It’s probably no great exaggeration to say that understanding the digestive process may not be something that’s hugely useful to a personal trainer. Sure, you need to know about nutrition and how the body uses energy, but do you really need to know exactly what’s going on in all the pipes and tubes of the human body or the specific enzymes involved in breaking down what you eat?
Well, it’ll certainly be useful if you choose to specialise in nutrition, but even if you don’t it’s in the Level 2 and Level 3 syllabuses so you’ll need to learn it anyway! And what better way to remember something than with a handy acronym…?
The digestive process is pretty disgusting when you think about it (particularly the end part) so how about we use that to our advantage? Digestion is a messy business, and you can use that to remember the route taken by food as it passes through the body like this:
So, I’ve used the American spelling of ‘esophagus’ rather than the British ‘oesophagus’ because if I used the British spelling it would be MOSSILI and that’s far less memorable than MESSILI, and also doesn’t mean anything.
And, to be clear, this is the journey taken by the food itself so does not include the pancreas, liver or gallbladder, as whilst they contribute to the digestive process by secreting enzymes the actual food doesn’t venture into them.
So there we have it! Remember that food is digested MESSILI!
Mouth, Esophagus, Stomach, Small Intestine, Large Intestine
(Yeah, and in the picture I’ve spared you the poophole at the end. We all know it’s there. We all know what it does. But that doesn’t mean we need to see it graphically depicted, okay?! You’re welcome.)
And you can download the diagram here.
Functional Fitness PTS 