bloating

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from Prevention here on FitSugar!

By Diana Kelly, Prevention

Need another reason to hate Mondays? Tight postweekend waistbands. Unless you spent the past two days living like a monk, the cocktails, movie snacks, and dinners out can all add up to one thing: belly bloat.

“If you wake up bloated on Monday morning, your weekend food choices are likely to blame,” explains Keri Gans, RD, author of The Small Change Diet. “In fact, overindulging for two days straight can easily cause a gain of three pounds. Fortunately, this weight gain is usually temporary and easy to get rid of in less than a week.”

Last week, we shared with you five easy tips to get a flat belly by Friday. Here are four more tips to help you debloat.

1. Hold the Hot Sauce

If you love four-alarm food, lay off the Tabasco, barbecue sauce, and garlic for a few days while debloating. Spicy foods stimulate the release of stomach acid, causing irritation. Give dishes a flavor boost with in-season fresh or dried herbs such as dill, basil, mint, sage, tarragon, and rosemary. You can also use curry powder or lemon or lime juice — all perfect with fish or chicken. Also, steer clear of black pepper, nutmeg, cloves, chili powder, onions, mustard, horseradish, and acidic foods such as ketchup, tomato sauce, and vinegar.

Try These Foods Instead to Give Your Metabolism a Boost

Use Prevention’s recipe finder tool to find tasty recipes seasoned with fresh herbs.

More ways to beat the bloat after the break.

We are excited to share one of our fave stories from Prevention here on FitSugar!

by Diana Kelly, Prevention

Need another reason to hate Mondays? Tight postweekend waistbands. Unless you spent the past two days living like a monk, the cocktails, movie snacks, and dinners out can all add up to one thing: belly bloat.

"If you wake up bloated on Monday morning, your weekend food choices are likely to blame," explains Keri Gans, RD, author of The Small Change Diet. "In fact, overindulging for two days straight can easily cause a gain of three pounds. Fortunately, this weight gain is usually temporary and easy to get rid of in less than a week."

Try These 5 Tasty Low-Sodium Dinner Ideas

Feel flat again by Friday with these five easy tips.

1. Season Food Differently

You may be attracted to your saltshaker, but water is too. When you take in higher-than-usual amounts of the salty stuff, you'll temporarily retain more fluid, contributing to that sluggish feeling, a puffy appearance, and extra water weight. Avoid salt, overprocessed foods, and salt-based seasonings. Gans suggests you also ditch the frozen microwaveable meals while you’re de-bloating — they’re packed with sodium. Instead, she recommends a simple turkey sandwich or a salad with chicken for lunch this week. And eat plenty of fruits and vegetables that are packed with water.

Add zest to your dinner recipes with fresh herbs and salt-free seasoning blends such as the Original and Italian Medley Mrs. Dash.

Four more tips after the break.

We are pumped to share one of our favorite stories from Health.com here on our site.

By Melissa Daly

Feeling puffy? Bloating caused by gas, irregularity, or water retention can make even a tiny tummy become anything but. Here's how to deal with the problem.

Increase potassium
The more salt you consume on a given day, the more potassium-rich foods — asparagus, citrus fruits, melon, tomatoes — you should eat, says Tammy Lakatos Shames, RD, the author of The Secret to Skinny.

Get off the couch
"In many people, exercise stimulates the bowels, ending constipation," says Jacqueline Wolf, MD, associate professor of medicine at Harvard University and author of A Woman's Guide to a Healthy Stomach.

Health.com: Surprising Causes of Constipation

Down eight glasses of liquids each day
Fluids help flush waste out of your system and reduce water retention. Coffee can have the added bonus of contracting the colon, helping you to go.

Sip peppermint tea
It alleviates gas by relaxing the digestive tract and boosting normal peristalsis, says Wolf. Research suggests that enteric-coated peppermint-oil capsules also help with stomach pain.

Health.com: Best and Worst Foods For Digestion

Stop it before it starts
Before a little-snug-dress event, take a cue from red-carpet vets: cut out excess salt and drink two to three liters of water a day, says Carrie Wiatt, nutritionist to Fergie and Sela Ward.

Health.com: How to Get Rid of Annoying Body Problems

Flickr User goosegrease

We are pumped to share one of our favorite stories from Self here on FitSugar!

Feeling sluggish after the busy holiday season? You're not alone. According to a recent study in The New England Journal of Medicine, the average American gains a pound between November and January.

But rather than wallow in the aftermath of too many cocktails and Christmas cookies, we turned to fitness expert Angela Parker, who offered these easy tips to banish postholiday bloating fast:

1. Sweat your ass off! Give yourself a daily 60-minute sweat session three days in a row. No walking — go running or spinning.
2. If you want to shrink fast, stick to egg whites, fish, chicken, and veggies.

Read on for more ways to banish postholiday bloating.

While we'd all love to be more conscious of portion sizes to help reduce holiday weight gain, all it takes is a cheese ball here, and a pigs in a blanket there, and those innocent bite-sized holiday treats can produce an explosion of heartburn and bloating in your belly. If you went a little overboard at the hors d'oeuvres table (or the main course), and are now feeling the negative side effects, here are some quick remedies to help ease the pain.

