Today I am kicking off week 1 of the new program from Beachbody Super Trainer Autumn Calabrese: The 4 Week Gut Protocol.

In case you haven’t heard of it before, the Gut Protocol is a comprehensive nutrition program that explores how the food you eat affects your gut health and gut microbiome.

The goal of the program is to identify food that could be causing digestive issues and eliminate them to re-balance your gut microbiome and improve your energy levels, immunity, and overall health.

Along with the program, Autumn has released a series of videos to help guide you, as well as a 4 Week, Low Impact Workout Program called 4 Week for Every Body that can be done along with the program if you choose to do so.

How Does the Gut Protocol Work?

In the 4 Week Gut Protocol, Autumn will help you learn how to identify possible food sensitivities and help you choose food that support a healthy gut. You will learn about alkaline foods and ways you can rebalance the gut microbiome.

You will also utilize the portion control containers that you might be familiar with already from 21 Day Fix. This will help you determine how much of each food group you need to get per day based on your calorie target. The program comes with a guide that thoroughly explains how this will all work.

Here’s a Quick Breakdown of How This Will Work

• Eat at least 30 different plants in your weekly diet.
• Limit coffee to no more than three 8 oz. cups a week.
• Consume no more than 200 mg of caffeine a day.
• Limit Red meat to only once a week.
• Add a serving of fermented foods at least 3 times a week.
• Drink half your body weight in ounces of water a day – for example, if you weight 160 pounds, drink 80 fluid ounces of water every day.
• Do the 4 weeks for Every Body workout program

The 4 R’s of the Gut Protocol – Remove, Replace, Replenish, and Rebalance

The 4 R’s of the Gut Protocol are designed to help you identify food you need to add or remove from your diet.

What to Remove

On Day 1, you will remove the following items from your diet for the entire 4 weeks and really beyond if you want to maintain a healthy gut. The items are:

• Dairy
• Gluten
• Alcohol
• Artificial sweeteners
• Processed soy (soy milk, processed vegan meats, and soybean oil)
• Corn

Some Additional foods to consider removing are Eggs, nuts, and legumes.

Although Eggs are nutrient dense, some people can be sensitive to them. You might try limits or removing them all together over the next 4 weeks, and then reintroduce them and see how your body responds.

Nuts and legumes can also cause sensitivity so try to avoid, but if not soaking them before eating them will help with digestion.

What to Reduce

While you don’t have to remove these specific items from your diet, limits the amounts of the following items will help with your overall gut health:

• Added Sugars – No more than 10g a day.
• Caffeine – No more than 200 mg a day.
• Coffee – Limit to three 8 oz cups of coffee a week. Only unsweetened nondairy milk alternatives (coconut, almond, oat, etc. Just no soy).
• Red Meat – Limit to once a week or remove completely.

What to Replace

After removing the foods that cause sensitives, you’ll add in food and supplements that help nourish your body and support your gut.

• Naturally Fermented Foods – 1 serving 3 times a week
• Plants – Autumn is big on plants as they are one of the biggest factors in gut health. The goal is 30 different plants a week in your diet.

How to Replenish

It’s important to replenish the microbiome in your gut with food, but Beachbody has a few key products to specifically help give you a quick and easy boost:

• Vegan Shakeology – Learn more about Shakeology and my go to recipe.
• Optimize – helps support a function digestive tract with a blend of digestive enzimes and camu-camu to help support nutrient absorption.
• Revitalize – a prebiotic and probiotic blend that helps support the gastrointestinal tract.
• Energize – Plant based preworkout, just be sure to factor it into your added sugars and daily caffeine intake.

How to Rebalance

Exerices helps rebalance your body because moving your body helps your body. Exercise can help reduce stress over time, promote regular movement of the gastrointestinal tract to help with regular bowel movements, and also enhance the number of beneficial microbial and microflora in your gut.

Autumn suggests pairing the 4 Week Gut Protocol with her “no-impact” program 4 Weeks for Every Body. The workouts are 30 minutes or less and only 4 days a week. It has a modifier so the program will work for any fitness level. The goal is to move your body with causing an abundance of stress.

Here’s What You Get With the 4 Week Gut Protocol

The 4 Week Gut Protocol is packed with resources to help you succeed. First, you will get the color coded portion control containers that I previously mentioned, along with guides to help you understand the program, calculate your calorie target, and more.

The program comes with 4 helpful videos where Autumn talks to you about what you can expect in the program. She calls these the 4 Steps to Feeling Great videos.

It also comes with 4 weekly focus videos that will guide you through the program each week and give you some specific areas to focus on.

It also includes a program guide and some tracking sheets to help you keep up with what you are eating and things to track with your digestion to see how your body is responding. There’s even ones that are specific for Vegans!

Food Lists

The 4 Week Gut Protocol comes with several sheets that give you ideas on what foods you can eat when trying to plan your meals. Considering the program wants you to eat 30 different vegetables a week, you will appreciate all of the ideas for the Green Container as well as all the other colored containers.

Recipe Videos

Autumn has teamed up with her brother and chef Bobby Calabrese to a lot of yummy recipes that you can utilize as part of this program. Each recipe includes a video and PDF of the recipe.

There are recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, soups and chilis, and desserts. There are a total of 17 recipes included with video, and a total of 30 with PDFs.

Fixate Recipes

Autumn even goes as far as to show you which recipes in her Fixate program can also work for the Gut Protocol.

My 4 Week Gut Protocol Meal Plan and Recipes

I thought it might be helpful if each week I shared my personal meal plan + what recipes I plan to make for my family that week.

Please keep in mind that I am following plan C of the Gut Protocol.

Here are the links to dinner recipes I’m making this week:

• Chicken & Veggie Stir Fry
• Lemon Grilled Salmon
• Lasagna Roll-Ups

For meal prep I personally prepped the Asian Meatballs + Chicken Salad this week:

Kitchen tools I love + meal prep containers:

First Option

Second Option