Meet Meg Gerber | Functional Gut Health Dietitian & Breath Work Teacher

We had the good fortune of connecting with Meg Gerber and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Meg, is there something you believe many others might not?
My belief = vegan diets = not healthy

This feels controversial to many, but to provide more context, I typically work with stressed women who have struggled chronically with gut issues and very often are also working with autoimmunity. High stress overtime has a significant impact on digestion and our gastrointestinal tract as a whole. Most namely – it slows everything down – you don’t digest your food and move your bowels along as well. This can result in poor nutrient absorption, poor detoxification (pooping is one of your main forms of bodily detox), hormone imbalance (we clear hormones via the stool), poor metabolism (vitamins and minerals that fuel the thyroid and metabolic processes are low) and so much more! Chronic stress can also cause damage the mucosal and epithelial lining of the gut along with creating blood sugar dysregulation overtime (with can come with its own set of domino-effect health risks). I want to get clients the biggest ‘bang for their buck’ when it comes to absorbable, nutrient dense foods that support digestive health, gut healing and the immune response.

Therefore, consuming high quality animal-based protein is one of the best ways to optimize nutritional intake of things like protein, vitamins and minerals. This is because animal-based proteins like meat, fish, eggs, dairy are about 80-100% bioavailable compared to plant proteins that are 40-60% bioavailable. Meaning, you absorb almost all of the protein in your piece of salmon on your dinner plate but you absorb only about half of your plant based protein smoothie.

Not to mention, some of the most energy-supportive minerals like copper and iron are rich in animal-based proteins like meat and fish. When I say high quality, I mean animals ideally coming from regenerative, organic or small local farms; ideally grass fed beef, wild seafood, organic poultry and organic and/or raw dairy. The nutrient profile is different in high quality red meat like grass fed beef vs. a fast food hamburger in that it isn’t pumped with antibiotics and hormones and an animal fed grass will have less inflammatory fatty acids and more anti-inflammatory omega 3s in its meat.

In addition, many of my clients need gut healing support from gut lining damage known as ‘leaky gut’ (seen by research as one of the root causes behind autoimmunity) Therefore, they are in need of bioavailable protein foods because the building blocks of protein (known as amino acids) help with tissue healing and repair.

Alright, so for those in our community who might not be familiar with your business, can you tell us more?
I own two companies – Grounded Nourishment (a private functional medicine nutrition practice) and JÜJ Bitters – a digestive bitters made for health conscious folks.

My private practice is a melding what I like to call the ‘art and science’ of gut healing. I provide support around nutrition, functional lab testing and supplements (the science) along with deeper nervous system and mindset work around healing which includes things like guided breath work, journaling prompts, mindfulness mantras and vagus nerve stimulation. I’ve spent over 400 hours of additional training in mindfulness-based practices as I found that healing the gut really needs to go beyond the food – I work with humans and that means combining what the textbook says for healing along with the emotions, stress level, self talk and nervous system capacity of the person in front of me.

To truly heal the gut, we have to create a bodily environment that recognizes it is ‘safe’. Safety happens when we get the body into ‘rest and digest’ or the calm, collected, resourced state of the nervous system more often than it is in the high chronic stress, fight/flight/freeze or fawn state. That high stress state is most commonly due to things like years of under eating, overexercising, having a toxic work or relationship environment, lack of sleep, cycles of dieting, blood sugar imbalance, toxic exposures, etc. The intention of the nervous system is to realign that system of safety recognition so that the food and supplements can truly ‘work’.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I live in Austin Texas and it’s quite a mecca for health-minded people like myself! I would likely take them out to one of my favorite gluten free restaurants in the area like The Well or Picnik. Time in nature always helps me refill my cup so we would spend time on the greenbelt hiking in Austin. We’d take a picnic to Barton Springs pool and go for a dip. I am a sucker for reformer pilates so we would take a class at Peach House Pilates and we would most definitely get brunch at my favorite gluten free food truck: Nourished ATX. There would definitely be a matcha at Maha and a scoop of GF DF icecream mixed in at Gati :).

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My past coaches and mentors! I’m a big believer (as a nutrition coach/support system of clients) in being coached and supported myself. For me, this is truly the oxygen mask analogy of filling up my cup first to be better for the world around me.

Website: www.groundednourish.com; www.livewithjuj.com

Instagram: @groundednourish; @livewithjuj

Image Credits
Mica McCook, Maddi Cislo