This blog has been written by Sheree Beaumont of Sheree Hannah Wellness, Holistic Nutritionist, Personal Trainer & Wellness Coach who empowers women to transform their lives, understand their bodies and feel their best from the inside out.
Waking up bloated? 🤰🏼 Think you might have underlying food intolerances? 🤷🏼♀️ Wearing baggy clothes to hide feeling 6 months pregnant at the end of the day?
As someone who used to get really bad bloating and felt super self-conscious about it, I get how uncomfortable it can be… I also get that when there’s bloating, there’s often gas (and that can be super embarrassing).
Bloating is no joke, it’s no fun and it’s a sign that our digestive system and gut health could do with a little extra support, love and attention.
Which is why I put together these 5 simple tips to help you beat the bloat and support your gut! 🙌🏽
1. Avoid water 🙅🏼♀️💧 for 30 minutes pre and post meal
Whilst we don’t typically drink enough water day to day (we should be aiming for around 2L) as we are 70% and our cells and body needs it for detoxification and optimal energy, brain function and movement.
Drinking water with our meals can really contribute to the bloat. Water is often guzzled down at meal times to make up for all we’ve missed during the day, a chance to ‘rehydrate’.
But when you drink water with your meals it dilutes your stomach acid. This makes it harder for your body to digest foods, kill off harmful and unwanted bacteria and results in the food you’ve just eaten sitting in your stomach for longer, making it more likely to ferment and therefore make you bloated.
Give yourself a 30 minute window each side of main meals to ensure optimal stomach acid is available when you do eat, and if you have to drink some water, add in a few squeezes of lemon juice to help support the stomach acidity.
2. Have apple cider vinegar before your main meals
Speaking of acidity, apple cider vinegar (ACV) is highly effective at supporting stomach acid production. Your stomach should sit at a pH of 2, and ACV has a pH of 2 - 3 which makes it an effective option. Studies recommend 10 - 30mL per day, so around 1 tbsp. before two of your main meals should do the trick.
I recommend starting out slowly, at 1 tsp. diluted in some warm water, and then gently increasing as it can be quite potent. This is supportive for not only bloating, but other digestive issues related to the stomach like indigestion, burping, reflux too.
ACV encourages stomach acid production and the optimal pH of your stomach so your digestion is optimised.
3. Consume Rad Greens
Our beautiful beneficial bugs need high quality food, and that comes from eating whole real foods, particularly prebiotic foods. Without enough food to feed the good bacteria, we can end up out of balance.
When it comes to your gut health, the balance of good bacteria vs. bad bacteria in your gut is where it all starts. Having more bad bacteria than good, or having a deficiency of good gut bacteria is what we term in the industry as ‘dysbiosis’.
The Real Rad Greens is far more than just getting your serve of leafy greens for the day, it actually contains Livaux which is a prebiotic shown to improve irritable bowel syndrome symptoms including bloating, gas, and abdominal pain.
It does this by feeding Faecalibacterium prausnitzii; one of the good bacterium that is supposed to be the most plentiful inside our gut (yet often isn’t). This is one of the biggest deficiencies I see when I do functional medicine stool testing on clients, so having an ingredient that specifically increases this is awesome.
Livaux is paired alongside other gut loving nutrients like aloe vera, spirulina, and wheatgrass which all support digestion, irritable bowel syndrome symptoms and optimal gut health. Making Real Rad Greens your perfect daily go-to digestive supplement!
4. Chew your food at least 20 times per bite 😬
How you eat your food is JUST as important as what you eat! This has to be the most under-utilised tool in the debloating, gut healing toolkit. I cannot tell you how much just slowing down, and chewing your food can make a world of difference in your digestive health.
Think about it this way, most of the time we are eating in front of a device, or in a hurry, not even consciously eating, the fork is already preloaded with the next mouthful before we’ve finished the mouthful we’ve got, and we are swallowing that piece of broccoli before it’s even broken into two.
Let me remind you of something… you only have ONE set of teeth in your entire digestive tract. Your digestion starts in your mouth, not once the food lands in your tummy.
Failing to chew properly, leads to a lot of strain being put on the digestive tract. It sounds simple, but chewing thoroughly stimulates the secretion of digestive enzymes and reduces stress placed on the gut, and makes the entire digestive process easier. So get chewing!
5. Deep belly breaths before each meal 🌬
Belly breathing, a.k.a diaphragmatic breathing, activates what’s called your parasympathetic nervous system - responsible for regulating rest AND digestion.
Much like failing to chew your food, this is where we focus on the HOW you are eating. If you’re not present with your food, eating it in a hurry, or whilst stressed, this communicates to the body you’re not safe, it shifts the body into fight or flight (your sympathetic nervous system), and the food you were just eating winds up sitting in your stomach because the body perceives it has other more important things to deal with (like saving your life).
Belly breathing communicates to the body it is safe, and therefore can make sure there is optimal blood for digestion in the internal organs 🫁, enhances the digestive process and prevents food lingering and fermenting when it shouldn’t be.
If you loved these tips and want to learn more about supporting your digestion and optimising your gut health, check out my 4 week gut reset - 4 weeks to beat the bloat, reboot your gut health, detox your body and skyrocket your energy. Or flick me a message on instagram @shereehannahwellness, I’m always happy to answer any of your burning gut health questions!
Yours in Health & Happiness,
Sheree xo
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