Food/Diet Bloating

harmonix1234

Eats Squid
What foods offer good carbs without making me bloated.
Bread, rice, wheat, weetbix, pasta, every time I eat carbs I go up two pants sizes for about 6 hours. Gives me the shits (not literally).
I wake up in the morning feeling great. Then I eat my weetbix and by lunchtime I have to undo my pants cause I'm all swelled up. Over it.

Any suggestions?
 
Last edited:

Andrei

Likes Dirt
Sounds like either a gluten issue or maybe you should just stay away from grains altogether. Starchy foods like potatoes and bananas might be a good option.
Sent from my LG-E900 using Board Express
 

0psi

Eats Squid
Yeah you could have a gluten intolerance. I read an interesting article a while back that suggested like lactose everyone was gluten intolerant to some degree.
 

geoff_tewierik

Likes Dirt
Definately sounds like a gluten issue, though the rice doesn't fit into that class of foods.

Suggest you test yourself out on some gluten free variants of your normal bread and pasta.

Alternatively look at some sweet potatoe.
 

Handles

Likes Bikes
Harmonix,
Both my kids have coeliacs disease. Although it might be just an allergy, if it is coeliacs disease it can be serious if left undiagnosed. It might be a good idea to get a blood test.
 

cha_cha_

Likes Dirt
echoing the above: i would try eliminating everything on that list and turn to fruits and starchy vegetables. it's hard to get massive amounts of carbs when you eliminate some of the super dense sources (rice is ~80g carbs per 100g compared to bananas and sweet potatoes which are closer to 25g per 100g).

i would think that rice would be the least likely to cause trouble though.
 

badtreefrog

Likes Bikes
Fruits, sweet potatoes, quinoa are all good sources of carbs that are less likely to make you bloated. Dried fruits have a higher carb/g ratio and are good on the ride snacks.

If you have body fat stores (which everyone does) then you don't actually need to eat that many carbs for energy.
 

harmonix1234

Eats Squid
Thanks, will take a few days off the bread and weetbix, might get some bloods done too. See how I feel after some time off the wheat. Thanks for all your replies.
 

driftking

Wheel size expert
Bloating might not be a digestive issue but I think it may be worth finding out If you do have any medical reason behind it. I bloat too when eating those foods, I think mine is more due the amount I eat though.

Its not a bad idea to eliminate grains from most diets anyway where possible. Maybe look at the GAPS diet or the SCD. Carbs have different types of make ups so you have polysaccharides, disaccharides and monosaccharides, some people cannot handle certain types.

To be honest from what iv read grains seem to be something many of use should cut down on anyway. At least a pretty big number of grains.
 

harmonix1234

Eats Squid
Thanks driftking.
This morning, no weetbix or toast for brekkie. Just three poached eggs on some wilted spinach and some grilled tomato. And a coffee. black no sugar.
I feel like a million bucks and my shorts are loose around my waist for the first time ever.
Gonna stick to it for a week and see how my body reacts.
Just looking in the cupboard makes me realise how many wheat carbs we have in the house.
 

Thomas11

Likes Dirt
quinoa is a great alternative to rice and pasta.
I actually prefer it to rice when i cook curry's or stirfry's, substitute the rice for quinoa. Its also a protein rich grain which is great for muscle repair if you have a high exercise program. Doesnt bloat me at all either, and i do get a small amount of bloating when I have a heavy pasta/rice meal.
 

driftking

Wheel size expert
quinoa is a great alternative to rice and pasta.
I actually prefer it to rice when i cook curry's or stirfry's, substitute the rice for quinoa. Its also a protein rich grain which is great for muscle repair if you have a high exercise program. Doesnt bloat me at all either, and i do get a small amount of bloating when I have a heavy pasta/rice meal.
To add quinoa also absorbs less crap from the soil. Rice particularly brown rice (because its not stripped down) holds more contaminates, arsenic been one that is found in rice in much higher doses than other products...

If you do eat rice do research and go organic and find out if they have testing results avaliable to view.
 

JP

Likes Dirt
How about a problem with dairy?

For years I consumed copious amounts of milk in drinks, on cereal etc etc, and always ended up bloated and farting like a champion. After doing some research I gave up the dairy and SHAZAAM! I now drink rice milk (takes a bit of getting used to) but I feel so much better.
 

Cypher

Likes Dirt
Whoa there nelly! I think you need to back track a bit. Bloating can be either a minor annoyance or a symptom of something really serious, like bowel cancer (yes it can happen to young people too). By self diagnosing you may be missing the real problem (mis-diagnosis) or not quite fixing the problem - a band-aid solution at best. It is unlikely that bloating is the only problem you have. For example you have a fever for a reason - an infection - but by only treating the fever you could ignore the massive supperating and infected wound. You wont get any better.

For instance you may actually have a real gluten problem where you need to cut out most if not all gluten. If you cut out some, but not all, gluten you may get some relief from the bloating symptoms but not acutally fixing the problem. An inflammed digestive symptom can lead to bigger problems like cancer if you leave it untreated. Since you haven't got an accurate diagnosis of the problem you're just hoping that what you are doing is going to fix the problem.

