fbpx

Why are you Bloated?

Take the Quiz!

Ep. 12 Overcoming food fear & changing your mindset to improve digestive symptoms

Did you know that your thoughts can affect your gut health?

Often, our thoughts about our food can lead to increased stress, which negatively impacts our gut bacteria, which, in turn, leads to issues such as bloating and food fears, which leads to increased stress – and the cycle continues.

In this episode of the Love Your Gut Podcast, I look at the many factors that we need to consider when trying to overcome food fears, the good and the bad of having access to so much diet information online, and I give you three important things to think about to help your gut health.

Topics Covered in This Episode:

  • The effects of restrictive eating on your gut bacteria
  • Social media and diet culture
  • How our subconscious thoughts impact how we eat
  • Our body’s stress response and disordered eating
  • Shifting our mindsets to counteract food fears
  • Why motivation is an important driver towards a good relationship with food

With so much dietary information out there, it’s easy to become trapped in a cycle of negative thoughts and fears. If we take a moment to step back and shift our mindsets to become more conscientious eaters, we can counteract the negative thoughts that cause disordered eating and digestive symptoms.

If this episode has been helpful, DM me on Instagram, and tell me about your experience!

 

 

Connect with Dr. Heather
Follow the Podcast
Follow Along on Instagram
Follow Along on Facebook

 

 

Follow & Review on Apple Podcasts

Are you following my podcast? If you’re not, I want to encourage you to do that today so you don’t miss any future episodes! I would also appreciate it if you would leave me a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify! I read each of them, and they help me make sure I am providing the content that you love to hear!

 

 

TRANSCRIPTION:

 

SPEAKERS
Dr. Heather Finley

 

Heather Finley  00:00

I just want to normalize this a little bit. We live in a very wellness focused culture, there’s diet messaging, left and right. It can be sometimes really, really hard to navigate. But every time you are thinking negatively about food, thinking negatively about your body that’s impacting your physiology. And it’s not just affecting what is going on in your gut, but it’s also affecting all the things that need to happen for proper digestion before food ever even lands in your gut. Hey, welcome to the love your gut podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Heather Finley, I know what you’re thinking, how am I supposed to love my gut when all it does is hold me back. I thought the same thing before I found relief from my own gut health issues. I dedicated my life to getting to the bottom of my own gut issues. So I can help women just like you transform theirs. Now, I’m here to guide you through your own gut health journey. We do this through identifying your root causes and making sustainable and transformative changes. As a result, you can unleash your true potential. My goal is to empower you with the information and tools you need to love your gut. So it loves you back, right here on this podcast. Hello, hello, and welcome back to the next episode of the love your gut podcast. This is your host, Dr. Heather Finley, I am so glad to be in your air pods today. I pulled you guys over on Instagram earlier this week and asked to which episode I should record. And this one was the overwhelming winner. So we’re gonna talk today, all things overcoming food, fear, changing your mindset to improve your digestive symptoms, and really why this can be the crux of all the symptoms that you experience. So I want to start off with a story. There is nothing worse than sitting down for a meal, only to be bombarded by thoughts about food, thoughts about symptoms. All you want to do is enjoy the meal. But yet all you can think about is the symptoms that you might have. And if you’re anyone who struggles with digestive symptoms, which is probably everyone listening to this podcast, you’ve probably had those thoughts before, it is very rare that you don’t experience any kind of food fear when you have digestive symptoms. And we see a lot of clients in our program who previously have had either an eating disorder or disordered eating. And I can’t start this episode without talking about these two things. Because it’s often a chicken or egg scenario, did the disordered eating cause the digestive issues? Or did the digestive issues cause the eating disorder? Sometimes we don’t know. But it’s really rare to develop an eating disorder without starting a diet first. In my private practice, back in the day, when I used to see clients face to face in a brick and mortar building, I primarily saw clients with eating disorders, which is why I pivoted and started combining my knowledge of eating disorders with my knowledge of gut health, because approximately 90% of people with eating disorders have digestive dysfunction. And the digestive dysfunction can can exist years after you may have resolved your eating disorder. Obviously, there’s a large spectrum of recovery when it comes to recovering from an eating disorder. But I want to start off first by just talking about the downstream impacts of disordered eating. So there’s a cascade of events that can happen with under eating and food fear. And it all starts in the mind. So everything that you’re thinking actually affects everything else that goes on in your gut. So I want to set the stage here really quick. Let’s think of a time where maybe you were on vacation or you were out for a walk. Maybe you were walking past your favorite bakery, and you smelled something amazing. And you maybe thought, Oh, well, I wasn’t hungry until I just smelled that pastry or cookie coming from the bakery that you just walked by. So you start smelling this, you start salivating right? That’s a natural food response. So that’s a natural, physical, physiological response to food is you start salivating when you smell something really delicious. Well, how often is that happening in your normal life? How often are you sitting down smelling your food

