Episode 48: Feeling Bloated? Why Bloating Happens and How to Relieve It
Hey there! 👋 I'm Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains), personal trainer and host of the Coaching Corner podcast.
Bloating happens to everyone—yes, even the fittest people you know! In this episode, I’m diving into the common causes of bloating, why it’s completely normal, and how you can manage it in a healthy way.
I also tackle the unrealistic beauty standards that make so many people obsess over having a flat belly, even though that’s not a true indicator of health or fitness. Instead of chasing an unrealistic ideal, I’ll help you shift your focus to real health markers like resting heart rate, blood pressure, and strength.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
🔹 The most common causes of bloating (and how to reduce them)
🔹 Why bloating doesn’t mean you’re unhealthy or doing something wrong
🔹 How social media and beauty standards distort our perception of what’s “normal”
🔹 Simple, effective strategies to relieve bloating, including:
✅ Staying hydrated
✅ Moving your body
✅ Managing fiber intake
✅ Understanding food sensitivities & gut health
🔹 Why a fit body doesn’t have to mean a flat belly—and why that’s okay!
🔗 Resources & Links:
🎯 Tune in next week for more expert tips to help you crush your fitness goals!
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Jayd (00:00):
Bloating can mean bloating in your belly or in your abdominal area, which can often be experienced when you've eaten too quickly or you eat a really big meal that will make your belly feel more full and your belly will stick out more. But even if you eat a normal amount, if you are a really thin person or if you have a really small waist, it is normal and it is likely that after you eat your belly is probably going to be bigger. Hey there. Welcome to the Coaching Corner podcast. I'm Jayd Harrison, AKA jaydigains. I've been a personal trainer for about 10 years and I've created this podcast to share with you some of the tips that I share with my own personal training clients. In today's episode, we're going to talk about one of the most common questions that I get from my clients and followers, which is what do I do when I'm feeling bloated?
(01:01)
Now, I had this conversation with my Twitch chat while I was live on my Twitch channel. That's Twitch tv slash jaydigains, which you can follow if you like. And join me while I'm live on Tuesdays when I do a fitness and health stream. Now, feeling bloated is something that happens to everyone regardless of how fit you are or how long you've been working out. So in this episode I talk about what causes bloating and also I give some practical tips for what to do if you feel bloated. Before we get into the episode, if you are watching on YouTube, make sure to give this video a like and subscribe to the channel to keep up with more podcast updates. If you are listening to this podcast episode, make sure to follow the channel so that you always get the latest episodes. Without further ado, let's get into the episode.
(01:51)
I did want to talk about bloating today because that's something that people experience a lot. It's something that my clients ask me about a lot is like, oh, I feel really bloated today. What do I do when I feel bloated? And it's a cause for concern for a lot of people for a couple of different reasons. One, people have this kind of obsession with the way that their bellies look. And so when you are bloated, meaning your body is holding onto a lot of water, or maybe it's holding onto air, right, there's air, or maybe there's just you've eaten a lot of food and there's a lot of bulk of food actually in your digestive system, and so you may experience some bloating in your belly. And this can cause a concern for a lot of people because like I said, people tend to be kind of obsessed with their bellies and what their bellies look like, especially women.
(02:45)
I do want to say sometimes the obsession with the belly and how whether it looks bloated or lean can be an unhealthy fixation. As a millennial, I grew up with Britney Spears and pop history and then all the magazines that really favored having a flat tummy. And the reality though is that a flat tummy is not something that most people experience even healthy and fit people. It's not something that most healthy fit people experience. Most of the time when you look at fitness magazines or even just pop magazines where they have these models who have super flat tummies like Victoria's Secret models, et cetera, the way that their bodies look is not the way that their bodies look in that photo shoot is not the way that their bodies look most of the time. What a Victoria Secret model does in preparation for a photo shoot is not eat any solid foods for a few days being on a liquid diet, and they are also pretty severely dehydrated so that they look a lot more lean than what they actually naturally are.
