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 Hi there,
If we haven’t met yet, I’m Amanda
Malachesky, Digestive and Allergy
Detective, and I know how to help people find a solid
plan to improve their digestion. Not only have I figured out
my own do-able and effective gut maintenance plan after
experiencing years of digestive turmoil, I’ve also helped
hundreds of clients and students find their personalized
plan for calm digestion.

I know that you’ve likely found yourself feeling anxious

about your food and supplements, asking endless
questions about your gut, and second guessing your
approach, only to find you still don’t know what to do.

I want to let you know:

my students are breaking through this, and coming out
the other side empowered to make confident choices
to transform their bloating, constipation, and diarrhea.

Let’s take a look at what happened for one of my students as they shifted their approach to their digestion:

Ysi S. started the program feeling bloated and nauseous daily and frequently had loose stools, which had been
happening for a very long time, and had done everything they could think of. By the end of our time together,
Ysi had comfortable digestion for the first time in years.

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“My symptoms have actually improved dramatically in the last month or so...I have added some dairy back
into my diet, mostly stopped eating spicy foods, and really focused on mindfulness, stress-relief, and joy in my
life. Diet wise, I have actually been less restrictive/more inclusive than I ever have been, and somehow my
bowel movements have been more solid.

Over the course of 8 weeks, Amanda truly provided me with all of the knowledge needed to take charge of my
digestive health. What I love most is that I now feel that I have all the tools and resources I need to move
forward on my own and make informed decisions about my own digestive health.”

---Ysi S., CA

And Ysi isn’t alone! If you follow my formula for creating your calm digestion plan, you will also find your
unique path to resolve bloating, constipation, and diarrhea.

I have been specially trained to help you find what’s true for your body, so you can work in harmony with yourself,
and access flexibility and spontaneity again.

What I want to share with you today is the Roadmap to Gut Recovery. This is the exact formula I teach my
students to help them find their personalized calm digestion plan.

I invite you to read on to see what YOU can do to find your unique digestive solutions!

Are you ready to see how it’s done?

Let’s step out onto the road together.

As Lao Tzu said, “The journey of a thousand miles begins

with a single step.”

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PG 4 © 2021 Confluence Nutrition www.confluencenutrition.com Roadmap to Gut Recovery
 STEP 1:
ASSESS & GATHER INFORMATION

The first thing to do when creating any plan is to assess Once you have answered these questions, you need to ask
where you are and how you got there. WHY to help you know where to focus your efforts.

You might have already tried to do this, by compiling all For example, your approach will be different if your current
of your previous test results, or writing out a summary of digestive symptoms started with a bout of food poisoning
everything you think is connected to your symptoms. versus the stress from getting a divorce, or if probiotics
make your symptoms worse.
The challenge here is that not every detail is relevant,
and it can be difficult to know which things are truly Focusing on the suspected underlying mechanisms of your
important. symptoms is what helps you focus your action.

I’ve found that there are 3 key things to focus on in your Has anyone ever sat down and mapped this out with you?
assessment: If not, this is always the place to begin.

• What events were the key triggers? This could be an You can map out your triggers by making a timeline of your
illness, a stress event, or anything at all that you noticed significant health events, and considering why this event
changed your symptoms for the worse. may have changed your digestion.
• What do you currently know makes things better?
• What do you currently know makes things worse?

ACTION STEP

Take out a sheet of paper or fresh digital document, and write down a
chronology of significant events that affected your digestion. When did
you first notice something wasn’t right? What else was happening at that
time in your life? What happened then?

Just note them down, either with dates, or the age you were when you
experienced them. What can you infer about the mechanism of those
changes? What do you notice?

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 STEP 2:
TAKE ITERATIVE ACTION

A lot of gut health experts spend their time suggesting cookie-cutter protocols for gut problems,
but the challenge with this is that everyone is unique.

The cause of one person’s constipation may not be the same as another person’s constipation. And
if you’ve tried one of these rote protocols and it didn’t work, you have no idea why.

Your action steps need to be based on something unique to you, and there needs to be a process
for evaluating your successes and failures so you can learn from them.

Using the suspected mechanisms you discovered in your assessment step, you’ll now work with
what I call the Iterative Action Method.

Iterative Action is simply taking action by building on what you know and what you learn. It’s a
5-step process that’s circular:

ACTION STEP

Commit to basing your actions from here on out on what

you learn from your experiments, rather than cookie-cutter
protocols.