My suggestion is to go keep a food diary and track you bloating/pooing symptoms for a month. Then go and visit your GP as well as a nutritionist or dietician and get it sorted out properly. To get a diagnosis of ceoliac/gluten intolerance you actually need to be eating gluten at the time, so don't cut it out when doing the diary. Being a proper ceoliac or intolerant person is no fun at all. Gluten is in everything!

Grains are not evil. About 90% of the population have no trouble at all with digesting them. You should mix them up though. Most people pretty much only eat wheat. Your gut is an ecosystem - it does not like a monoculture.

Other things to think causes of bloating are:
* What is your overall diet like? You may be just suffering from a lack of variety of food. Do you eat the same foods week in/week out? Your gut, like muscles, likes a challenge and needs exercise. You do this by eating as wide a variety of foods as possible.
* It might not be a gluten problem. You might be a FODMAP irritible bowel person for instance.
* How long do you sit down each day. Sitting down for long periods is bad. Try a standing desk arrangement at work if you are a desk jockey. Don't watch hours of TV on the couch.
* How long has it been since your last anti-biotics course? They don't kill just the bad bacteria - they pretty much wipe you out. Include some fermented foods in your weekly diet and not just yogurt. Saurkraut, miso, tempeh are other examples. It is the variety and not the quantity that counts (which is unfortunate since you can generally only get tins of saurkraut and really, who wants to eat that much fermented cabbage?)
* How much alcohol do you consume? You might want to think about following the national guidelines at least for a period of time and see how you go.
* sleep and stress will also affect your guts. Practice good sleep hygiene and manage stress
 
Last edited:

harmonix1234

Eats Squid
Interested in how the OP has fared with a change to diet over a couple of months?
Been off the wheat since the original post aside from a small blowout Chrissie lunch. No real difference.
Still all puffy and gassy. But my energy levels are a lot higher without the wheat carbs, which doesn't make any sense to me.
Gonna try the no dairy next. I'll go a month and see how that goes.
Been eating Quinoa. Don't like it much, but not so bad with a few bits of roasted veggies and the odd bit of haloumi thrown in.
Just ran out of it and don't reckon I'll buy it again.

Also booked in to see GP for an allergy test.

Thanks Cypher. Great points.

Other things to think causes of bloating are:
* What is your overall diet like? You may be just suffering from a lack of variety of food. Do you eat the same foods week in/week out? Your gut, like muscles, likes a challenge and needs exercise. You do this by eating as wide a variety of foods as possible. Pretty varied, but I sure coould do with a lot less meat and a lot more veggies
* It might not be a gluten problem. You might be a FODMAP irritible bowel person for instance. Might be. Other family member has irritable bowel syndrome.
* How long do you sit down each day. Sitting down for long periods is bad. Try a standing desk arrangement at work if you are a desk jockey. Don't watch hours of TV on the couch. I spend all day on a seat, aside from my commute... Which is also on a seat
* How long has it been since your last anti-biotics course? They don't kill just the bad bacteria - they pretty much wipe you out. Include some fermented foods in your weekly diet and not just yogurt. Saurkraut, miso, tempeh are other examples. It is the variety and not the quantity that counts (which is unfortunate since you can generally only get tins of saurkraut and really, who wants to eat that much fermented cabbage?) About six months since last antibiotic course, which I had to repeat, twice to get rid of the sickness.
* How much alcohol do you consume? You might want to think about following the national guidelines at least for a period of time and see how you go. None. Ever. I had one small baileys NYE and aside from that it's been about two years since I drank half a stubby on my wedding night.* sleep and stress will also affect your guts. Practice good sleep hygiene and manage stress
 
Last edited:

willsy01

Eats Squid
Gluten intolerance seems to be the latest fad. No one had a problem with it.......then all of a sudden, everyone did. Quite a bizarre phenomenon.
 

geoff_tewierik

Likes Dirt
With a wife who is a diagnosed coeliac (13 years ago, blood test, then endoscopy confirmation, followed up years later by another endoscopy to confirm inflammation of intestinal lining had gone) and gets violently ill when she accidentally (well meaning friends make dinner and forget an ingredient like Soy Sauce can be made with wheat) ingests gluten, I can tell you it's not a fad.

What you are seeing is an active medical community ensuring the testing is done to diagnose coeliac disease, rather than lumping people into the Irritable Bowel Syndrome group.

~1% of Australians are affected by coeliac disease.
 

driftking

Wheel size expert
Gluten intolerance seems to be the latest fad. No one had a problem with it.......then all of a sudden, everyone did. Quite a bizarre phenomenon.
1. Generation is changing over so inevitably there will be some correlation with generation and diesase.
2.diagnosis for everything has drastically improved as has our understanding of the gastronomic functioning and how it relates to conditions and symptoms.
3.there is also a anti gluten trend as a healthy diet even I'd you don't have issues, gluten seems to be marketed as bad these days well not bad but the amount of gluten free products end highlight for good reason has also simultaneous made people question if gluten is bad.
 
Top