05 Feb Why Bloating After Eating Happens
Are you leaving your meal feeling bloated and blah? Let me preface by saying it’s 1000000% normal to have a bigger belly after eating. Our food has to go somewhere, so stomach expansion is A-OK as you digest your meal, it should go down. It’s also normal that your stomach won’t be flat by the end of the day like it was when you woke up. That would be awesome, right?!
Let’s go over the reasons you might be feeling too bloated for a lengthy amount of time after eating. Pssstttt, some of these are overlooked because how simple they seem. 😬
Reasons Why Bloating After Eating Happens
Eating Too Quickly Creates Bloating After Eating
Are you fast eater? You might want to slow down because when you eat too quickly – you’re skipping some important pre-digestion processes making more work for your gut to breakdown your foods, hence the bloat y’all. Slowing down will help your body register that food is coming and can start producing stomach acid and enzyme production to do it’s thang! When you eat too fast, you most likely aren’t chewing enough.
There are enzymes in our saliva that help stimulate more digestive enzymes down the line to start secreting, but also the enzymes in our mouth start breaking down the food. In our saliva, we have amylase and lipase, which helps breakdown of carbohydrates and fats.
Eating While Stressed Causes Bloating
Are you in fight or flight? It’s time to cool your jets. When you’re in fight or flight, blood flow is directed to your heart + muscles – not your digestion. It’s ready to help you run from a tiger! But lesssss be honest, there is no tiger. It’s just a stressful AF day with a long to-do list and over-commitments. Our body will always prioritize survival > digestion. When our blood flow is not prioritizing digestion, this lowers our ability to digest and the food just feels like it’s sitting there like a rock + contributing to uncomfortable bloating. Let’s start to rest + digest going into the meal.
Meditate and deep breath exercising before you start eating can help you trigger that rest + digest phase, instead of fight or flight!
Not Enough Enzyme Production / Stomach Acid
Maybe you are eating slowly and you’re chill – what else could be happening!? You could be having issues digesting carbs, proteins, or fats (or a combo of both)! You might not be secreting enough digestive enzymes or producing enough stomach acid (especially if you are a person who has been relying on acid reducing medication for a long period of time). Supplementing with digestive enzymes, HCL, TUDCA, or ox bile might be right up your alley for support, but make sure you are working with a practitioner to see if there is an underlying reason on why you aren’t able to naturally produce this.
Stool testing is an incredible resource here to figure out underlying imbalances. Another thing you can try is incorporating more bitters (via food or supplements) to help encourage natural production!
Food Sensitivities
Food sensitivities are unique to everyone. But if you are eating an inflammatory food for you, this can definitely cause bloating shortly after you eat it and prolonged bloating. An elimination type diet can help you figure out food sensitivities and intolerances, but testing can move this process much faster + sometimes it’s dang hard to know which foods are causing issues because symptoms can be delaying for up to 48 hours.
Drinking Too Much While Eating
If you’re drinking a lot water or beverages during your meal, this is diluting your stomach acid, which will influence how you digest your food. Try backing off too much fluid before or during your meal.
After assessing these aspects of your diet and lifestyle + you feel that there could be something more happening. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us + see how we can help you!
For a limited time this month, we are launching a special IBS bundle (+ really helpful for a lot of other digestive issues), so if you fall in this category this could be an awesome bundle to get your journey started off right!