(04:03)
So I think that we tend to have this unrealistic expectation of what our bellies and our bodies should look like and we are fit. You can be fit and not look like a Victoria's Secret model. In fact, Victoria's Secret models don't even look like Victoria's secret models most of the time. Okay? So that's something that you want to start to confront and maybe deconstruct in terms of your expectations of your body. You know what? There's a lot of different ways that a fit and healthy body looks like you can be fit and healthy with even a higher body fat percentage, and you can be very unhealthy at a very lean body fat percentage. You are not ugly and you are not unfit. If you're feeling bloated or if you feel like your belly looks flabby or if you feel like your belly isn't flat, that doesn't negate your level of fitness.
(04:58)
That doesn't mean that you're not fit if you don't have a flat belly. In fact, most fit people do not have a flat belly. To get a flat belly. You have to be a very low unhealthily, low body fat percentage, especially as a woman. And typically you're going to have to do things that are not healthy in order to achieve that look, which is why even Victoria models, Victoria's Secret models do not look like that most of the time. So you just kind of want to think about adjusting your expectations of what your belly looks like and what it should look like. Try to deconstruct that expectation that it should look flat all the time or at all. That's one thing that you want to kind of keep in mind. Yo five, you say the belly focus is the most popular form of body mafia.
(05:43)
I totally agree. I think that if you are healthy and you have a healthy body fat percentage, you exercise regularly, you eat healthy, you follow the healthy plate model, you're mindful of your calories and your protein intake. If you are living a fit lifestyle, you are a fit person, especially if you look at your health markers like resting heart rate, blood pressure, blood sugar, insulin levels. If all of those are healthy, then you are healthy regardless of what your belly looks like. And that type of body dysmorphia is something that I also struggle with and I have to constantly remind myself that I am healthy, I am strong, I look strong, right? Strong in my opinion, is better than skinny. When people are super, super lean, they're not actually their strongest being super, getting super, super lean. For most people, especially if they're stepping on a stage to compete in bodybuilding or in a bodybuilding competition or a physique competition, when they step on the stage is when in terms of their strength levels, they're at their lowest. So the leaner you, you do tend to lose muscle and lose strength.
(06:58)
What we want to do instead, what I encourage my clients to do instead is place more value on your actual health markers and on your actual strength and performance in the gym. Those are the most important things rather than how thick or thin lean or not lean or bloated your belly is. Okay. So that's thing number one for me. Flashback to the clip I made about my actual organs making my belly not flat. Yeah, exactly. So the other thing is especially if you're a woman, the expectation of having a flat belly is so unrealistic because in order to be healthy as a woman, you do need to have a certain level of fat in your system. We as women or as female having female bodies, our bodies need more fat than male bodies and it's normal and healthy to have that little, I call it the fertility pooch, right at the very bottom of your belly.
(08:01)
That's where your uterus is, right? That's where your organs are, and especially if it's around the time of the month where it's that time of the month, you're going to have more inflammation in that area. So your fertility pooch is going to be bigger. That doesn't mean that you're ugly. It doesn't mean that you're not fit. That's literally natural. And I will also challenge that because in another life I was an archeologist and I studied a Bronze Age and early iron age archeology, and I also spent some time studying prehistoric societies too. And in the Mediterranean and prehistoric societies in the Mediterranean and leading way early, way early in human history and also into ancient history, that fertility pooch was celebrated as the ideal feminine body. The ideal feminine body had that fertility pooch. You see this on the Socratic figurines, different figurines that were made around the Mediterranean.
(09:12)
We see these figurines of the female figure that include a little fertility pooch, and that was considered beauty like the goddess, right? So when you look in the mirror, especially if it's around that time of the month and you're feeling more bloated and you got more of that more exaggerated fertility pooch, maybe even reframe it in your mind like hell yeah, that's that goddess body, that's that fertility pooch, that's peak femininity baby. That's a way that I try to reframe it for myself is be like, rather than seeing that standard, rather than feeling like I need to reach that standard of having a flat belly when I have that little fertility pooch, it's like, hell yeah, because I'm a literal woman and that's what it looks like to have a healthy female body and celebrate it. So that's what I wanted to say about the fertility pooch.
