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Welcome back. Today we're going to be talking about that lovely issue that we all experience, bloating, that puffy, distended stomach. I swear, sometimes when I am bloated, I could bounce a quarter off my belly. It is firm and it hurts. In some situations, it can even feel debilitating where you don't even want to go do things or you don't want to just do stuff around your house or do your daily tasks because you're stomach hurts from being bloated.
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So today I'm going to give eight very quick and simple tips to help reduce bloating quickly. Now, these aren't going to be necessarily long term fixes. This is going to be I'm bloated in the moment. What do I do to help reduce it? Now, because let's be honest, we all need those tips in our back pocket so we can whip them out and get rid of that puffy stomach.
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That is so uncomfortable. And if you find today's episode helpful, don't forget to let me know. I love to read your reviews. It means the world to me. You can go wherever you listen and just write a review and make sure you follow the show.
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Everything down to the tagline, you're doing better than you think you are. Spoke to me in the first episode and now, two years later, minimal pounds lost but significant changes in my body muscle mass, thanks to Andrea. I don't think I would have gotten this far without her. Truly, thank you. This mama got through some dark times clinging to your encouragement and insanely educational wisdom and strategies.
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Forever grateful. No, thank you. Vkane eight two eight for the review. And I read that review because I want you to really show up for this podcast every week, and I hope that you learn that it's one day at a time, one step at a time. Exercise is fun.
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Food is your friend. It fuels you. I hope that you can shift your paradigm like this amazing review did on seeing yourself how you are, because we're so hard on ourselves. So I hope that when you show up for this podcast, that you do get a mental shift and you do feel more powerful in your body with simple actionable steps and you do know how amazing you are. So thank you for that review so much.
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It literally made my whole week. I'm not even kidding. And before we get into today's episode, I do want to point out that you know, I am a big fan of sleep. It makes such a huge difference in so many aspects of your life. And I know it's really complicated to get as a mother and truly even just an adult in general.
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All right, let's get into it. Eight quick tips to help reduce bloating. Quickly, it I'm not going to get into a ton of the things that can cause bloating because there is a variety of situations, but typically it is caused by excess intestinal gas. Now, that can happen based on what we are eating. That can happen if we're having digestive issues.
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That can happen if we eat too fast. It can happen if we have a food intolerance or just gas and digestion buildup. So there's lots of different reasons, and that's only a couple of them. But what it is simply gas trapped in our stomach and it's creating this fullness or this abdominal pressure where we just feel puffy. Something else I want you to think about is bloating is also more common when you are recently postpartum or when you have diastasis recti, and that is because your abdominal wall is weakened.
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If you just had a baby, the front of your abdominal wall has just been stretched from that baby, so it's not as good at holding in any excess gas. And it's the same thing with diastasis recti. Remember, diastasis recti is a thinning and stretching of the linear alba. The linear alba is literally the line that runs right down the center of your core and separates your six pack, the right side and the left side. So when that's stretched, if you experience any bloating, it's like poof and out goes your stomach.
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So be aware that they can be worse and that bloating happens more in those situations. So don't feel bad about it, but just know that's normal. And as you move into being aware of your deep core healing postpartum or with diastasis recti, that definitely can improve. I remember after my twins, when I developed diastasis recti, feeling like everything made me bloated. And over time as I worked on my breathing and deep core, it also started to improve long term.
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So as we talk about these quick tips that are going to be helpful, I do want people in that boat to realize you do need to work on your breathing. You do need to work on your deep core, and you need to do progressive overload for it to help long term fix that Bloating issue and see changes that way. And as we talk about bloating, I also want you to realize if you are experiencing bloating on a very regular basis, you do need to figure out why it's not just a normal situation. I highly suggest getting a Bloating journal. Literally.
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Go to the Dollar store, pay ninety nine cents for a tiny little journal you can keep in your back pocket. Write down what you just ate when you're feeling bloated and see if you can catch a culprit. See if there's something you're consistently eating that is causing it. Cut it out and see if it improves. It's super simple and anybody can do it so easily.
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So do think about that as I give you these ideas that it's not only about stopping the bloating in the moment, but we do want to improve it long term. So with that said, let's get into how we can stop it in the moment, how we can see improvements quickly. My first tip is you need to have some potassium. It's pretty easy. You need to eat an avocado kiwis oranges, pistachios, a banana, which is the most classic thing to eat for potassium.
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Because potassium, if you're bloated from salt retention, potassium can help the kidneys get rid of that salt and it helps lower that water retention. Potassium also helps with digestion of food and it also supports the release of saliva and gastric acid, which help with digestion and absorbing proteins and carbohydrates. So if you're having a digestive problem, go get a banana. It's simple, it's easy, and it's going to help really move that food through your digestive tract. My second quick tip is you need to simmer down on the carbonated drinks.
