E3: The Ultimate Guide to Bloat Busting

Are you ready to wave goodbye to the discomfort of bloating? Embark on a journey with me, Karlee, as we unlock the secrets to a bloat-free life. I'll be your confidant and guide, sharing my own battles with bloating and the surprising ways in which stress has been my digestive nemesis. Forget the endless cycle of restrictive diets and the cabinet overflowing with supplements; it's time for a change. Discover a world where balanced eating rules supreme, and learning to listen to your body's needs trumps cutting out entire food groups. Plus, I'll be introducing you to my free resource, "The Ultimate Guide to Bloat Busting," packed with actionable advice on mindful eating, adequate hydration, gut-nourishing foods, and the art of stress management—all key ingredients in keeping your gut content.

As we sit down at the table of health, let's chat about the transformative effects of chowing down with intention and quenching your body's thirst the right way. I'll reveal how taking the time to savour your meals not only enhances the dining experience but also sets the stage for impeccable digestion. We'll also dive into the world of probiotics, where I'll dish out delectable recipes that favour your wallet just as much as your gut flora—spoiler alert, they don't come in a pill bottle. And because we could all use a little less stress, I'll be sharing my personal strategies for shifting gears from the hustle and bustle to a more serene, digestion-friendly mindset. So grab your most enormous mug—hydration's about to get a whole lot more interesting—and prepare to transform how you think about food, stress, and the harmony of your body.

Mentioned in this Episode:
The Ultimate Guide to Bloat Busting (FREE): Download it!
Blog post on the gut-brain connection: Read it!

Get Started for FREE:
Ultimate Guide to Bloat-Busting: Free Download

Contact Info:
Website: www.beyondbloated.com
IG: @beyond.bloated
Email: karleeclose@beyondbloated.com

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Transcript

Karlee: 0:03

Welcome to the Beyond Bloated Podcast. I'm Karlee, a certified health coach, helping women under 50 ditch their bloat without having to follow super strict and stressful protocols. As someone who's struggled with all sorts of digestive issues for over five years, I know exactly how you're feeling. I also know that there's a way to feel better, and it doesn't have to involve tons of expensive supplements and insanely restrictive diets. Join me as I share all of my bloat-busting wisdom to help you say goodbye to that bloated belly and regain your confidence. It's time for you to move beyond bloated. Hello, hello everyone.

Karlee: 0:37

It is feeling more and more like spring out there every day and I am getting hyped. Today is actually Easter recording this in advance. So I'm going to my parents' place soon for Easter dinner and we're going to have turkey. We're going to have gravy mashed potatoes. I made pumpkin pie and roasted Brussels sprouts. Super excited to be eating all of the traditional Easter foods and not have to stress, given. My family is very healthy because my mom is gluten and dairy free, my brother is gluten and dairy free, my brother's girlfriend is vegetarian, so we are really accommodating for everybody.

Karlee: 1:16

But at the same time, there was a period where I would still be concerned because I was avoiding gluten, dairy sugar, certain fruits and vegetables. I basically thought that any food that I ate was going to cause me to bloat, be super gassy and uncomfortable. And that was kind of true, because I was stressing myself out so much about what foods that I was going to be able to eat. What wasn't I going to be able to eat that I couldn't digest anything, because stress is such an important factor in digestion. When we are stressed, we cannot digest food. So stressing yourself out is going to make things so much worse for you, and that's exactly what I want to talk about today.

Karlee: 1:59

So elimination diets and supplement protocols are obviously very restrictive. Personally, I have done plenty of them, so I can tell you firsthand that they cause a lot of stress. They are unsustainable. If you want to go out for dinner with your friends, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, whatever, you're not doing that without having a panic, because if you're eliminating so many different foods and then you're going out and having someone else make your meal for you, you don't know what's in it, you're freaking out, you're not having a good time. These restrictive diets can also cause a lot of food fear and just like an unhealthy relationship with food in the end because, say, you do this protocol, so I don't know.

