Raise your hand if you’ve heard these before:
- A juice cleanse will fix your bloat
- You should never eat gluten and dairy again
- Eating more cruciferous veggies will fix your bloat
- All bloat is “bad”
Here’s what I have to say:
✓A juice cleanse may give you temporary relief but it won’t solve the underlying problem
✓Not everyone needs to cut out gluten and dairy
✓Raw salads can actually increase bloat only because *raw* veggies are harder to digest and breakdown. Try cooking them to make them easier on your system.
✓Sometimes it *is* normal to get bloated after eating (especially beans, legumes, etc) but painful, persistent, or progressively worse throughout the day can mean something is off.
Here’s the thing…
Bloat can actually happen regardless of what you eat!
That’s because it’s often not a food issue. The real reason why bloat happens is a real eye-opener. For many of our clients it’s a combination of different root causes including: low stomach acid, slow gut motility, stress, digestive imbalances or even hypothyroidism.
When chronic and persistent bloating happens because of a deeper issue, you only create a larger problem by jumping on a juice cleanse, detox or fad. When you jump from cleanse to detox to fad diet here is what can happen:
- You feel famished
- You are deprived of important nutrients needed to support your gut and physical health
- You might be left feeling weak, sluggish and moody
And let’s be real, most of the time you don’t even make it to the end because you are so frustrated, hangry and tired. Instead of focusing on all of the things that you *cannot* eat for gut health, it’s important to focus on what you DO need and the actual root causes that are contributing to your symptoms. If you are curious about your potential root causes, you can take this free quiz.