Heather Finley  04:54

thinking how delicious is this going to be? Or how often are you sitting down? I’m thinking, oh my gosh, this is gonna make me so bloated. When you start off thinking, oh my gosh, this is gonna make me so bloated, you don’t have the same physiological response that you do. As to the comparison of walking past that bakery and salivating what happens when your body or your gut, your physiology when you’re under stress, even food, fear is a stress on your body, your salivation decreases, your stomach acid decreases, your gut motility slows down. When your gut motility slows down, things get stuck in your gut for longer, so your gut can cause fermentation, bacterial overgrowth, etc. This can then cause intestinal permeability, or what you may have seen on the internet known as, quote, unquote, a leaky gut, this can lead to loss of brain fog, fatigue, depression, anxiety. So again, when we’re thinking about this chicken or egg scenario, it definitely could be a chicken or egg scenario, if you were led to believe that food is a problem, and the way in which you’re eating is causing the digestive symptoms, of course, you’re scared to eat. So I just want to normalize this a little bit. We live in a very wellness focused culture, there’s diet messaging, left and right, it can be sometimes really, really hard to navigate. But every time you are thinking negatively about food, thinking negatively about your body, that’s impacting your physiology. And it’s not just affecting what is going on in your gut. But it’s also affecting all the things that need to happen for proper digestion before food ever even lands in your gut. So I want to talk a little bit about why restricting more foods is not helping you. It’s very common for clients to come to the gut Together program, eating maybe five to 10 foods, they’ve gone to one practitioner who told them to do low FODMAP, they’ve gone to another practitioner who told them to do standard carbohydrate diet, and other that told them AIP was the way to go. And they’re now looking at this list of foods that looks pretty small, and they feel super confused. So there’s this misconception in the gut health world about, restrict, restrict restrict. But the research that we actually have on the gut shows that the wider variety of foods you can eat, the more diverse your gut bacteria is. So when you’re restricting foods out of food, fear, because of the food fear that you have, that food is going to be causing you to feel bloated or food is going to make you feel terrible. You’re actually starving your microbiome, and your gut microbiome, specifically, or your gut microbiota, which is a technical term there.

