That tight, heavy feeling in your belly? It’s not just uncomfortable, it’s a sign your digestion needs support. The good news is, that constant feeling of being bloated isn’t something you just have to live with!
While occasional bloating is normal, frequent bloating can be a sign that your digestion needs extra support. Everything from the foods you eat to your hydration levels, stress, and even how you combine certain ingredients can play a role in keeping your belly flat and comfortable.
But before we get into the best ways to beat bloating, it’s important to understand what’s really going on inside your body. Bloating isn’t just about feeling full or uncomfortable—it’s a sign that your digestive system may be struggling to process food efficiently. By uncovering the root causes, you’ll be better equipped to make lasting changes that keep bloating at bay.
Digestion is such a central process in our bodies, one of the most energy intensive. Digestion is also responsible for not only breaking down food but also helping absorb and assimilate nutrients. When your digestion is efficient and healthy, your entire body functions well. See how my Feel Good Digestive Enzyme formula can help increase nutrient absorption while relieving gas and bloating!
When digestion is not working well, that’s when congestion and bloating begins. For instance, the mere act of overeating can create indigestion, because the body doesn’t have sufficient hydrochloric acid and enzymes to digest all the food your body has taken in.
If that excess food/waste is not eliminated quickly enough, it may ferment and rot, creating growth of unfriendly bacteria to further aid the breakdown of the food. These unfriendly bacteria then feed on the extra food and produce gas in the process.
So the key takeaway here is that indigestion produces gas and gas creates bloating.
This is another big one. We’ve all (especially us women!) had the experience of holding onto too much water and feeling “waterlogged” and heavy. It’s hard to describe this yucky feeling, but we’ve all experienced it!
Now, there are many, MANY reasons why your cells might hold onto too much water — sometimes one of the causes is not drinking enough water! Sounds strange, but when you don’t get enough water, your body sometimes holds onto more water and creates that dreaded “puffy” look.
So be sure you drink plenty of water, and also that you get lots of pure water from the fruits and vegetables in your diet. Plenty of pure water will help dilute and eliminate the toxins and impurities, making your body less likely to get puffy or bloated.
If bloating in a premenopausal woman follows a pattern, it’s likely to be related to the menstrual cycle. During the last two weeks of the menstrual cycle, known as the luteal phase, women can retain water, which causes swelling in not only the abdomen but sometimes in the hands, feet and breasts. Learn about The Best Natural Ways to Deal with Menopause.
The rising levels of hormones also have a direct effect on the gastrointestinal tract. “This hormonal effect causes the GI tract not to empty as quickly and to produce gas,” explains Dr. Grace Janik, director of reproductive endocrinology at St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
Because stool and gas are moving more slowly through the intestines, women often have constipation and bloating in the two weeks before their periods. Of course, this can be greatly ameliorated by eating a healthy diet and using some of the tips I provide below, but it can present another challenging for us ladies than it is for men!
Now that you understand the deeper causes of bloating, let’s get into the actionable tips…
Have you ever felt bloated after drinking water? Earlier we discussed the importance of drinking plenty of water to avoid water retention, but when we drink water and the temperature of the water can have a big impact on bloating as well.
Drinking ice cold water, and other liquids will impede the digestive process by diluting gastric juices, such as your HCL, and cooling your overall digestion. You also dilute the digestive enzymes your body needs for the effective digestion of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats.
If you need water or a beverage between meals, sip on room temperature water or hot tea, but no chugging — and definitely nothing too cold! Best to hydrate between meals—at least 30 minutes before, and wait at least 45 minutes after eating to start drinking large amounts of liquids.
Carbonated drinks like beer, champagne, seltzer water, mineral water, and tonic water (anything with added carbonation) contain air bubbles that travel to the stomach and release carbon dioxide to the digestive tract. This creates an uncomfortable bloating sensation.
Not only do artificial carbonated drinks create an acidic metabolic state in your body, but they’re loaded with chemicals and contains HFCS (regular soda) or artificial sweeteners (diet soda) — or yeast (beer), all of which create even more bloating. Yeast and corn syrup are especially bad for bloating because they both feed unfriendly bacteria.
Try my De-Bloating Digestive Distress Elixir recipe!
In Ayurvedic and Asian medicine, the digestive system runs on the fire element. Thus, foods and herbs that support warmth and strength in this area are highly valued and encouraged. Some of these include ginger, cayenne pepper, lemon, cinnamon and others.
This is also a big reason why an exclusively raw diet is not recommended in those traditions, because your digestive system becomes “cool” and weakens over time. But when we do eat raw foods, and I still do recommend eating a lot of raw veggies and fruit, as well as some seeds and nuts, we can add “fire” to the mix with these aforementioned foods. So lemon in the Glowing Green Smoothie for instance, and cayenne pepper in the Dharma’s Oil-Free Kale Salad.
Keep these “fire” promoting foods on hand to add into recipes easily.