Karlee: 2:40

For two months you're super strict with your diet. You've eliminated gluten, dairy, all sugar, some fruits, some vegetables. Now you're done the protocol, so you did the two months. Now what? Are you just going to start eating all of those foods again, the foods that you've told your brain for two months do not eat this or it will make me sick, or I won't feel good, or I can't eat this food because it's going to fuel my disease or my illness or whatever it is that you're trying to cure. So now that you've taken these foods away for two months, how are you eating them again? You've literally programmed your mind to think these are bad. So it's really hard to come off of it and just freely start eating all the foods you eliminated without any sort of worry. I also don't believe they're that effective. I do think there is a time and a place for elimination diets.

Karlee: 3:33

I personally am gluten and dairy free and that really did help me. But that wasn't about eliminating healthy foods. I was eating a lot of heavily processed, unhealthy foods, loaded with sugar and just terrible ingredients. So by me going gluten and dairy free. I also was eliminating a lot of processed boxed foods that were bad for me, so I've kind of forced myself to eat better by doing so. And also, the gluten and dairy in this country is not really food. It's heavily processed in itself, the nutrients have been wiped. It's not good quality stuff. So I personally don't think that going gluten and dairy free is restrictive. I don't feel restricted. I actually probably could eat like high quality gluten and dairy products if I wanted to. I actually have started eating ghee. I have no issues, but I'm just chilling on my diet. I have no interest in changing it at this time.

Karlee: 4:33

The elimination diets that I'm referring to in this episode the ones that I have an issue with and I don't recommend in my practice are the ones that again eliminate fruits, vegetables. I practice are the ones that again eliminate fruits, vegetables, grains, all types of sugar for very long periods of time. If you're trying to figure out if you have a sensitivity to something and you want to do a short-term three-week elimination diet and then you reintroduce everything just to pinpoint a specific ingredient, that's different. But I find that food is so easy to blame for all of our problems, especially when you have digestive issues, say you're experiencing bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, stomach pain anything that's clearly related to your gut. It's easy for us to be like, oh, what did I eat? What did I eat that caused this? Because your symptom usually happens shortly after eating. But it's not the food's fault most of the time.

Karlee: 5:34

Digestion is a very complicated process. It involves lots of moving parts. What you eat is only a small part of that. Of course, what we eat matters Like. If you're eating junk food day in, day out, yeah, that's probably going to cause digestive issues. But if you're like eating healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables and grains, and you're still having a problem, then it's not the food, and I've created an entire guide for free that is going to help you improve your digestion, and it does not include eliminating any food.

Karlee: 6:14

My free guide is called the Ultimate Guide to Bloat Busting and I've split it into four sections. So we have a section on mindful eating, hydration habits, gut nourishing foods and stress management, because all of these things play a part in digestion. So I've split the guide into four sections and each section has information on each of those four topics that I just discussed, and I've also included some tools that you can use to actually implement this information and track your progress. So, for example, the mindful eating section. That's the first section. I have information on mindful eating tips that you can use to start eating mindfully and improve your digestion, and then I have a journal that you can start to utilize to track what mindful eating habit have you implemented in this meal. Was it helpful? Did you experience any symptoms afterwards? What mindful eating habit do you want to include next? Things like that, so you can start to track your progress and see is this actually working. For me, there's also some other cool things in there, like a hydration tracker so you can track your water intake, because water is also very important for digestion, and there's also some recipes. So in the gut nourishing food section, we're not eliminating foods. We're actually adding in foods that are going to benefit our gut health.

Karlee: 7:47

On top of getting the guide and the information in the guide and the tools inside of the guide, you also get a mini four-day email series written by yours truly. So you'll download the guide, you'll get it immediately and then the following four days you're going to get one email per day that corresponds to each section in the guide. I did this because I feel like getting a full guide full of information on four different topics can be a little overwhelming. So this way you can kind of break it down if you choose, to tackle it one day at a time. So on day one you'll get an email on mindful eating, because I said, mindful eating is the first section of the guide. So day one the email will come in on mindful eating. It just provides a little bit more information on mindful eating and then you can kind of use that with the guide, with the mindful eating journal, and you can focus your attention on that, the guide with the mindful eating journal, and you can focus your attention on that for one day. So then day two comes around and we move on to hydration. So now you can kind of break it into chunks. Instead of you download the guide, you get all this at once and it's overwhelming and you don't know where to start. So I thought this was just like a cool way to section it off for you. Like I said, this is all for free. So if you go to beyondbloatedcom slash ultimate dash guide, you can fill in your information just your name and your email, and then the guide will be sent to you and then the next four days after that, you'll receive one email from me with information corresponding to each section of the guide. Now I want to give you a little taste of what each section is about because, like I said, all four of these factors really impact digestion. So if you want to improve your bloating and your other digestive symptoms, optimizing these four sections or factors is really going to help.

