Are you feeling bloated and gassy after meals? It’s a horrible and uncomfortable way to feel. And to be honest with you, I sometimes feel like that after eating certain foods. In the past, before I really got on top of a personalised diet that works for me, I used to suffer from that quite a lot.

There’s a couple of things that you can look at. One is what type of foods you’re intolerant to or sensitive to according to your DNA. But the other, and probably the strong area of interest, is what’s going on in real time in your gut.

We know that bacteria contributes to bloating and gas, and in order to have a healthy gut, we need to have a good variation of bacteria – not too many good bacteria and not too many bad. It’s okay to have a few bad bacteria, but you want to have a nice variation. Very often people have got that dysbiosis in their guts, where they haven’t got that variation, and that can cause bloating and gas amongst other things. It’s typically what we’re eating, how it’s reacting with the bacteria in our gut, that can then lead to bloating and gas.

There is a product you can look at, which is a gut intelligence test from Viome – it’s a simple stool test. And once you’ve returned that, about four weeks later you get the results on this beautifully presented app. And this app will tell you four simple things, as well as the results of the bacteria in your gut, (though that part might not make much sense to you – things like lactobacillus, and Bacteroidetes).

The four columns that it gives you in the app are:

  • What are your super foods
  • The foods you should eat all the time
  • What are the foods that you can enjoy, but not every day
  • The foods that you should have really sparingly, they are not great for you

And then your Kryptonite foods, the foods you should absolutely avoid. And this is real time data. It’s what’s going on right now in your gut that is probably causing that bloating and that gas. I’ve done this, my colleagues have done this, loads and loads of clients have done this test. It’s a brilliant, brilliant kit.

If you don’t want to put any investment in anything else, the simple thing to do is eliminate foods from your diet. So cut out a food, see if it reduces your bloating and your gas. It’s simply a question of eliminating everything one by one. Obviously, if you eliminate several things, you won’t know which one it is when the symptoms disappear.

My advice would be to do some testing using the Viome kit. Alternatively, an elimination test, and get to the bottom of what you’re eating and what’s not getting on with your bacteria. It’s really all about the small stuff, the little bacteria.

If you take care of them, they’ll take care of you!

What’s your Health IQ?

If you’re reading this, you might be in reasonably senior position, running your own business or have a busy life running the home and juggling other responsibilities. Either way, you’re busy!

The convergent pressures of work and family life have probably meant that the time you did have to spend on health and fitness has disappeared. Why not talk to us and see how we can help.

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Leanne Spencer is an entrepreneur, coach, TEDx Speaker, author of Remove the Guesswork, and founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. Bodyshot is a health and fitness consultancy that helps busy professionals get more energy by removing the guesswork around their health, fitness and nutrition. Visit www.bodyshotperformance.com or email [email protected] to register your interest in our services and connect with us on FacebookInstagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Author(s)

  • Leanne is an award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. She delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight', is the author of bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine', and hosts a podcast called ’Remove the Guesswork‘. Leanne is the founder of Bodyshot Performance, an award-winning health and wellbeing company. Bodyshot Performance work with businesses of up to 500 people who want to create a culture of energy, vitality and performance through the business and position wellbeing as a competitive advantage. Bodyshot intersect the latest science and technology to provide unique solutions to the challenge of wellbeing in the workplace that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our clients have won awards for wellbeing and recognise it directly improves employee engagement and retention and attracts talent into the business.  We also work with chronically stressed or burned out professionals to get you back in control of your health and able to do the things you want to do in life. My expertise is around health, fitness and wellbeing, specifically focusing on sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion and fitness. I host a popular podcast on iTunes called ’Remove the Guesswork ‘, and in November 2016 I delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight'. I’m the author of the bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine' and I regularly speak to corporates on health and wellbeing. My personal values are to live truthfully, considerately and to "suck all the marrow out of life" as Thoreau said. I support the charity Diversity Role Models which works to combat homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I recently completed the world’s toughest ski race to raise £10,125 for Alzheimer's Research as my father-in-law was profoundly ill with Alzheimers, and I am on a constant mission to find ways to live in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I love sport, fitness, reading, gardening, business, podcasting, and being with my cat and our scampish little rescue dog, Kami from Romania.