Ep. 67: Bloated? What the Timing of Your Bloating is Trying to Tell You About Your Gut

Ever feel like your bloating has no rhyme or reason?

One day you're fine... the next you wake up feeling like a human balloon — before you’ve even had breakfast.

In this episode, I’m breaking down one of the most overlooked clues when it comes to gut symptoms: WHEN your bloating happens.

Because the timing of your bloat?

 It’s like your gut’s secret language — telling you exactly where things might be going wrong.

We’ll cover: 

→ What it means if you wake up bloated

→ Why you’re bloated after meals (especially protein-heavy ones)

→ The classic “6 months pregnant by bedtime” bloat

→ And yes — even why drinking water might make you bloated

PLUS — I’ll walk you through what to do about each pattern, when testing (like HTMA or GI Map) is actually helpful, and the simple foundational steps you have to take before jumping to lab work.

Bloating should not be your normal — and this episode will help you start uncovering why it’s happening in the first place.

Links & Resources:

→ Ready to get to the root of your bloating for good? Apply for gutTogether® here: www.guttogetherprogram.com

→ Grab my favorite electrolytes from LMNT and get a free sample pack with any order: drheatherfinley.co/lmnt

→ Follow me on Instagram: @drheatherfinley

→ Purchase the adrenal cocktail (use code HEATHER10 for discount) 

