You finish a delicious dinner and sit back, ready to enjoy that post-meal contentment.
Then suddenly it hits.
Your stomach feels like it’s about to burst, even though you didn’t eat too much. And does your belly look bigger, too?
Bloating is incredibly common, affecting between 10% and 25% of healthy adults.1
Luckily, with the right foods, bloating can be alleviated and even avoided.
Let's explore what causes that uncomfortable fullness, which bloat-inducing foods to avoid, and which healthy, nutritious meals will give you that same happy feeling without the bloat.
What Is Bloating?
Bloating is a feeling of uncomfortable or even painful fullness or tightness in and around your stomach. It occurs when there is a build up of excess gas in the GI tract.
When you’re bloated, you may feel as if you’ve eaten a huge meal. In fact, you may even look like you’ve eaten a huge meal, a condition known as abdominal distention.
For the most part, your bloating will go away as your body processes and eliminates the food that caused the issue. However, depending on factors such as your diet, digestive issues, and hormonal changes, bloating can become a recurring issue.
What Causes Bloating?
Feeling bloated? There could be several causes.
If you frequently feel bloated after eating, it is likely due to the foods you are eating or an underlying digestive issue. With food-related bloating, the main causes are overeating or eating too much of certain foods—mainly those high in fat or sugar (or artificial sweeteners) as well as lactose.
Other common causes of bloating include:
- Food intolerances
- Gastrointestinal (GI) issues or other health conditions
- Buildup of digestive content, usually due to constipation or bowel obstructions
- For women, bloating often occurs around or during your menstrual cycle.
One of the most common causes of bloating is an imbalanced gut, a state also referred to as dysbiosis. If your gut microbiome becomes imbalanced, with an overabundance of harmful bacteria (pathogens) compared to beneficial bacteria (probiotics), it leads to an increase in methane and hydrogen gas production. This alteration in your gut environment further promotes the growth and proliferation of bad bacteria, resulting in more frequent episodes of bloating.
Balancing your gut with a high-quality spore probiotic (more on this later) is the best way to stop bloating in its tracks, though you still need to be cognizant of the foods you are eating…
Unfortunately, bloating can impact your day-to-day functioning as well as your overall health and wellness.
Foods That Cause Bloating
As we mentioned earlier, what you eat is one of the main causes of bloating.
Here are some foods you should avoid or minimize if you’re trying to banish bloating.
- Apples, pears, and other fruit high in sugars, especially if you eat them with the peel Artificial sweeteners such sorbitol, mannitol, or xylitol
- Beans and lentils
- Carbonated drinks Cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli and Brussels sprouts
- Dairy products
- Garlic
- High-fat foods
- Onions
- Wheat, rye, barley, and other insoluble fibers, especially if you have celiac disease or a gluten sensitivity
- Gluten, a key component of wheat and other grains, but also found in condiments like soy sauce and many processed foods
- Fructose, especially in the form of high fructose corn syrup
- Lactose, found in dairy products
Many of these foods are often considered healthy, so the key is moderation.
Reduce Bloating With These 5 Healthy Fall Recipes
And now that you know some foods to avoid, let’s look at some mouth-watering, bloat-free fall recipes you can enjoy, instead.
(As you might notice, many of these recipes include the addition of Just Thrive Probiotic for added gut support. Just Thrive Probiotic capsules can be swallowed whole or opened and the contents mixed into just about any recipe. In fact, Just Thrive’s strains are so shelf-stable, they’ll retain full potency even when exposed to high temperatures.)
1. Sweet Potato Falafel
This delicious meal is the perfect comfort food for fitness buffs. High in protein and healthy fats but low in carbs, it’s high in nutrients and in flavor.
Try this dish out if you’re cutting down on carbs but still want to satisfy your craving for a sweet, salty potato dish.
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Sweet Potato Falafel Ingredients:
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2. Vegan Pumpkin-Flavored Oatmeal Cookies
Fall is all about pumpkin-flavored, well, everything! So this season, treat yourself to one of the best pumpkin pastry vegan fall recipes.
With its decadent flavor and soft texture, each bite of this cookie will send your tastebuds to heaven.
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Vegan Pumpkin-Flavored Oatmeal Cookies Ingredients: Cookies
Glaze
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3. Sweet Potato Salad with Pomegranate
Looking for healthy fall salad recipes to try this season? Give your taste buds a treat with this pomegranate sweet potato salad!
This delicious, gluten-free, dairy-free salad is loaded with vitamins, healthy fats, and micronutrients. A serving of this in the middle of a busy day might be just what your body needs to feel energized and conquer the day like a champion!
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Sweet Potato Salad with Pomegranate Ingredients:
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4. Quinoa and Spiralized Vegetable Bowl
Want to start eating healthier lunches this fall? Then you should definitely include this quinoa and spiralized vegetable bowl in your meal choices.
Even better, in around an hour you can finish four to five days’ worth of delicious packed lunches. So set aside some time over the weekend, prepare a few servings of this recipe, and then store them in the refrigerator to retain freshness.
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Quinoa and Spiralized Vegetable Bowl Ingredients:
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5. Pumpkin and Pecan Smoothie
Smoothies are one of our favorite on-the-go meals! Packed with vitamins and nutrients, you can pour it into a spill-proof cup and sip it throughout your commute.
Athletes can attest to the many benefits of drinking homemade smoothies. Not only are they versatile and nutritious, but they’re also extremely easy to make.
Just pop them in a blender, and let it do all the work. Easy, right?
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Pumpkin and Pecan Smoothie Ingredients:
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Just Thrive Gut Health Products
Tame Bloating With Just Thrive Probiotic
These tasty, health-conscious fall recipes are the first step to a happy, bloat-free life.
But while managing your diet is a great start for combating bloat, you’ll need some extra help if you really want to get your digestive system into optimal shape.
And taking Just Thrive Probiotic is just what you need to look and feel your bloat-free best!
Just Thrive contains four proprietary spore probiotic strains:
- Bacillus indicus HU36™
- Bacillus subtilis HU58™
- Bacillus coagulans
- Bacillus clausii
Just Thrive’s spore-based strains are unique in that they are equipped with a protective endospore “shell” that allows them to make it through the harsh environment of your stomach and digestive tract and arrive 100% alive in your gut.
These powerful probiotics have been shown to:
- Dramatically decrease the production of ammonia and hydrogen gas in your gut—the major cause of excess gas and bloating during digestion
- Reduce bloating, gas, and abdominal discomfort.
And Just Thrive Probiotic is easy to add to your daily wellness routine, simply take one capsule once a day with your largest meal, or sprinkle the contents of a capsule into your favorite recipe—and because it’s tasteless, colorless, and odorless, you won’t even know it’s there! Plus, these resilient strains will not lose potency, even when baked in your favorite bloat-busting foods.
>> Support a healthy gut microbiome and beat bloat with Just Thrive Probiotic.
And did you know?
EVERY Just Thrive purchase is covered by our Bottom of the Bottle, 100% money-back guarantee.
So you can try Just Thrive Probiotic to see if it works for you… and we’re betting it will.
But if for any reason you don’t feel a difference, simply ask for a full refund at any time. Even if it’s 3 months or 3 years. Even if the bottle is empty!
>> Test drive Just Thrive Probiotic RISK FREE and save 22% with a subscription.
Sources
- Cleveland Clinic. Bloated Stomach. Available at: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/21740-bloated-stomach. Accessed July 11, 2023.