• Walk it off: No need for a brisk, speed-walking session, but around 20 minutes after your meal, a leisurely walk can assist in dispelling gas from your abdomen. What walking does is help to relieve overall intestinal pressure and therefore will reduce that uncomfortable bloating feeling. Walking also helps to get the blood flowing, which aids in the overall digestion process. Fresh air in itself can make you feel better too!

Keep reading for more tips.

Most women experience some form of PMS every month, ranging from a slight irritability to full-blown moodiness. And while we can't prevent all symptoms from occurring, there are some important lifestyle changes we can make to make the most of that time of the month. Here are four ways to combat PMS.

Change your diet: Many times, experiencing harsh PMS symptoms can be attributed to what you've been eating. Eating salty foods, for example, can cause bloating from fluid retention, which can lead to sore breasts. It's not just about limiting your diet, however. Adding certain foods can help reduce PMS symptoms. Check out our list of five foods that fight PMS here.

Don't stop exercising: Feeling fatigued, moody, bloated, and sore? Chances are your daily gym trip is the last thing on your mind. But instead of dragging yourself from bed to work to couch, try to stick to your normal routine, just make your workouts lighter in intensity. Regular exercise can help fight PMS fatigue, and if you stick to it now, you'll be more apt to continue exercising when your period starts — which can help relieve menstrual cramp pain. Here are low-impact exercises perfect for workouts during that time of the month.

Find two more proven ways to fight those dreaded PMS symptoms after the break.

The following post was written by the registered dietitians of C & J Nutrition, Stephanie Clarke and Willow Jarosh. We turned to them for their expert advice to answer a FitSugar reader's question.

Hi,
I am dealing with some serious bloating issues and it isn't pretty — especially since it's Summer and I plan to hang out in a bikini as much as possible. Can you tell me what foods cause bloating that I should be avoiding? Also, are there any foods out there that alleviate bloating? Thanks!
— Puffy Tummy

When dealing with bloating you need to approach the problems from a couple of different angles to find the source of the problems and figure out what is causing the bloating. A common cause we see with our clients is eating too much, too fast. The remedy for this is to slow down and be more conscious both before and during eating. Don't let yourself get famished between meals — because then you'll want to eat a ton of the first thing you see, quickly. Have a snack in between meals so that you're hungry but still able to make wise portion decisions and slow down at meals. In other words, try eating smaller amounts more often.

If your bloating is PMS-related, skip sodas/carbonated water/etc., as the same bubbles that give carbonated drinks their fizz can enter our digestive tract and cause bloating. Also go easy on salty foods/snacks — too much salt causes our bodies to hold onto water, leading to that puffy feeling of fluid retention. Finally, don't skimp on protein and your meals and snacks. Protein can actually help pull excess water out of your body (especially handy during water-retention prone PMS time).

Keep reading for a few more tips and foods to avoid.

The last thing anyone wants to deal with on the day of a big event — like your wedding! — is being uncomfortably bloated. While the best way to a flat belly is through cardio and ab work, feeling bloated is a whole other beast. Here are some tips to banish the bloat on your big day.

• Eat the right kinds of foods. Certain foods like whole grains and pineapple actually help ease bloating because they keep the digestive system on track. It's also important to stay hydrated. When dehydrated, your body retains fluids, which is a surefire way to get a little belly bump.
• Stay away from certain foods. While pineapple might banish that balloon belly, there are a host of foods that do just the opposite. Before the big day, try to limit your intake of foods that cause bloating. These are foods that cause the body to feel too full and/or gassy like beans, broccoli, pears, and cabbage. Salty and fatty foods are also big culprits, and so are carbonated beverages.
• Eat slowly and chew your food. Often the reason we feel bloated is that we're swallowing air while we eat. A surefire sign that you're eating too fast is if you get the hiccups. Slow down and take time to really chew your food. You'll feel fuller sooner, swallow less air, and make things easier on your digestive system.

If you've done all of the above but are still feeling out of sorts, you can always take a cue from Eric Damon — the costume designer for Gossip Girl. Whenever the girls on set are feeling bloated, he puts them in Spanx. Keep in mind that when your wedding day arrives — Spanx or no Spanx — you'll be the most beautiful woman in the room.

We are pumped to share one of our fave stories from Self here on FitSugar!

We're not going to lie: transforming your body from head to toe isn't always the fastest process, because it takes time to burn fat and build muscle. However, there is an exception: With the right diet and workout, you can see a difference in your belly (and maybe even reveal an ab or two!) in just a couple of days. The secret? Beat bloat.

Generally, the best way to avoid bloat is to stay away from soda, alcohol and greasy, salty, fatty meals, which slow the stomach and the intestines from emptying, according to Timothy S. Harlan (a.k.a. Dr. Gourmet), M.D., medical director of Tulane University's School of Medicine.

Here are 5 of our favorite bloat-busting foods, and a few moves to add to your belly-shrinking workout routine.

• Papaya: There's some research that says the enzyme in papaya may aid digestion. Try mixing diced papaya into plain organic yogurt for breakfast.
• Oatmeal: According to Harlan, in a recent meta-analysis of a number of studies related to digestion, researchers found that oat bran can be particularly beneficial. Harlan recommends having oatmeal for breakfast. Warning: Avoid McDonald's new oatmeal, which has more sugar than a Snickers bar, according to this recent New York Times article. Yikes!

More foods to decrease the bloat, so keep reading.