Heather Finley  07:56

When you’re eating five foods, your bacterial diversity in your gut decreases. It’s not uncommon, when we run stool testing on our clients that we see that really the problem isn’t necessarily that they have loads of overgrowth of quote unquote, bad bacteria in their gut, it’s that they just don’t have enough good bacteria. And this is a direct result of under eating and restricting food groups. Now. So that’s the physiological effect that food fear overall can have on the gut. We’ll get into the nuances in the more nitty gritty in a second. But the other thing that I want you to think about is how is this food fear impacting your social life? How is how is this affecting how you show up? When your friend calls you and says, Hey, we’re going to happy hour at 5pm? Can you come? If you’re bloated that day? Do you say yes? Or do you say no? Most likely you say no? Or if you do say yes. And maybe you are miserable the whole time? Because you’re so worried about what’s going to happen? Are you going to be bloated? Are you not going to be bloated? Which then the other point that I want to make here is how does this impact your mindset about food and yourself? It becomes a super vicious cycle, right? So you’re nervous about a circumstance so you think I can’t eat because this is going to make me so bloated. So then you don’t eat, your stress response increases. And as a result of your stress response, increasing, you have decreased salivation, decreased stomach acid, your gut motility slows down. So then when you do eat, you don’t have the capacity to actually digest the food that you’re consuming, even if it’s a safe foods, so now you’ve just made it a self fulfilling prophecy, and you’re sabotaging your own gut health because you’re lowering your bacterial diversity. You have more bloating, more constant Question more gas, more diarrhea, whatever it is. So then you just remove more foods from your diet, you’re thinking, well, this food used to be safe, but now it’s not. So now what do I eat, your stress increases even more, and then your symptoms increase from stress about food, and then you think I’m never going to feel better. This is so miserable, I guess I’m just gonna stick to super bland foods, and I’m never going to eat carbs again, or whatever you tell yourself. So you remove more foods from your diet, you’re lowering your bacterial diversity. Now you’re having maybe some skin issues, you know, it must be my gut, I must need to find what is that one food that’s causing the symptoms that I’m having. And your stress continues to increase? So I won’t I won’t go on because you get the point here. So the mindset shift that I want you to think about is, what if it’s actually not the food? What if the reason that you feel toxic that you feel bloated that you feel uncomfortable, is because of something that you’re not eating? Or what if it’s because of not even something that you’re not eating? What if it’s because of how you’re thinking about food, I cannot tell you how many times we have worked with clients in our program, and they’re doing all the quote unquote, right things they are eating all what they think are the right foods, they are taking what they think are the right supplements. And really the crux of their symptoms is that they’re so stressed about food, even though they don’t think that they have food issues. I think a lot of us maybe even subconsciously have food issues, because we live in a day and age where we have so much access to information, which really, that’s a great thing. It’s great to have access to so much information, you have access to podcasts like this one, you have access to blogs, you have access to following people on Instagram, and all of that can be a positive thing. But when you’re consuming so much information about what’s good, what’s bad, what you should eat, for gut health, what you shouldn’t eat for gut health,

Heather Finley  12:04

all of a sudden, your mind is so confused about what you should do. So if you hear one thing from this podcast, what I want you to hear is that there is no such thing as a perfect diet for gut health. I get DMS all the time on Instagram of people asking me can you tell me what to eat, I’m bloated, I don’t know what to eat. And my response is always the goal for gut health. And health in general, is to eat the widest variety of foods with the least amount of symptoms. So for you, that’s going to be super different than what I’m going to eat. And there’s also other pieces that you want to consider in here cultural pieces. If your diet that you’ve been prescribed by some health practitioner, or maybe from some Instagram influencer, or wherever you are, wherever you found it. If your diet is inhibiting you from participating in things that are important to you, then it’s not the right fit. If your diet or nutrition plan is impacting your social life, if it’s impacting your ability to go on date night with your husband, or go out with your friends, it is not the right fit. Because there’s so much more to food than just nutritional value. And I know it might sound weird for you to hear a dietitian telling you that but I want you to think about how much nourishment you get from a food experience. So how many times have you maybe gone to dinner with someone or, you know, maybe think about like a holiday experience. You know, close your eyes and think about this for a second. Think about a food experience that you had, where maybe you don’t even really remember what the food is that you ate you remember the experience that you had, so much of our culture is surrounded with food, but also food, you may be part of that memory. Maybe you always crave something that your grandmother used to make. Or maybe on Christmas, you look forward to a family recipe that is super important. And it’s something that you have consumed every year for Christmas. Think about how it’s not even really what is in the food that’s important about that meal. It’s the tradition, and it’s the memories. So there is a piece here of nutrition. That is pleasure, and that is fun. And when you develop so much food fear, this inhibits you from showing up for those experiences. And it makes it really hard because then it just fills that same cycle again of stress. So I want to go back to what I was Talking about earlier with eating disorders and disordered eating. And obviously, that’s a huge spectrum and probably another podcast episode for another time. But it’s very common that we work with clients that have fast, disordered eating or an eating disorder. And they, you know, have maybe lost their period in the past, they’ve struggled with severe restriction, binging, purging, whatever it might be. And they’ve resolved what they think is issues with food, and they are in a more stable place, but they still still deal with a lot of bloating, they still deal with bloating that makes them scared of food. And they may have really worked on their thoughts about food. And they’ve may have worked on increasing variety of food, but subconsciously, they still have fear every time they eat. So this belief system, this mindset around food affects behaviors around food, right? If you always think that you’re going to be bloated, you probably will get bloated. And as you learned earlier, stress contributes to gut imbalances. So there can be issues with the microbiome, years after restricting that really make it impossible for you to tolerate food, if you don’t change your mindset. So your disordered thinking about food is really impacting your gut health. And all of this misguided behavior is often filled with misinformation. And what I mean by this is misinformation about what you need to do for your gut health, what’s going to be helpful for you, and just all the information that’s out on the internet. So I want to leave you with three points and three things to think about. Number one is the physiological impacts that your food fear is having on your gut. So you might believe that you’ve resolved your food fear, but I want you to go even deeper than that. What subconscious thoughts are you having when you sit down for a meal?