(10:09)
But bloating also can mean a lot of other things too. Bloating can mean bloating in your belly or in your abdominal area, which can often be experienced when you've eaten too quickly or you eat a really big meal that will make your belly feel more full and your belly will stick out more. But even if you eat a normal amount, if you are a really thin person or if you have a really small waist, it is normal and it is likely that after you eat your belly is probably going to be bigger. The more that you eat throughout the day, your belly is probably going to get a tiny bit bigger, but that is normal and it is healthy and that's okay. I mean, look at snakes, right? I am a person with a small waist. I've always had that bone structure where my waist is small, which means whenever I eat something, especially if I eat something that is high in carbohydrates or high in sodium, I am like a snake where you can see in the snake's body where the food is, you can literally see it.
(11:21)
It's very noticeable or it's noticeable to me because I have been brainwashed by the flat belly obsession culture, and that's okay, and that's normal, and that's just part of having a body, okay? Now, sometimes you might find that if you eat something that is high in sodium or high in carbohydrates, that will probably also lead to you feeling more bloated. High sodium, high car carbohydrates tend to cause your body overall to retain more water. And so you might experience bloating that's beyond the belly, and also you see less definition in your legs and your shoulders. Your arms, maybe your face will maybe appear a little bit more puffy. And you can see this a lot. If you ever watch boxers or mixed martial arts fights at the weigh-ins, the fighters will look a lot more lean because they're trying to make weight. So leading up to the weigh-ins, the night before the fights, they will be dehydrated.
(12:30)
They will have not eaten solid foods likely because they're trying to get their body weight down as much as possible. And there's a huge difference between how they look in their weigh-ins. And then when you see them the next day at night, their bodies look so different, they're a lot more puffy. They lose a lot of the muscle definition that they might've had at weigh-ins because during that time in between weigh-ins and when they actually fight, fighters will be carb loading to make sure that their bodies have, and also with sodium foods too, they're trying to load up on energy to make sure that their bodies have the energy so that they can have that and use it during the fight. This is Rhonda Rousey's, a perfect example of this. Rhonda Rousey, her weigh-ins. I remember there was one fight, I don't remember exactly which one it was, but you saw it in her weigh-ins before she looked super, super lean, and then the next day when she stepped into the octagon is just like the untrained eye would think that she probably gained 10 pounds of fat or something.
(13:36)
But no, she was bloated because she'd carb bloated and she was hydrated and ate plenty. So that also is something that you can experience based on how you eat and your hydration levels as well. So bloating can sometimes happen and you can see it in the face and in the rest of the body as well. How dare you have organs? You leave my baby out of my food baby out of this, right? I mean, we like to say after you eat junk food or if you go to a restaurant, you eat a lot of food that's really sugary or has a lot of sodium in it. Maybe after a treat meal is when you'll experience the most significant bloating, but it's not just from your treat foods. Eating high fiber foods can also cause bloating, especially if you're not used to eating a lot of fiber.
(14:25)
So that would be whole grains, vegetables, especially your starchy vegetables like sweet potato or potatoes. Those also can cause contribute to water retention and gas buildup too. So it's not necessarily even always a reflection of having a bad diet or treating yourself or cheating on your diet. It can even when you're doing everything. So another thing that also happens, this happens to me every single time when you're traveling, traveling is the worst that I tend to get bloated. If you've been sitting for a long time or you have a change in your routine or you're eating things that you don't normally eat, even changes in the water. Water in different states and in different cities is different. Even that can contribute to bloating. So all of these things can cause bloating either in the abdomen or throughout your entire body, and it's totally normal. Everybody experiences them.
(15:25)
So let's talk about some of the common causes for bloating. It's very normal, it's very natural, but let's take a look at the mechanics of why you get bloated in terms of digestive and dietary causes. One main reason why you might experience bloating is you are swallowing too much air. Now, this can come from eating really fast. You're literally swallowing pockets of air. It can also come from drinking carbonated beverages, alcoholic or soft drinks. Chewing gum is also a pretty common cause of swallowing air because when you're chewing gum, you're actually so gross, it's going to sound so gross, but you're actually getting little bubbles of air caught in your saliva and then swallowing that. So swallowing too much air can cause you to have air buildup. So if you find yourself burping a lot or farting a lot and you're feeling bloated and you know that you have eaten really quickly recently, or you've had a lot of carbonated beverages or you've chewed gum, that could be a cause of your bloating.