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Carbonated drinks are made by mixing gas and water. That is literally what they're made out of. So those bubbles from that gas and water can easily build up in your stomach and create that bloating balloon effect. So if you're someone who even drinks carbonated water, you might need to switch to flat water. And I know, you might be thinking, but I'm not having soda.
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If you're drinking carbonated water a ton, you're going to experience more bloating. And if you're drinking soda a ton, you're also going to experience more bloating. So if you're bloated, do not drink any carbonated drinks the rest of the day, you need to switch to water. It's going to help reduce that bloating. These tips are going to be coming in hot today.
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So we're already moving to the third tip. I need you to watch your coniferous vegetable intake. Coniferous vegetables are broccoli, brussels sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, bach, choy, radishes, kale, and a couple of other things. But those are kind of the most common ones. And the reason why you want to limit these is because they are high in sulfur and they do contain a sugar called raphanose, which remains undigested until the bacteria in your gut basically ferments it.
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So this basically leads the gas to build up and it can't really get out until your gut bacteria ferments it and kicks it out so it can create bloating. I can honestly say this is a big one for me. I know I've talked about it before and the reason I tell you to track where you're sensitive to because I used to get bloating all the time, like a couple of times a week and I could not figure it out. And I was like, I don't understand. And I was of the mindset of like, I'm eating healthy, why am I bloated?
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Only things that are unhealthy in, quote unquote, create bloating. And that's wrong. Sometimes we're just sensitive to things. And I started tracking and I realized, oh my gosh, I pound cauliflower and broccoli like a maniac and I was turning into a puffer fish afterwards. So I kicked them out of my diet for a little while.
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I just focused on other vegetables and my bloating went way down and I have been able to add them back in. I just don't have them as much. And something else that can be helpful is cooking. If you are having vegetables or coniferous vegetables, is cooking them. And the reason why that is helpful is because when you cook them, it helps break down and soften the fibers as well, so it makes it easier to digest.
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So I do have them. Again, I just limit them and I try to cook them. But you need to pay attention for you and see, oh, can I add it back in or can I not? And even tracking that journal is going to help if you're kind of sensitive to those and if you are bloated, don't later in the day go say, oh, I'm feeling bloated. I'm going to go have a whole side of broccoli and that's going to make me feel better because it's going to do the opposite.
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So just be aware of that. My fourth tip is to add some ginger into your diet. As soon as you're starting to feel bloated, get some ginger in your body. Ginger helps increase mobility to your gestational intestines tract, so it basically improves it. Ginger helps speed up the digestion process and empty your stomach faster.
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Win win. You're puffy. We need to get that food out that's making you puffy. It's going to speed up that process. And a couple of quick fun facts.
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Ginger can also help reduce your PMS symptoms and an upset stomach because of the way it helps move food through the digestive tract. I'm sure you're thinking now, okay, how do I even eat ginger? What does that mean? Because I know the first time I had ginger I thought that and it's actually pretty simple. You can add it to your tea.
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If you're a tea drinker, you can add it to any juices or smoothies, just blend it in. I had a friend who would juice some fruits and vegetables and drink it in the morning and she would just put some ginger in it and it was no big deal. I have other friends who put it in smoothies. I've put it in my smoothies before. It is a root and it is a teeny bit spicy, so you don't need a ton of it.
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You can also chew on ginger so you can go to the store, any store has it. Buy the ginger root and then cut a really thin slice of it, kind of like a slice of gum, a small one, and you can just chew on it. And when it loses flavor, then you can spit it out. That makes it really easy because you don't even have to make anything because I don't always have time to make things. But I do have time to cut a light small piece of ginger and just chew on it for a little bit.
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And if you're feeling bloated in the moment, that's going to be a great option to try to help reduce it. My fifth quick tip to reduce bloating is to limit your fake sugars. Kind of a fun fact when you're looking at food labels, you might be like, well, what's a fake sugar? I can't always tell. Anything that ends in ol is a fake sugar.
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So erythritol, Xylitol and sorbital all are artificial sweeteners. And anytime you have that, they're going to puff up your stomach. You may be thinking, oh, I'm saving carbohydrates by having some fake sugar. Or maybe you're trying to eat a lower fat diet and while they pull out the fat, they just sweeten it because, let's be honest, fat does add flavor. That's part of why fat is amazing as well.
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As, you know, I feel proteins, fats and carbs are all amazing, but fat does add flavor. So when we go into lower fat items, oftentimes they pull out the fat, but that loses the flavor. So they have to add in fake sugars to make up for the flavor. And that might make you puffy. So be aware of sugar free gum, candies, or even just anything that has the ol at the end of the label.