Heather Finley  17:08

How are those thoughts then impacting how you eat? Are you chewing your food? are you smelling your food so that you do salivate? Or are you rushing through the meal, because you’re stressed about it, we see so many clients who don’t even realize that they’re doing this, but they’re stressed about the meal, makes them rush through the meal. And then that actually ends up being what makes them bloated. So the physiological impacts going on here are really important. As I mentioned earlier, stress is going to inhibit your digestive enzymes from being available, and you need digestive enzymes to digest your food. Stress also decreases salivation. And when you have decreased salivation, you have less bacteria and digestive enzyme support. salivation is really the key player in this whole process. If you don’t salivate, then you don’t have enough stomach acid. And that doesn’t trigger your digestive enzymes. Stress is also going to slow food breakdown, your body sees every stress the same. So whether you’re stressed about your food, or you’re stressed about chasing or running from a bear, it’s going to interpret that the same, so it’s going to slow your food breakdown because your body’s worried about putting blood in the muscles so you can flee. You can also sometimes get the opposite if you have an acute stress. So let’s say you’ve probably had this experience before, maybe you are about to give a speech and you just ate lunch and you find yourself running to the bathroom. That’s another reaction that you can have. So if you have the opposite problem, if you’re having episodes where you’re barely making it to the bathroom, this often is a stress response. And working on the nervous system. Working on the food fear working on the stress piece is very, very important. So when your brain is alerted that there’s a stressor, your hypothalamus is going to release CRH which is corticotropin releasing hormone, then your pituitary gland releases ACTH. This basically what you need to understand here is this tells your adrenal glands to make cortisol. And when the when your adrenal glands make cortisol, your body releases glucose and adrenaline to combat stress so that the brain senses the stress is over, even though it may not be over. So you’re in this sympathetic state your fight or flight, this is actually going to reduce the amount of good bacteria. It increases your susceptibility to pathogens. So stress management and anxiety management are critical for optimizing your microbiome. So we want to get out of this self fulfilling prophecy. One thing that I want you to to think about is, how can you think about food as nourishment versus food as a symptom? So instead of sitting down and thinking, oh my gosh, every time I eat garlic, I get bloated. How can you think my gut is getting better this garlic is going to feel my gut. I didn’t tolerate it last time, but I’m in a different place. And I’m going to eat mindfully and slowly into my food. And I know that my body is going to learn to tolerate this. Or maybe you don’t even need it to be a positive affirmation, maybe you can just be neutral about it, maybe instead of garlic is going to make me bloated, maybe it’s, I trust my body to do what it needs to do. Or I trust that my body is going to tolerate this.