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 STEP 2A:
ASK A QUESTION

All good research starts with a good question. You’ll want Or, if my symptoms started after an episode of food
to focus your efforts on solutions that are likely to produce poisoning, and I suspect SIBO is an underlying cause, my
the result you want. question might be “Do I have SIBO?”, or “Does treating
SIBO resolve my symptoms?”
Your question should be about the suspected mechanism
you identified in your assessment. You’re probably naturally doing this already. Asking these
questions helps you understand what you’re testing, and
For example, if my symptoms started when I switched to what information you’re trying to gather.
a new diet, and I suspect the mechanism of that change
was an increase in dietary fiber, my question might be This matters because without this focus, you’re likely
“Will changing the types of fiber in my diet reduce my randomly throwing things at your symptoms, and getting
constipation?” confused about whether anything is working at all.

ACTION STEP

Create a question about your suspected symptom

mechanisms. Try to be specific.

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 STEP 2B:
MAKE A HYPOTHESIS

Next, you’ll make a hypothesis about what you think will help.

It may seem like this is the same as the question, but it takes your thinking one step further: it applies
a possible solution to the problem.

When you create your hypothesis, you are clearly stating that you THINK a particular solution will
have a particular effect.

For example, If your question was, “Will changing the type of fiber in my diet affect my constipation?”,
your hypothesis might be “A low FODMAP diet (a diet low in fermentable carbohydrates) will improve
my constipation.”

If your question was “Does treating SIBO resolve my symptoms?”, your hypothesis might be “An
herbal antimicrobial protocol will improve my symptoms.”

Making a hypothesis clearly states the action you will take to try and address your problem.

ACTION STEP

Create a hypothesis about what you think will address the

question you asked. Choose a specific action, treatment,
or protocol.

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 STEP 2C:
DESIGN AN EXPERIMENT

Now, you’ll design an experiment you made your hypothesis you won’t know which change is responsible for the
about. problem. If you have a good effect, you also won’t know
what was responsible! Design your experiment well.
Your experiment will be one of these options:
• Habit changes It’s also important to be strategic about what order you
• Diet changes work on these three categories. I teach a Foundations
• Supplements or medications First approach. A lot of times, focusing on the foundations
clears things up without the need for bigger interventions.
There are important strategies for each of these types of
changes, and this is where a lot of people get stuck in the I recommend the following order for your experiments:
ditch on their road to gut recovery. 1. Habit changes and stress reduction FIRST!
2. Diet changes to get CLEAR on what diet minimizes
This most often comes up with supplements, where people symptoms.
try to add many different supplements at once, but it can 3. Supplements, medications, higher level treatments.
also come up with diets.
Whatever experiment you choose first, make sure that it
The really key thing that is often missed is that you want directly tests your suspected underlying mechanisms or
to change only ONE THING at a time. Changing too many causes.
things at once muddies the waters and makes answering
your research question difficult. If you have a bad effect,

ACTION STEP

Choose ONE thing to focus on, and complete your

experiment.

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 STEP 2D:
RUN YOUR EXPERIMENT

Now you’ll actually run your experiment! Remember, in general, you should only be changing ONE
thing.

The purpose of running your experiment is to get clear about whether your were right about the
suspected mechanism or not. When you get a good answer about this, it both helps you understand
your underlying causes, AND know what you need to do to feel well.

During this step, it’s crucial to track your progress so that you can objectively see your results (or
lack thereof). The key tool for doing this is the Food-Symptom Diary. (You can download a copy of
my Food-Symptom Diary here).

On this simple tracking device, you just note what you ate, any signs or symptoms you experienced,
and you report on the state of your poop, using the Bristol Stool Chart.

It may seem like this is kind of a weird exercise, but your poop is one of the primary indicators of
your digestive health.

During your experiment, it’s important that you not second guess what you’re seeing on the Food-
Symptom diary, but to simply just take data, and set it aside.

ACTION STEP

Download a Food-Symptom Diary and practice tracking

your symptom changes for a week.