Karlee: 9:46

Okay, so, number one, we have mindful eating. Question you might be having is what is mindful eating Like? It sounds very holistic and strange, right? So mindful eating is really just focusing on how we eat, because in today's society it's very common to be very busy. We're working, we're taking care of kids, other family members, pets, whatever, and you don't make the time to sit down and have a meal like you should. So mindful eating really is just how it sounds it's being aware or mindful of how you are eating.

Karlee: 10:28

So let me give you an example. You work a nine to five desk job. It's stressful, you're busy, you're jumping from meeting to meeting all day long. You've packed a lunch, but you have approximately five minutes to eat it, so you snatch that out of the fridge. You're on your computer typing an email with your left hand. You're shoveling your food into your mouth with your right hand. That is not eating mindfully. So what's wrong with the situation? One you cannot eat an entire meal in five minutes. You need to chew your food well, to applesauce consistency before you swallow, because your gut does not have teeth.

Karlee: 11:09

Two you're eating distracted. You're on your computer, you're typing an email. You're not paying attention to your food in front of you. This can cause overeating because for one, it takes our brain approximately 20 minutes to register that we're full. So if you're eating an entire meal in five minutes, your brain has not even acknowledged the fact that you're eating. So it's very easy to overeat. And you're also just not paying attention. You're paying attention to your computer, to your email, to your job, not to your food. So even if you kind of do start to feel full, you're not focused on that. You're focused on something else. So you won't acknowledge it and you'll just keep eating.

Karlee: 11:51

But probably the biggest issue with this is you are stressed. So you've been stressed all day from your job and instead of stepping away, go outside and eat at a picnic table. Get some fresh air. We got birds chirping, it's peaceful. You take deep breaths before your meal to get your body into rest and digest mode and you really take your time with your food. You're not rushing, you're not like, oh my God, I have a meeting in five minutes. I need to eat this super fast. You are sitting down for lunch, you're enjoying your meal, you're focusing on the food in front of you. You're not on your phone or your laptop. Because we cannot digest food when we are stressed, it does not matter what you are eating.

Karlee: 12:40

If you are stressed, your body is in fight or flight mode, which means it is using all of its resources to prepare for you to either fight or run. Digestion is last on the list of priorities for your body at that time, and even something like working a nine to five job where it's high stress is going to put your body into that fight or flight. It doesn't actually have to be like a life or death situation for you to be in that mode. Something like dealing with finances or your kids are irritating you Like. Little things in today's society puts us into this fight or flight mode, even though we do not have to fight or flight. So that is what mindful eating is, even though we do not have to fight or flight. So that is what mindful eating is and, like I said, my bloat busting guide has an entire section dedicated to mindful eating. So if you download the guide, you'll get the steps on how to eat mindfully and then you can use the mindful eating journal to track like if you're doing it, how often you're doing it, if you're noticing improvements, what you want to do more of things like that.

Karlee: 13:55

Moving on to section two, we have hydration habits, so obviously we need water to survive. Everybody knows that. But drinking an adequate amount of water is really going to help with your bloating. There are a few reasons why that is. For one, bloating can often be caused by fluid retention, which occurs when the body holds on to excess water. So if you drink enough water, that helps your body maintain the proper fluid balance and then it doesn't need to retain all of this excess fluid.

Karlee: 14:30

Another major cause of bloating is constipation. And what causes constipation? Insufficient water intake. If you aren't drinking enough water, you can become dehydrated, and then this lack of hydration can lead to dry, hard stools that are difficult to pass, and that is another form of constipation. It's like not going frequently enough, but also if it's just really difficult for you to go. That is constipation as well. So staying nice and hydrated will help keep your stool soft and easy to pass, and water also helps keep the GI tract lubricated and functioning smoothly. So if you don't drink enough water, the movement of food and waste through the intestines can slow down, which is the other form of constipation that I was talking about. Water can also help move gas through the GI tract, which can alleviate bloating, because bloating can also be caused by trapped gas. If you've ever noticed that after drinking a beer or a carbonated beverage of any sort, you get bloated, that could be the reasoning you have a bunch of trapped gas stuck in your GI tract. So something like drinking water can actually help push that gas through and alleviate some of the bloating. But keep in mind that when the gas is being pushed through, it has to come out somehow, so that's burping or flatulence.