Heather Finley  20:50

It doesn’t always have to be in garlic is this amazing food for my gut, if you want to get there, that’s great. But maybe even just making the thoughts that you’re having about food neutral, feels a little bit more attainable, versus making all them positive. So we want to get out of this self fulfilling prophecy, we want to first activate this process of salvation, the process of the meal, hygiene, chewing salivation, digestive enzymes, etc. So that the reason that you’re bloating isn’t because of stress, with your stress response being decreased. The other point that I want to make here is that your gut is a muscle, and it can be trained over time. So if you’re constantly restricting food, this muscle is continuing to get out of shape. So sometimes the stress about food is going to be worse than the food itself, especially with long term restriction. So really, to resolve your symptoms, you need to eat enough food, and you need to eat enough variety. So the mindset shift here is, do I actually feel better eating five to 10 foods? Or do I feel the same that I did when I was including more, and knowing that when you include more foods in your diet to fuel your gut, you’re actually doing yourself a favor, because the number one predictor of a healthy gut is the diversity of plants and foods that you eat on your plate, the quickest way to change your gut is through food, and stress management. So there’s this internal shift that has to happen. This transformation in your gut is less about what you do, and more about what you believe about food and about your body. So you can go through the motions all day long. You can go through the motions of fueling your gut by eating a wide variety of plants, balancing your blood sugar, doing all the things that we know are great for gut health. But internally, what do you believe about this, if you still believe that food is the problem, and that everything you eat is going to make you bloated? Then you’re still operating from a stressed state? I can’t tell you how many times we work with clients that don’t even realize that they’re doing this also, they don’t think that they have fear about food. You know, doctor, whether I’m eating a wide variety of plants, I’m still bloated. But do you think it could be this food that’s causing the symptom that I’m having? And so they immediately are going to food versus going to okay, maybe it was? How did I sleep the night before?

Heather Finley  23:42

How is my stress, how is how I was eating. So even on a subconscious level, they’re immediately blaming food versus maybe some of the other things that could be at play. So of course, there are foods that can trigger symptoms. The point of this episode is not to tell you that, that no food is going to cause you to be bloated or anything along those lines. The point is that it’s important to get to a place of neutrality around food and optimizing your thoughts about it. Because at the end of the day, if you can’t resolve your food, fear, it’s going to be really, really hard for you to resolve your digestive symptoms. So it’s all about how you respond to it. How you learn to manage the triggers, how you learn to speak to yourself and about your gut is really, really important. So when you are terrified to eat this is stress. What you’re thinking about what you’re eating matters, changing your mindset is key. And one thing that I would challenge you to do really is check where you are getting your information. Hey, I know you’re absolutely loving this episode, but I have to interrupt real quick to ask you a huge favor. My mission is to empower as many women as possible to find relief from their digestive symptoms, and you are a part of that mission. And the best way that you can help me to pursue this mention is by going over to iTunes, and giving us a five star rating and review so that more people can find this podcast. Now back to the episode. So the last thing that I want to leave you with here, point number three is your thoughts can change your gut. So what is your motivation? Why do you want to find relief from your gut symptoms? Maybe it’s because you want your family to feel safe and comfortable around food. Maybe it’s because you want food to be fun and adventurous. Maybe it’s because you want to nourish your body versus restrict. Maybe your mantra is my body is my home, and we are on the same team. I also want you to think about how you were raised around food. When did your relationship with food change? And are there people in your life that contribute to your food fear? And how can you nourish yourself in a way that makes you feel your best, but doesn’t add more stress? Like I mentioned, the goal here is the widest variety of foods with the least amount of symptoms. So maybe you know that there’s a specific food that truly does not make you feel good, there’s a difference there, versus thinking that everything you eat is going to make you bloated. That is knowledge, not restriction. So if there’s something that you eat, that really causes you to not feel great, that’s okay. Knowledge is power. The goal really is to let’s change the mindset about food and seeing food in a different way that food can nourish your body food can nourish your gut, you can create safety around food, you can not see food as just a symptom, but instead as a way to nourish yourself so that you can do the things that you do. So food is the vehicle to have enough energy to run around with your kids to have enough energy to not need a nap during the day to have enough energy to get through your your work to do list. Because really, at the end of the day, your intention behind the Food Matters. So you may make different choices on how to fuel your gut. And that’s out of more of a self care versus a restriction. So an example here is I was talking to a client the other day and she was telling me, Well, I, I’ve always been so scared to eat oatmeal in the morning, because you know, someone one time had told her that’s not good for your blood sugar. And that’s going to, you know, make you feel terrible. And she’s like, but I really do like oatmeal. And I really want to eat this oatmeal. So we talked about it. And I’m like, Well, what if you can eat the oatmeal, but you add something to it to help you to not have a blood sugar crash. So instead of eating plain oatmeal, what if you have oatmeal, and you put some protein powder in it for an added protein source. And maybe you add some nut butter to it for a fat source. And maybe you add some berries to it to add some color and now you have a full complete meal. That’s not going to wreck your blood sugar. And you can just pay attention to how you feel. So maybe let’s try the oatmeal one day. And let’s try a completely different meal, maybe like some type of eggs scramble the next day. And let’s see how your body feels. Are you crashing at 2pm? Do you have energy to get through the day? Do you feel good. And this is a little bit different of a choice because now she’s tuning into how her body feels versus a food rule. And she can make choices on how to nourish herself because of what she knows to be true about how to feel herself so she knows. Okay, I feel great when I eat oatmeal when I add protein and fat to it. I feel great when I eat this egg scramble, and she can have just more information. So I want to walk you through an exercise really quick that we like to do with our clients about how to change your mindset about food and how to really change your thoughts because the reality is here. I don’t want you to be afraid to eat. We want to eat with intention. Like I said, information. Knowledge is power. So knowing how your body feels and responds to food is helpful. But seeing every food as the cause of your problems is not helpful. So instead of long term restriction, we want to add foods back in and we want to know what works for you. So like the oatmeal example, we want to know that pairing oatmeal with a protein of fat helps you to feel better.

