There’s no mistaking bloating—, that pressure-filled feeling in your intestine that’s akin to swallowing a bowling ball. Most of us take care of it every so often, and it’s normally NBD. “Transient bloating from time to time might be completely regular,” Elena Ivanina, DO, a gastroenterologist with Northwell Well being Lenox Hill Hospital in New York Metropolis and founding father of GutLove, tells SELF.

Nonetheless, it may also be tremendous uncomfortable, so that you’d in all probability quite keep away from it—and that begins with determining what’s really behind it. There are a bunch of widespread causes of bloating that may very well be the wrongdoer, starting from what you eat to sure well being circumstances to easily sitting an excessive amount of. Listed below are some potential explanation why you’re feeling so rattling bloated and what you are able to do to forestall the puffiness.

1. You’re consuming a bunch of fiber-filled meals…

Loads of instances, a bloated abdomen simply comes all the way down to what’s on the menu. Specifically, fiber-rich meals like beans, lentils, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, complete grains, onions, and apples. When the micro organism in your GI tract get to work on breaking down the fiber out of your bean burrito or kale and quinoa salad, they create gasoline as a byproduct, in accordance with Danielle VenHuizen, MS, RDN, a Seattle-based dietitian who focuses on intestine well being and the founding father of Meals/Sense Vitamin Counseling. And all that gasoline can construct up and make you bloat.

Once more, that is fairly regular, particularly if you happen to don’t eat a ton of fiber on the common. The excellent news is that your digestive system will get extra environment friendly at breaking down dietary fiber when it’s used to doing it. So consuming extra of it may show you how to curb your bloating in the long term, VenHuizen tells SELF. Simply make sure you improve your fiber consumption slowly (say, by a pair grams per week—which could appear to be including some flaxseeds to your breakfast or a serving of legume-based pasta at dinner) so that you don’t get overly gassy or crampy.

2. …or snacks filled with sugar substitutes.

Meals containing synthetic sweeteners (notably sugar alcohols, like sorbitol, mannitol, and glycerol) may dial up the gasoline in your GI tract and result in bloating. As SELF reported beforehand, your physique can’t totally soak up and digest them, in order that they find yourself hanging out in your intestine, the place gas-producing micro organism feed on them. These sugar alcohols are widespread substances in issues like sugar-free ice cream, chewing gum, protein shakes or bars—therefore, the ever-pleasant “protein farts.”

3. You reside for fizzy drinks.

Ditto for carbonated drinks, like sodas or a number of the sparking stuff, since all of the gas-producing bubbles in your bev go straight to your intestine, Ven Huizen says. And if you happen to couple the carbonation with sugar substitutes—say, such as you’d get in a superbly crisp Weight loss plan Coke—you may increase the bloat much more. Cue that uncomfortably full feeling. (Plus a burp or two.)

4. A meals intolerance may very well be at play.

In case you’re experiencing different GI signs like cramping or diarrhea together with bloating after consuming one thing, it would imply you could have meals intolerance, VenHuizen says. You may develop this in case your GI tract lacks the enzymes wanted to digest a sure kind of carbohydrate or naturally occurring sugar: Suppose lactose (the sugar present in milk and different dairy merchandise) or fructose (a sugar present in fruit and honey).

In case you suppose you could have a meals sensitivity like lactose intolerance, begin by monitoring your signs in a meals diary for no less than just a few weeks. You’ll wish to jot down your meals and snacks, together with the way you’re feeling, all through the day. “It’s probably the most useful software there’s to know your intestine points, together with bloating,” Dr. Ivanina says. That log shall be beneficial data to share together with your physician or a registered dietitian, who can then information you thru an elimination weight loss program, if wanted, to see if reducing out the offending meals makes you’re feeling higher. (It’s tremendous essential to do that beneath the supervision of a professional to be sure to’re deciphering any patterns appropriately, and aren’t taking out meals you don’t have to.)

5. You haven’t pooped in a pair days.

In that case, constipation, which is often outlined as pooping three or fewer instances per week or having arduous, lumpy, or difficult-to-pass stools, may very well be accountable. “When stool sits round for longer than it ought to, it may trigger gas-producing micro organism to construct up and trigger bloating,” Supriya Rao, MD, a gastroenterologist with Tufts Medication in Boston, tells SELF.