Karlee: 16:01

Now I've got a little pro tip for you. So drinking just plain filtered water might not leave you as hydrated as you would like. It actually can do the opposite, because if you're drinking too much, filtered water might not leave you as hydrated as you would like. It actually can do the opposite, because if you're drinking too much filtered water, you're just going to have to pee a lot, and if you're peeing frequently, you're also peeing out a bunch of electrolytes and essential minerals for the body. So that's actually something we want to avoid.

Karlee: 16:30

Instead, if you add a high quality sea salt to your water and I'm talking just like a pinch don't be dumping tablespoons of salt into your water. If you can taste that it's salty, you've added too much. But just a little pinch of high quality sea salt, which means either pink Himalayan sea salt that's the one I use or a Celtic sea salt. I've also used that. Those are good options. Both of those contain essential electrolytes like, obviously, sodium, potassium, magnesium and calcium. So these electrolytes in your water can enhance the absorption of water in the intestines. So, even like a pinch yeah, a pinch of sea salt, but also, if you like, electrolyte drinks, if you have an electrolyte powder, adding that to your water is going to be the same effect. So, yeah, drinking filtered water is totally fine and good, but adding electrolytes like an electrolyte powder high quality one, of course or a pinch of pink Himalayan sea salt or Celtic sea salt, is just going to give your body that extra punch of absorption.

Karlee: 17:40

So I do it with all of my water drinks. I have a giant mammoth mug that I carry around with me. It's two liters and I just dump a little bit of pink Himalayan sea salt in there. I say dump, but it's not a dump, it's like two pinches because it's two liters of water. And, yeah, I just carry that around with me for the day and I slug on that. If you drink tea, tea also counts for your water intake for the day, so you don't just have to carry around a mammoth mug like I do and drink that.

Karlee: 18:16

I know some people literally hate water. Crazy to me, honestly. I love water, but some people just think it's boring and they don't like water, so it's hard for them to drink the amount that they should be drinking. So in my guide that I have created, I actually have in the hydration section a infused water recipes section. So I've got like how many here? Five different infusions for you to try to like spice up your water. For example, one of them is a citrus splash, so it's got ingredients and instructions on how to make a citrusy water drink to make drinking your water more fun and enjoyable for those of you who don't like the taste of water.

Karlee: 19:03

Moving on to section three, we have gut nourishing foods. So, as I said, we are not eliminating foods, we are adding foods. So these foods in particular are very probiotic rich. If you know of probiotics, you might only know of them through supplements. You can buy capsules, pills or powders for probiotics, but you can also get probiotics through food, and this is actually probably my preferred method because A it's way cheaper. A capsule or like a bottle of probiotics can literally be over $100 for a month's supply, which is insane, whereas you could buy like a giant thing of sauerkraut at Costco for $13. Yeah, and the probiotics that we get from food actually contains more diversity than the ones that you would buy in a supplement. If you look at your supplement, it probably has a couple of strains listed, but food sources like yogurt, kefir, sauerkraut, for a few examples they contain a broader range of probiotic strains. So this diversity is very beneficial for promoting balance and diversity in our guts, which is associated with better overall gut health. The more diverse the bacteria in your gut, the better you're going to feel. So not only are you getting cheaper probiotics, but you're also getting a more diverse strain range than if you were to buy capsules or whatever powder you buy.

Karlee: 20:46

You also have to be careful with what supplements you're buying, because a lot of supplements contain a lot of trash ingredients. They'll have a lot of unnecessary fillers or they'll just have seed oils in there or ingredients that are banned in Europe. So if you're getting your probiotics from food opposed to a supplement, you can be absolutely sure that you're not eating other garbage ingredients that you don't need. Like if you're eating sauerkraut as your probiotic source, make sure it's organic and a good quality sauerkraut. But other than that, like it should just be cabbage salt water, maybe there's some ginger or something in there, and then that ferments and it creates the probiotics something in there and then that ferments and it creates the probiotics, and so you're getting the benefits of the cabbage as well as the probiotics and you're avoiding unnecessary fillers that would be in a supplement.