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 STEP 2E:
EVALUATE AND MAKE CONCLUSIONS

Once your experiment is complete, you’ll go back through • If so, you’ve found something new to add to your
your Food-Symptom diary to see if there has been an ongoing calm digestion plan.
overall shift during your experiment in the quality of your • If they got worse, what would be the possible underlying
poop...has it gotten more “normal”? mechanism of that?
• What new questions have emerged?
You’ll also ask whether your initial hypothesis was correct
or not, and consider whether your overall symptoms are Any new questions (or previous questions) become your
better or worse than when you started. next experiments in the Iterative Action Method to
continue learning what your body specifically needs.
At this stage, you’ll try to make conclusions: did your
experiment have the results you suspected? Over time, using this process, you get clearer on what works
and what the underlying mechanisms of your symptoms
are, and your range of flares gets narrower.

ACTION STEP

Review your Food-Symptom Diary and see what kind of

conclusions you can make. Did things improve or did they
get worse? Use these results to inform your next steps!

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 STEP 3:
DO MORE OF WHAT WORKS AND LESS OF
WHAT DOESN’T

As you continue to run Iterative Action Experiments, you’ll build a clear library of things you know
help, and things you know don’t help.

Though it may seem simple, this specific information is what builds out YOUR unique calm digestion
plan!

It likely includes:

• Behaviors that keep your gut running smoothly.

• Specific dietary choices that allow you to maintain comfortable digestion.
• Supplements that clearly made a difference for you.

Going forward, you simply do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t, directed entirely by
your body and its response to the experiments you’ve tried.

ACTION STEP

Consider what would be different for you in your life if you

specifically knew what to do more of and less of to keep
your digestion happy?

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MISTAKES TO AVOID:

MISTAKE #1: QUICK FIX-MAGIC PILL

It’s so tempting to think that the awesome thing that turned up in your newsfeed is FINALLY going to fix everything. And wouldn’t
it be wonderful if all we had to do was take one pill, or supplement, or eat that one fancy food?

The truth about gut healing is that the solution is rarely one single thing, and true healing requires the right strategy and
approach, rather than a specific diet, supplement, or tool.

We fall for the magic fix because it seems so easy, but it really is usually too good to be true. Though this approach is more work,
I promise it will yield better, more sustainable results.

MISTAKE #2: IGNORING the FOUNDATION

Elimination diets are super helpful tools to identify the mechanisms of your food sensitivities or intolerances, but they aren’t meant
to be used for the long term. Lots of people teach you how to get on these diets, but don’t share the exit plan.

The key next step after finding improvement from an elimination diet is to do one-by-one food reintroductions, so you can identify
which foods are your specific triggers. In most cases, you’ll find you don’t need to continue avoiding a huge list of foods, just the
ones that clearly make your symptoms worse!

MISTAKE #3: GOING CRAZY WITH PROTOCOLS & SUPPLEMENTS

Protocol hopping and garbage-mouthing supplements can really muddy up your health situation. When you jump around to all
these solutions, unless you happen to hit pay dirt, you don’t know which intervention really made the difference.

This is really common with supplements. People add four or many more supplements, and start them all at once. Then they have
symptoms, like headaches, but they don’t know what is causing them because they added too much at once.

When adopting a new protocol or supplement, it’s a good idea to add things one at a time, so you can clearly see whether it’s
helping or not.

MISTAKE #4: EXPECTING RESULTS TOO FAST

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you can’t rush success with this process.

Your body is a living, completely unique organism, and it has its own timeline, and speed at which it can adapt to new changes. For
example, my student Mohammed found that he could only tolerate a very small portion of a probiotic capsule at a time.

Having exquisite patience with your body is necessary to really understand what it’s telling you, and this is what gets you where
you’d like to go.

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 Now what’s NEXT??
Now you know how to create a calm digestion plan, but do you know how to
apply this to your unique situation?

I’m hosting a FREE TRAINING on how to go from confused

and frustrated by your gut healing diets and protocols to
a confident plan for calm digestion!

In the training, I’m going to cover:

• The common mistakes you may be making when choosing your diets and
supplements.
• The key assessment skills that significantly reduce your trial-and-error.
• The MASTER formula I use to help my students go from anxiety, endless gut
questions, and second guessing to a confident plan for calm digestion.

GIVE ME THE CLASS TIMES

I look forward to meeting you and helping you along YOUR Road to Gut
Recovery…

PG 14 © 2021 Confluence Nutrition

Amanda
www.confluencenutrition.com Roadmap to Gut Recovery