Anything that is hard to digest will leave you feeling bloated, plain and simple. Dairy is known to particularly cause bloating, since it lacks all its enzymes and is one of the hardest foods most people can digest. So avoid it or cut back all together. Excessive meat, or processed foods with unnatural ingredients will also slow down your digestion quite a bit and set the stage for fermentation, putrefaction and bloating.
Also, stop chugging your smoothies… Chew them instead! My Glowing Green Smoothie is made of whole foods, and should be treated as a meal. When you take the time to thoroughly chew your food, you pave the way for easier digestion and less bloating.
This one you’ve definitely heard, but it’s really important and worth repeating: avoid processed foods laden with excessive salt. Table salt is really de-natured sodium chloride salt. Table salt is dead, kiln-dried, highly processed, and will also create “false fat”, making you look bloated and up to 9 pounds heavier than you truly weigh. There are many “hidden” sources of bad salt in all kinds of packaged foods, so your best bet is to avoid processed foods as much as possible!
Over time, as you stop eating excessively salty processed foods, you won’t find the need to add as much salt to your foods naturally, and foods will still taste flavorful.
It takes a while for your body to signal fullness, so if you eat until you feel completely full, chances are you will have overeaten, which can lead to a bloated feeling. Likewise, completely stuffing yourself makes it more difficult for efficient digestion to occur and for digestive juices to do their job.
So, if you want to avoid feeling bloated, particularly after meals, then don’t eat until you are full. Instead, eat slowly, chew well and pay attention to what your body is telling you. Stopping when you feel about 75 percent full will maximize your body’s ability to digest the foods you eat and help prevent bloating.
Starting your meal with a green salad or Probiotic & Enzyme Salad (or both) aids digestion. This not only brings you digestive-enhancing enzymes, it helps you avoid overeating the heavier foods that are more difficult to digest and that cause bloat. Salad veggies contain fiber and healthy nutrients that fill you up and serve as a natural form of calorie restriction. The enzymes in the greens also kick start your digestive processes, preparing the way for heavier foods to come.
When you do eat salad, keep it light. Avoid heavy cream-based dressings or chunks of cheese, or dressings with lots of bad oils. Unless it’s an entree, nuts can also be too heavy for a salad. Instead, use lemon or apple cider vinegar and perhaps a little bit of avocado for fat in your pre-meal salads! One of my favorite healthy dressing recipes is an Oil-Free Red Pepper & Cilantro Dressing that is so easy, you can make it tonight.
One easy way to help prevent gassiness and bloating is to use the KISS principle. KISS stands for Keep It Simple Silly! ;) And that means, eating fewer food groups and ingredients per meal. If you make a salad, don’t add 12 different vegetables and spices and other ingredients — try 5-8 ingredients total. At a restaurant, order salad as your starter instead of an elaborate, heavy appetizer.
Pair heavier foods, like animal protein or starches with veggies and salads, rather than each other. Making simple meals with raw and cooked vegetables not only saves you time in the kitchen, but it supports your health and prevents unwanted bloat.
Try making one of my easy salad recipes for dinner tonight!
While there are a seemingly infinite number of supplements out there that can be taken, I generally recommend three primary supplements for bloating. Not surprisingly, they all have to do with optimizing digestion and elimination.
Probiotics are literally the building blocks of a healthy digestive system, and my Feel Good SBO Probiotics not only help digest food, they keep pathogens at bay, aid your immune system and so much more. This powerful formula contains soil based organisms (SBOs) to improve your ability to digest and assimilate macronutrients and speed up the elimination of waste. Take a close look at Why You Need Soil Based Probiotics (SBOs).
Digestive enzymes are also important because they break down stubborn macronutrients in your food like protein, carbs and fat, which can reduce gas and bloating as well as improve nutrient absorption. I highly recommend trying our Feel Good Digestive Enzyme Formula which has 2-3 times more fat-metabolizing lipase than standard formulas.
And lastly, when digestion slows down, waste and toxins can build up, leaving you feeling sluggish and bloated. That’s where Detoxy comes in! This oxygen-based cleanse gently supports your body’s natural elimination process, helping to clear out waste without harsh laxatives or discomfort. Taking Detoxy at night allows your body to reset, so you wake up feeling light, refreshed, and energized.
This last one is probably you don’t hear often, so let me explain. Stress can have a very strong impact on your digestion, and therefore the level of bloating you experience. Because we’ve all felt a difference when we’ve eaten in a state of fear or distress — how our food doesn’t sit well, our stomach may feel unsettled or upset. For some, this results in downright heartburn.
So take special care to eat under peaceful, joyous circumstances. It will affect your digestion in a very positive way and you’ll feel so much better.
Following these steps, along with the core principles of Beauty Detox, will help ensure you have optimal digestion, minimum puffiness and bloating, and help you feel your best. Having optimal digestion also helps to prevent and alleviate symptoms of many diseases.
We’ve covered the causes of bloating, and simple steps you can take to dramatically reduce or eliminate bloating. Now let’s take a look at The Top Foods to Eat (And NOT Eat!) to Reduce Bloating.
