1 - Eliminate processed sugar and concentrated sugars from your diet. Fruit juices, chocolate bars, sweets. Loose concentrated sugar foods too.
2 – Increase your intake of antioxidant flavonoid foods. They are found in fruits and vegetables with lots of different colours and help your immune function.
3 – Your inner garden, or microbiome needs a wide variety of foods to nourish it. The aim is as many healthy bacterial species as possible in your gut. Eat a diet rich in fruits and vegetables of all different kinds. A wide mix of all types of vegetables and not just the same fruits you like to eat all the time. If your goal is to improve your immune resilience, you should be eating the vegetables and fruits you don't like. That’s right, eat the fruit and veg you wouldn’t usually choose to give your gut a rich variety of bacteria.
4 - Inflammatory foods a no-go area! Forget fried foods or anything with hydrogenated fats. A simple way to spot these is that they often come sealed in bags or boxes at the supermarket. This will be hard for some people, but saying no to processed foods means saying no to the inflammation they bring. The idea is to keep as much of those precious antioxidant reserves as possible. High floury carbohydrate rich meals make you feel tired after eating them for a reason - they are behind insulin surges which lead to more pro-inflammatory effects.
So, cut out that sugar whenever you can, eat a colourful range of fruits and vegetables and take those inflammatory processed foods off your shopping list.