(16:31)
High sodium intake, I mentioned that before. Sodium causes your body to retain more water. That's just chemistry. So if you ever have a pile of salt on your plate and you drop a little bit of water onto the plate, the sodium is going to absorb all of that water. And that happens in our bodies too. If you have eaten a lot of sodium, it's going to cause it's going to absorb a lot of the water that's in your system causing you to retain more water. And when you are retaining more water, your body's going to be heavier. It's also going to look puffier, and you're probably going to have a little bit more bloating in your belly. Like I mentioned before, high fiber intake, especially if you're not used to eating high fiber foods. If you have recently eaten something that's high in fiber that can cause gas to build up and bloating, but this is something that does get better over time as your body gets used to eating more and more fiber, you should experience this less.
(17:39)
It's really most prominent when you first start to eat a lot of fiber, which is why I recommend if you are going to be changing up your diet to eat healthier, you want to start eating more fiber, do it very gradually. Gradually increase the amount of fiber that you eat every day. Oh, lactose intolerance and sensitivity. Some people are lactose intolerant and they don't even realize it, or they have a sensitivity which is not exactly intolerance and you're not exactly going to get sick. But when you may notice that when you eat dairy or when you drink milk or you have something that has dairy in it, if you experience a lot of bloating and a lot of gastric distress, that can also cause bloating. I have an allergy to pork and to peanuts, and there was a time in my life where I ate peanut butter every single day.
(18:37)
I didn't realize I was allergic. And then when I found out that I was allergic, I continued to eat peanut butter every day because I loved it so much. And that time in my life I regularly would be super duper sick in my stomach and I had a lot of stomach pain all the time, and I thought that that was just normal. I thought that was just normal. But I'll never forget when I stopped eating peanut butter every day when I finally gave it up and my stomach started to feel better and I was like, whoa. Is this what normal people feel like? Because I wasn't bloated all the time. I didn't have stomach aches all the time, and my allergy to peanuts was mild enough that I could eat it without, I didn't asphyxiate or anything, but it just caused a lot of gastric distress, and I didn't realize how much pain I was in until I stopped eating that food that I was intolerant to.
(19:37)
So whether it's lactose or something else that you might have an intolerance to, you may be eating something that it just doesn't agree with your body. So it's worthwhile getting tested for those things, getting tested for food allergies or lactose intolerance. If you suspect that you have a food sensitivity, you also can do an elimination diet. I would recommend doing this under the guidance of a dietician or a doctor, though I have a couple of friends who've had to do that, figured out that they had cash emoto's and they were sick all the time because they had cash emoto and they were eating all these foods that exacerbated their symptoms. So you might do an elimination diet for a number of reasons, but again, I would recommend seeing a dietician or a doctor and doing your elimination diet under their guidance. And if you have health insurance, check your health insurance because a lot of times you can see a dietician and get coverage for it, full coverage a lot of times for a certain number of sessions per year with a dietician.
(20:42)
So you may not even have to actually pay for it out of pocket to see a dietician. And if you suspect that you have an intolerance, that's what I would recommend you do. You may also have gut imbalances. It's not uncommon for people to experience an overgrowth or an undergrowth of certain types of gut bacteria. I know this is something a lot of people don't like to talk about, but our bodies actually are made up in large part of different species of bacteria and yeast, and there's a certain balance in the ecosystem that our bellies need in order to operate the best. The gut bacteria, the yeast, all of those guys, they do actually help with digestion. They are an essential part of your system. But when you get an overgrowth or you don't have enough of the good guys that can cause gastric distress, that can cause bloating and other symptoms as well.
(21:43)
Where these imbalances come from a lot of times is actually if you've been on antibiotics, antibiotics take out the bad bacteria if you have a bacterial infection, but they also sometimes will take out the good guys too. So if you experience a lot of gastric distress or tummy trouble when you've been on antibiotics, you may need to go on a probiotic or eat probiotic foods like yogurt, pickled foods, kimchi, pickled ginger, my favorite, or actually just take a probiotic supplement again, I would check with your doctor and check with a dietician before making that decision though. And artificial sweeteners, oh man, this is one. This is a big one to watch out for artificial sweeteners like sugar alcohols. So artificial sweeteners are generally kind of, they're safe, they're safe for consumption, but they are a little bit harder for our bodies to digest, and they can ferment in the gut, which the fermentation process causes gas.