Karlee: 21:49

In my ultimate guide to bloat busting the section on gut nourishing foods, I have a list of probiotic foods, an explanation of what each of them are, and then the next page is a few well, there's a few pages actually, but there's a few recipes on how you can use these probiotic rich foods into your diet. One of the examples is a probiotic parfait with berries, so you could have that for breakfast. Get your probiotics in. It's delicious Boom breakfast is complete.

Karlee: 22:24

The fourth and final section is stress management. This is a big one. I kind of touched on it with mindful eating. They are a little bit related because mindful eating is kind of about getting yourself out of the stress mode before you eat, but it also focuses on some other aspects, whereas the stress management section is all about stress management. I will once again stress the importance of getting out of fight or flight mode before we eat. So fight or flight mode is also known as the sympathetic nervous system and it's activated during stressful periods. And, as I mentioned earlier, they don't have to be all that stressful for us to go into this mode. It slows down digestion and it redirects our energy to essential functions like being able to run or throw a punch. I actually published a blog post not that long ago on the gut-brain connection and how stress impacts bloating in particular. So if you want to deep dive into that, go to beyondbloatedcom slash blog. All of my blog posts are there. I will link also that particular post in the show notes in case you're interested in that one.

Karlee: 23:46

Stress management is important for eating. I talked about in the mindful eating section how taking deep breaths before we eat is going to help us get into rest and digest and better digest our food. But it's also just good to do multiple times throughout the day. You shouldn't just be managing your stress right before you're about to eat. If you're stressed all other times of the day, that is also going to be very negatively affecting your health. Stress not only impairs our ability to digest food, but it also increases gut permeability, also known as leaky gut. So if you're stressed out all the time, your gut is going to develop bigger holes in it. Your gut lining is typically used as a barrier to prevent unwanted bacteria, food particles and whatnot from seeping through and getting into our bloodstream. But stress has been proven to make these holes bigger, which allows all of this yucky stuff to leak through, and that's what actually causes a lot of food intolerances and autoimmune diseases, things like that. So we really want to be managing our stress.

Karlee: 25:02

My free guide supplies a list of techniques that you can use to reduce your stress, so it's called the Stress Management Toolkit. Not everybody is going to be down to meditate for five minutes a day. Not everybody is going to enjoy going for nature walks, so that's why this toolkit has a number of options and that way you can pick what fits into your lifestyle, something that appeals to you. You can try multiple different things and this is just like something you can slowly start to add into your day to reduce your stress levels, increase your digestion and prevent leaky gut, because we don't want that. That's going to cause you a lot of trouble. So after hearing today's episode, I'm hoping that you no longer just blame food for your digestive troubles. Food is not the enemy. There are a lot of factors that play a role in how well we digest our food. What's causing our bloating, things like that? So download my guide. It's free. Beyondbloatedcom. Slash. Ultimate dash guide. I'll link it in the show notes for you as well.

Karlee: 26:14

You can take a look at the things that we talked about today with your own eyes. Some people prefer to read, some people prefer to listen. I think both is great. So you have a little information on what's involved. Now you can use it. You can start to put it into your own life. Hopefully you'll start to notice benefits.

Karlee: 26:33

I sure did when I started implementing these things into my life the four-day email series that you're going to get, along with the guide, you can respond. So when you receive the email, if you have a question about one of the four sections, if you just want to share your story, anything at all you can hit reply. The message will go directly to me, I will be the one reading it and I will respond to you. So please don't be shy. If you have any questions about today's episode, about the guide, email me back or you can reach me at beyondbloated on Instagram. I'm all ears. I love hearing from you. So thank you so much for listening today. I hope you download my guide and I hope it's helpful to you. I'll talk to you next time. Thank you for listening to the Beyond Bloated podcast. If you enjoyed today's episode, please take a moment to subscribe and leave a review, and don't forget to share this podcast with your fellow gut goddesses. If you'd like to chat about today's episode, send me a DM on Instagram at beyondbloated. Until next time, bye.