Heather Finley  30:08

And this knowledge can help empower you versus restrict you. Because you see here, the thought is, what can I add to this to help me versus what can I take away, because a lot of times, and this is something that I didn’t mention earlier, but with these really, really restrictive gut health diets, you become so restricted that it’s very, very hard for you to manage your blood sugar. So when you’re eating, for example, oatmeal by itself, are you bloated because of the oatmeal Are you bloated because your blood sugar is all over the place. So when you really learn to balance your blood sugar, and eat in a way that you feel empowered, to fuel yourself, it can help you to feel a lot better about the situation. So it’s super easy to blame food for your digestive symptoms. But sometimes food variety, and what you can actually add to the meal could actually solve the problems. So I want to walk you through a little exercise that we do with our clients that will help you to start to change your thoughts about food. So here’s how you can reframe your thoughts. I want you to think of a story that you tell yourself, maybe it’s I’ll never find relief, or like this food makes me bloated, or I’m always going to be bloated when I eat whatever the food is. So that’s the story that I want you to think about. Why do you believe that? Maybe the reason you believe that is because you think that there’s something wrong with your body, or you think that there’s no way that it can be fixed, or you think that you’ve already tried so many things, and nothing has worked. So then I want you to think about what’s actually true. So maybe what’s true is I’ve only ever taken extreme approaches. And I’ve never understood the underlying symptoms, I’ve only ever focused on food. So I’ve never understood that maybe part of my symptoms were from stress. Or maybe my symptoms were from low stomach acid, or maybe my symptoms were from dysbiosis in my gut because of my restrictive diet. So that’s the truth is, maybe there’s something beyond food that’s affecting your symptoms. So then you have a choice. Step four of this process is the action. So what action can you take to not rewrite that story, maybe the action is I’m going to focus on what I can add to my diet to improve my blood sugar balance to potentially improve my symptoms. Or maybe it’s I’m going to focus on my meal hygiene by chewing really slowly, and making sure I salivate before I eat and really taking my time, or maybe the action step is I’m going to get to a place of neutrality around foods. So I know that I don’t feel great when I’m eating five foods. So and I feel about the same when I’m eating a variety. And I know that a variety is better for my gut. So I’m going to stick with eating a variety, while I explore the other reasons for why I could be having symptoms. So just to kind of recap it, what’s the story? You’re telling yourself? Why do you believe that? Oh, is that true? Or is it not true? And then what action can you take from there? I want you to, to practice doing that exercise whenever you find yourself having those thoughts. And I want you to maybe think differently about food and the symptoms that you’re having. So in summary, let’s walk through this. Step one, let’s explore your why why do you want to find bloat relief? And how will your life be different? And really, it could be why do you want to find bloat relief, constipation, acid reflux, etc. What’s motivating you to do that?