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If you're having multiple things of that a day in different foods, you're going to turn into a puffer fish. So you want to try to avoid that. My next tip, and this is really kind of going to focus a little bit more based on if you're bloated from constipation, is to add magnesium into your diet. Magnesium simply is a great supplement. I feel like anyone should take it, and honestly, everybody should.
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Magnesium helps attract water into your intestines, so it helps relax the gastrointestinal tract, which helps soften stools and increases the stool size, which makes them easier for you to get them out of your body. It also helps soothe your muscles in the intestines. And just in general, it kind of softens everything up because the water is pulled in. You can easily do a supplement with magnesium, but you can also just add avocados, bananas, black beans, and salmon because all of them have magnesium in them. So again, I go back to the potassium and the magnesium.
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They're both in avocados and bananas. So that's going to be a great choice if you're feeling bloated for both of those things. My 7th tip is a little bit different, but I think it's worth pointing out is to add fennel seeds into your diet. You might think, what is fennel seeds? You can easily get them in most stores, especially health food stores or even online.
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It's just a different style of seed. There's tons of different seeds you can have, and it improves your digestive health. Another fun fact about it is if you are a nursing mama, fennel is a great supplement because it helps promote lactation and it also improves your skin. So win Win, it's a great option. You can easily eat it by either crushing it or grinding it whole and having it plain, or you can mix it into oatmeal, you can put it into baked goods, anything where you would put seeds, you can easily put this.
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You can mix them in with your vegetables. You can mix them in with chicken or anything that you enjoy. Just anything you'd mix in seeds. And you can also eat them plain, as I mentioned. And since I'm spitting out a couple of fun facts as I was researching these, it actually freshens your breath, too.
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So keeping some fennel seeds on you is not a bad idea if you want to have a not bloated stomach and fresh breath. Win win. Okay, my 8th and final tip, we kind of flew through these, but they're all simple and quick and just easy things you can write down and think of just adding in right away. And my 8th is I would take charcoal. And I'm going to be honest, the first time someone told me to take activated charcoal, I was like, what I didn't know what it was.
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And it was a couple of years ago. And we keep it in our house. We actually use it I don't want to say regularly because we only use it with upset stomachs, but activated charcoal is actually pretty awesome. It's porous, so it basically binds to things in your stomach, which makes it easier to bind to gas. So when you have excess gas in your stomach, that charcoal traps that gas molecule and reduces the gas and reduces the bloating because it binds to it and pulls it out.
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Activated charcoal can also be great if someone's stomach is upset. This is how I learned about activated charcoal is because my sister in law has an older child who has some learning disabilities, and she can't always communicate when she's sick. And she explained to me it's really hard when this child gets sick because when she throws up, she can't really tell me and it is everywhere. She can't say her stomach hurts or anything, but when she started to recognize the signs and she has a hard time even getting it in the toilet, like she can struggle with that. She started giving her activated charcoal and it really reduced the amount that she would throw up or would kind of calm her tummy.
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So not only for bloating, but it can actually be really good for upset stomachs. Now, the thing you do need to know about activated charcoal, as I said, it's porous. So it doesn't only combine to gas and bacteria and other things that cause sickness. It can also combine to nutrients. So it's not something you want to take on a regular basis regularly at all.
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You only want to every once in a while when you're feeling bloated. It can help ease that bloating right away or if you have a really upset stomach. We flew through those eight tips. I think they're all going to be helpful. The last thing I want to say, and it's not really a tip, but it's something to just be aware of, is you do want to move around still when you are bloated.
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I know you may not want to be jumping around, but even just walking or light yoga can really get that digestional tract moving, which can help get that excess gas out of your system, which is also going to help. That's not necessarily a quick tip, but it's going to be helpful. So just realize that moving and exercise is going to be good as well. You don't just want to curl up in a ball. That that's going to help get things moving.
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Because if you notice a lot of these tips that I gave and a lot of these supplements and ideas were getting your intestines, were getting your digestive tract, everything moving to shift things around and get that gas out. So that's going to be the most effective. These were all super simple ideas. I hope you wrote down two, three, four of them that you can whip out next time you're feeling bloated. And I hope you know that bloating is normal.
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But we do want to get to the bottom of it if it is happening on a regular basis, because it shouldn't be after every meal or on a daily thing, it should be every once in a while. And if it is more than that, you do want to figure out what is going on, that journal can help you as well, just to see if it's linked to food or going in and seeing a doctor if you are bloated on a regular basis. All right, that's it for now. I hope your stomach is less bloated in the future and as always, you are doing better than you think you are. All right, we'll chat next week, like.