(22:51)
So if you have been chewing gum that has a lot of sugar alcohols for its sweetener, you're kind of getting a double whammy there, right? One of my favorite gums, I don't chew anymore because it was giving me a lot of gas. It was making me burp all the time, and my tummy kind of hurt because I had gas. It was like, oh, was it? It's bubble mint. The bubble mint gum. I don't remember which. I don't remember which brand that is, but I can't be trusted with it. I will chew it all day. And it uses sugar alcohol as a sweetener. Sugar alcohols are often used in protein bars as well, and other supplements like that. So just if you're eating a lot of those health foods or fitness foods like protein bars and whatnot, if it is flavored with sugar alcohols and you're also experiencing a lot of gas, that could be why.
(23:44)
So just something to keep an eye on as well. You always want to be in the practice of checking your food labels right before you eat stuff. Sugar alcohol gives you bubble guts. That's very common for people. It was a meme a couple years ago. There was a meme a couple years ago where people were complaining that there were these gummy bears that were giving them upset stomachs, and it was because people were eating a lot of them, and these gummy bears were flavored with sugar alcohol. Do you remember that? That was a couple years ago. If you look up the reviews for sugar-free gummy bears on Amazon, they are full of people talking about how it gave them the runs and messed their tummies up. So yeah, those are things to be mindful of the sugar free stuff. Sometimes you think you're doing something good for your fitness by eating sugar free because you're like, oh, well, I'm not eating unnecessary calories.
(24:39)
If it's sugar, alcohol or some other artificial sweetener, it could be causing bloating and or upset tummy too. So just be mindful of that. So let's talk about effective ways to relieve bloating. Now that we've talked about common causes. In the short term, if your bloating is due to water retention, your body is holding onto a lot of water because you've eaten sodium rich foods or maybe carbohydrate rich foods because carbohydrates are stored in our muscles with water. The way that we can get that to be released by our bodies is to move, get moving, do some kind of activity. You could exercise, you could work out, or you could just get up and get moving. So people in the chat were saying how they go for a walk to help relieve their bloating. So light moving like walking or stretching helps to get your muscles working and burning through the carbohydrates, or it's the carbohydrates are stored as glycogen in your muscles.
(25:36)
So glycogen is stored with water, and when your body goes to use that glycogen as energy, it releases the water as well, and then you will either pee the water out or breathe it out through your breathing exhalation or you'll sweat it out. So getting up and getting moving or doing some kind of an exercise can help to burn through that energy, release that water. Also getting up and moving stimulates digestion because you're moving your torso around instead of staying stuck in one position. So you can help relieve the bloating in terms of the water retention, but also the bulk of the food. You can move that along by getting yourself moving along. And another reason why exercise is really helpful for this too is deep breathing. But you could also just do some deep breathing exercises like maybe do a yoga meditation or a mindfulness meditation.
(26:24)
Do some deep breathing because that also can move your diaphragm around, which will move your torso around and which can aid in digestion. And then you can also do some abdominal massage like rubbing your tummy. They actually have these massages for babies that are experiencing gastric distress because babies like poor things. God bless their little hearts, they don't know how to fart on their own or burp on their own or poop on their own, right? When infants are just newborn, you have to help them with everything. And passing gas is one of those things. So in the parenting circles, there's little exercises that you can do to help the baby to pass gas along, and it comes down to drawing on their tummy in a certain shape and doing different things, moving their legs around.
(27:21)
Well, There was a trend on TikTok where people were doing that to each other. Adults were doing that to each other, and it actually works a lot of those same exercises if you get a friend or a spouse to bicycle your feet and then move you around and do it, it works on adults too. So that could be a fun bonding activity for you and your partner, but you also can Just rub your own tummy. So abdominal massage helps and getting up and moving, all that kind of thing. These are things that you can do. Drinking lots of water can help to pass things along as well.
(27:58)
That's kind of the main thing that I do when I'm feeling bloated. If I have had a treat meal or if I just feel bloated and I'm retaining water or I'm retaining a lot of gas, I just down a bunch of water. You guys have seen my giant water bottle here. This is my gigantic two liter bottle, and I drink out of this all day. I'll probably drink two of these a day, but I'll drink more on the days that I feel super bloated. So drinking liquids, keeping those liquids flowing can help to flush all of that out. Now, long-term strategies to prevent bloating, if it's something that's chronic and it's bothering you and you really don't like it, slow down when you're eating.