Heather Finley  34:31

And then think about some realistic goals that you can put into place. So look at how you can optimize the other pieces of your life so that potentially you can tolerate food better and that starts with your thoughts. So getting to a neutral place, with your thoughts about food knowing the physiological impacts that these stressful thoughts can have. Just evaluating your mindset acknowledge the self defeating thoughts that you’re having and remember that you have the power to disregard those thoughts. You can view those thoughts, like an ocean wave, the thoughts come into your mind, just like a wave crashes on the shore, and you watch them go straight back out to the ocean. So just because you’re having the thought does not make it true. And once you’ve gotten to the root of these multiple stories that you’re telling yourself, know that you can rewrite these stories about food. And then you can shift your mindset. So these mindset shifts reinforce, reinforce your growth oriented choice, many times our choices and our beliefs come from a deeper place. And a lot of times it’s a pressure point, or a pain that needs a little bit of TLC, the more that you can uncover these and start taking action, you can move through these, and it will have a less and less impact on the daily decisions that you make. So the ability that you have to shift and reframe your mindset about food is really critical to your success. So again, showing up to the meal thinking I’m going to be bloated is a great setup for actually being bloated, but showing up to the meal thinking, I am going to improve my digestion in all these different ways breathing, smelling my food, coming to a place of neutrality about the food, then you are empowering your body to do what it was made to do. And then kind of walk you through that thought log the stories, the why the truth, and the action. So I would love to hear from you. If this episode was helpful, please send me a DM on Instagram. If you have questions about this. I think this is probably one of the harder things to work through. Just because we’re surrounded by messages about what we should eat or what we shouldn’t eat all the time. So if this was helpful to you, please reach out please tell me what stood out. I would love to connect with you. And thank you so much for tuning in to this episode of the love your gut Podcast

 

Please note that this episode is not a substitute for medical advice. And you should always consult your healthcare provider prior to making any changes.

I’m giving your gut a thumbs up because you just finished another episode of the love your gut podcast. Thanks so much for listening in to this episode. I hope it was helpful. I know you feel like you’ve tried absolutely everything to get to the root cause of your gut symptoms. And if you ask me, I think it’s about time we find a long term solution. My gutTogether program is a life changing program that will help you finally understand what’s going on in your gut and the steps you need to take to find relief. Visit DrHeatherfinley.co/guttogether for more information so that you can start transforming your gut today. And as always, remember to love your gut so it will love you back

 

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Hi, I’m Dr. Heather

Registered dietitian and helps people struggling with bloating, constipation, and IBS find relief from their symptoms and feel excited about food again.

Tune in

Share This Post

Take the Quiz

Why Am I Bloated?

Are you curious to understand why you are bloated? Take our fun quiz to find out!

On The Blog

Related Posts

Root Cause Series #3: Stress

Recently I shared a free quiz on my Instagram to help individuals identify the top underlying cause that could be contributing to their symptoms.  Would you be surprised if I

Read More »

Root Cause Series: Low Stomach Acid

A few weeks ago, I polled everyone on Instagram and asked what the biggest confusion was surrounding their digestive symptoms. The resounding answer was, “how to determine the root cause.”

Read More »

Easy Hearts of Palm Pasta Dinner

About this Recipe A quick and easy, gut-friendly dinner using a new favorite Trader Joe’s item: Hearts of Palm pasta! You only need a handful of simple ingredients (chicken, olive

Read More »

Why Am I Bloated?

Are you curious to understand why you’re feeling bloated? Take our fun quiz to find out!

BANISH YOUR BLOAT AND FIND RELIEF FROM CHRONIC CONSTIPATION

Dr. Heather Finley