Drink tepid lemon water
Start your morning with a "Shower for your insides". Drinking half a lemon squeezed into a cup of boiled water, can help wake up your digestive organs and get it ready for the day ahead.
Think before you eat
Taking the time to think about what you are about to eat, can help get your digestive juices fired up. We need these juices, like saliva in the mouth, stomach acid and pancreatic enzymes in the gut to help us breakdown food so we can absorb their nutrients.
Chew your food
It sounds so simple but often we forget to chew our food up to 30 times! Ideally, we should chew our food until if we spat it out, we wouldn't recognise it anymore. Un-chewed food can cause bloat as it moves through the gut in larger particles.
Stay hydrated
Drink plenty of water throughout the day. Try keep most of your water intake away from meals.
This is so we do not dilute our digestive juices too much and gives us more chance of digesting food fully.
Ginger tea
Ginger helps relax the stomach muscles and is a good choice as a tea 15 minutes after meals to aid digestion. (If pregnant or breastfeeding, always consult your GP before adding extra ginger into your diet)
Check food labels
For bloat causing sugar alcohols, identified by usually ending in ‘ol’- sorbitol, xylitol, erythritol, mannitol, lactitol. Frequently found in ice cream, sugar free gum, sweets, cakes, and cookies. These sugar alcohols are a lot less lower in calories but are major contributors of bloat for a lot of people.
Add in gut loving foods
Glutamine found in protein, appears to have a role in maintaining proper barriers within the intestine.
Incorporate foods rich in glutamine such as protein-rich foods like beef, chicken, fish, dairy products, eggs, vegetables like beans, beetroot, cabbage, spinach, carrots, parsley, vegetable juices and also in whole wheat, brussels sprouts, celery, kale and fermented foods like miso.
A delicious drink of bone broth (a quick google will give you a tasty recipe) is a quick and easily digested way to support gut health, if you have a particularly bad gut health day.
Keep a Food Diary
Tried the above and still feeling bloated? Try keep food a dairy, include bowel movements and mood and see if any patterns flag up that may be contributing to your bloat. Still at a loss? Contact me on any of my below handles and let us see if we can figure it out together.