(28:38)
Remember, when we eat really quickly or chewing gum, swallowing air will cause your belly to be more bloated. Chew your food for a longer time before you swallow to avoid gulping down all of that air. And remember, our saliva is the first stage of digestion. Our saliva isn't just there to make food wet, right? It actually has enzymes in it that start to pre-B, break down the food before it ever reaches the rest of the digestive tract. So when you take time to break the food down with your teeth and with your saliva, then it has to spend less time in your digestive tract getting broken down versus when you gulp down food without chewing and without letting coating it with saliva properly. It has to spend more time in your gut breaking down, and the more time that it spends in your gut breaking down, the more likely you are to develop gas.
(29:36)
So slow down when you're eating, and then we talked about it a couple of times. Manage your fiber intake. Don't go crazy with it. If you're not used to eating fiber, introduce it very slowly and balance that out with water intake. If you eat a bunch of fiber but you don't drink enough water, you're especially going to feel bloated, so make sure you balance it with enough water in tank. Also, if it's a chronic problem for you and you do drink carbonated drinks, you eat artificial sweeteners or you drink stuff with artificial sweeteners, it may be time for you to start cutting that stuff down. You don't have to get rid of it all together. You don't have to go full cold Turkey. But it is a good idea to start to kind of replace that stuff with other things that are not carbonated or that don't use artificial sweeteners.
(30:25)
If you drink soda all day, which is something that I know a lot of people have a habit of, if you drink soda all day, start to replace some of those sodas with another non-carbonated beverage like water, and if you need to put some kind of a flavoring in the water to help yourself to drink it more, just be careful because the artificial sweeteners can also cause gas too. And then you want to also make sure that you are being mindful of your gut health. Eat plenty of probiotic rich foods like yogurt, keefer, fermented vegetables, anything fermented really is going to help with your gut health and get some good bacteria in there. I eat yogurt every day. That's kind of a mainstay for me. There's also the option of doing probiotic supplement, but again, with supplements, I always am very wary about them because supplements are not a very well-regulated industry.
(31:20)
There's not the standards that there are the same standards for supplements as there are for food. I'm always a little bit, ooh, about supplements. Do it under the guidance of a doctor or a dietician because they will give you the best advice on which ones are best for you and manage stress. Sometimes our hormones can cause bloating as well. I definitely tend to be more bloated when I'm stressed. So managing your stress can also be helpful for if you experience a lot of bloating, if you know that you're stressed, a lot of times these other things can help. But also it's good to practice stress relief practices, which exercise can be one of those deep breathing exercises. Also, one of those. And also like eating healthy, you'll notice a difference when you eat real food and if you're following the healthy plate model, your body and your mind and your gut, they're all interrelated.
(32:14)
So the better you take care of one piece, the better the other pieces get as well. So managing stress can be helpful, and also taking care of yourself can help to relieve stress. So it's like a self-feeding thing. So that's my guidance for if you're experiencing bloating or if you experience bloating a lot. These are some of the common causes. These are some of the things that you can do about it, but also, especially if you're not really uncomfortable, if you're not experiencing physical discomfort, don't sweat it. It's not a big deal. You do not have to have a super flat tummy or be super, super lean all the time in order to be fit. The two are not related fit people. Experience bloating and being super lean is not necessarily fit. But if you experience a lot of bloating and it's uncomfortable for you, or maybe you just want to maybe look a little leaner, maybe you got some photos coming up or something, follow the guidance in terms of how to reduce the bloating that we had that they were talking about earlier.
(33:17)
Thank you so much for watching or listening to this episode of The Coaching Corner podcast. I hope that you found it helpful. Let me know what you thought in the comments below this video if you're watching on YouTube. And if you haven't already, make sure to subscribe to the channel or follow. If you're listening to the podcast. If you like more information on me and the services that I offer, check out my website, jaydigains.com. I do offer training plans, meal plans, and I also have a membership site right on my website that you can join to get training tips, nutrition tips, recipes, and more every single month. Just go to jaydigains.com and sign up from the membership on the front page. Thank you again for watching this episode or listening to it, and I will see you in the next episode. In the meantime, take care.
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