Transcript

Dr. Heather Finley: 0:03

Welcome to the Love Your Gut Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Heather Finley, registered dietitian and gut health specialist. I understand the frustration of dealing with GI issues because I've been there and I spent over two decades searching for answers for my own gut issues of constipation, bloating, and stomach pain. I've dedicated my life to understanding and solving my own gut issues. And now I'm here to guide you. On this podcast, I'll help you identify the true root causes of your discomfort. So you can finally ditch your symptoms for good. My goal is to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need so that you can love your gut and it will love you right back. So if you're ready to learn a lot, gain a deeper understanding of your gut and find lasting relief. You are in the right place. Welcome to the love your gut podcast. Hey friends. Welcome back to the Love Your podcast. So excited to be here with you today. And we have a big lineup of things to talk about. Probably the most frustrating thing that many clients come to us with, and probably the most frustrating thing on your journey, which is bloat. And if you've experienced bloating before, you know that it's. It can be extremely uncomfortable. It can be extremely unpredictable and all the things in between. And so today we're gonna chat about what the timing of your bloating tells us about the root causes of your bloating. So waking up more bloated than when you went to bed. Et cetera, et cetera. I know when I was on my own gut health journey, I would wake up bloated and I'm like, how does that even happen? I haven't eaten anything in like 10 to 12 hours. It on. Its honestly just felt like some kind of betrayal and it's wild that it didn't actually start that way for me in the beginning, my bloating was more of just kind of this classic pattern of like, I'd wake up with kind of a flat stomach. Then by the end of the day, six months pregnant. So naturally, my brilliant plan was that I just needed to not eat or put off eating as pos as long as possible because my brain equated food to bloating. But spoiler alert. Skipping meals under eating and walking around, basically starving all morning. Definitely did not help my gut in the long run and led to lots of overeating later. Then it got weirder. I started bloating after even just drinking water like. Sips of water. And that's when I knew, okay, this is not just a food thing. There's got to be something else going on in my gut environment. So we've been trained, I think, in wellness culture to just always ask what food made me bloated. And I'm not here to tell you that no food's gonna bloat you'cause that's incorrect as well. If you eat a very large plate of broccoli or cruciferous vegetables, you're gonna get bloated. And that I would say, is a normal experience. But bloating should be a very occasional exception, like if you ate a plate of broccoli or something. So. I wanna talk about how we can help you identify some of the causes of bloating. Oftentimes we're thinking what food caused our bloat. Uh, but the better question and the more helpful question is actually. When does my bloating happen? Because the timing of your bloating, that is your gut trying to tell you exactly what's going on underneath the surface. And when we work with clients, and even if you're a podcast listener, you know that our number one goal is to identify the real root of your problem. Because if we know what the root of the problem is, we can actually fix it. So today we're going full detective mode. I'm gonna break down the common patterns of bloating. What the timing of your symptoms might be trying to tell you. We're gonna talk about waking up bloated bloat. That's an hour or two after meals, feeling fine, but progressively more bloated and pregnant feeling by the end of the day, or bloating after drinking water. I see you and I've been you because I've experienced. All of these types of bloating before. So we're uncovering what these patterns mean and why they happen, and most importantly, what you can do about it. So I also wanna dig into when it might be worth it to do testing. Based on your bloat pattern and what test versus when you probably don't need a test right away. So let's go ahead and just dive right in and we're gonna chat about bloating right when you wake up. So that one can be really confusing because you're thinking, I just slept. I haven't eaten anything. Why am I so bloated? This is probably the one that makes people feel the most crazy because it's. Like I didn't even eat. How is it possible? But bloating first thing in the morning is actually one of the biggest clues that what we have is not just about food. This is more about your gut motility, your minerals, and your nervous system. So what this usually means when you wake up bloated, this is often a sign of slow gut motility, possible stress impacting digestion, or just lack of quality sleep. Potentially mineral depletion as well. And honestly, it's probably a combination of two or three of these working together. So this typically happens because of motility and vagus nerve issues. So your vagus nerve is like this highway between your gut and your brain, and it tells your digestive system, Hey. It's safe, let's move things along. But when you are chronically stressed, go, go, go. In this fight or flight, your nervous system's stuck there. Your vagus nerve isn't doing a job very well. So the translation to that is things slow down, digestion slows, motility, slows. Your gut isn't clearing out the way that it should overnight. The second piece is dehydration and minerals. So a lot of people will wake up, they will chug plain water and wonder why they still. Feel super puffy, bloated, or actually more dehydrated. And here's the deal. Water alone does not hydrate you very well, especially if your mineral levels are depleted, and especially if you are filtering your water. Filtering your water is always a good idea. But when you filter your water, you also are filtering out the good stuff. So you have to make sure, even if you're just adding like trace mineral drops back, you wanna make sure you're adding your minerals back. And so we wanna think about minerals like these little spark plugs that actually help water to get into your cells. And without minerals, you're basically pouring water into a leaky bucket. The third piece of this is motility in your sleep, so people don't realize, but your gut is supposed to be moving overnight too. So your rest and digest system is what controls your gut's ability to clear out waste and move things along while you sleep. So if your motility is sluggish, maybe you're not pooping every day, or maybe you feel really backed up, you can absolutely wake up bloated, inflamed, and puffy. You can add things in here like SIBO or intestinal anogen overgrowth, and that's just gas, like building up overnight with nowhere to go. So here's how to know if this is you. You wake up bloated before eating. You're constipated or irregular, even if you have loose stools, by the way, you can still be constipated. You might feel puffy, inflamed, or swollen in the morning. Your bloating might slightly improve after a bowel movement, but maybe not fully gone, especially if you don't feel relieved after you go to the bathroom like that. There's possibly more. And maybe your digestion still feels slow. So if you're resonating with any of this, here is what we can do about it. Number one, hydrate. First thing in the morning. This can be as simple as an adrenal cocktail or even just a pinch of good quality sea salt in your morning water. I will put the link in the show notes to the adrenal cocktail that is like pre-made warning. It doesn't have a taste. Or actually it does have a taste, but it's not a lemon flavor, it's just like the powder. And so sometimes our clients will say, oh, this does not taste good. But if it's gonna help hydrate you, it's worth it. So just put a scoop of that, or a pinch of sea salt in your water in the morning. This can help hydrate you and make a big difference. You wanna support your vagus nerve as well. So humming, gargling, singing in the shower, cold exposure. All these things might seem super weird and how would they affect digestion, but they're gonna activate your vagus nerve, which is gonna support your gut motility. You also want to establish a morning bowel routine. And the common objection that we get to this from our clients is don't have time. But the thing is we have to make time for what's important, right? And your gut loves rhythm and routine. This does not have to be an eight hour morning routine. It can take five minutes, but I want you to try to go to the bathroom around the same time. Think about this though. If you are rushed every morning, you wake up late, you snooze your alarm, you're eating on the go. Why would your body wanna have a bowel movement? There's no time. So sometimes it's about creating time, even if you feel like you don't have it. I get it. I have three kids. Our mornings are not necessarily relaxing, so I totally get it. Try to find a morning routine that's gonna work for you which could just entail trying to go and sit on the toilet at the same time every day. Relax, take some moo breaths. You can look that up on YouTube. Moo breathing is really helpful. I. Let your body know it's safe to go and then support your motility throughout the day as well. Take bitters before meals. Ginger tea is great. Magnesium citrate can be awesome if you are constipated. Not too much obviously,'cause it can swing the other way. Walking after meals and then of course, like balancing your minerals. So if this pattern sounds like you're, you, here is where testing can help. I think that if, if this is what you're struggling with, HTMA testing can be really helpful because this is usually where we're gonna start because mineral depletion is such a common thread here. A lot of people stuck in this morning bloat cycle are stressed, they're not sleeping well. They're probably the like type A overachiever go, go, go type of person and not pooping daily. So HTMA will give us a window into your stress pattern, your nervous system, mineral status, all of which impact digestion directly. And then you could do stool testing as well. Love this test. If we're seeing sluggish motility and you possibly have a history of SIBO or long-term constipation, it can give us just a peek at your bacteria, how your digesting food, gut inflammation, your gut immune system, et cetera. Okay, next up, what does it mean if you don't wake up bloated, but the bloat hits hard an hour or two after you eat? So that's what we're gonna get into next. This would be. The person that feels fine. When you wake up, you probably wake up not feeling bloated. Then you eat breakfast and within an hour or two you start getting bloated, if that sounds familiar. This is kind of that post meal bloating. It usually tells me there's something going on with how well or not well, you are actually breaking down your food, so when bloating hits about an hour or two after eating, this is always. Almost a sign of low stomach acid, poor enzyme output, or you're just not breaking down your food properly. There could be liver, gallbladder components here, especially if you don't have a gallbladder or you have sluggish gallbladder symptoms. So this could be because your digestion is under supported, or it could also be linked to things like h pylori. Which is a common bacterial infection that suppresses stomach acid. So this happens because when stomach acid is a low, which you're probably thinking don't, most people have high stomach acid. The answer to that is no. A lot of our clients think they have too much stomach acid, even if they have reflux, and it's actually low. So if your stomach acid is low, food will sit in your stomach longer than it should, and instead of getting churned up and broken down like it's supposed to, it just kind of hangs out. And when food finally moves downstream into your small intestine, it's just not ready. So that's when fermentation kicks in. You get bloating, you get gas, you get discomfort. Stress is also a major player here, so remember that digestion is a parasympathetic a k, a rest and digest activity. So if you're scarfing down your meals in five minutes while answering emails and feeding your kids and scrolling Instagram. Watching true crime, whatever it is, sitting in traffic, your body is not prioritizing stomach acid production and enzyme release because it doesn't know the difference between a chaotic meal or being chased by a bear. So let's be real. Most of us eat in a very stressed state without even realizing it. I've mentioned this on podcasts before, but if you have kids and you're thinking, LOL, there is no way that I'm gonna be able to eat dinner without stress. I'm right there with you. One of the best things that you can do is get your kids involved. So we love having our kids. Lead the breathing exercises before dinner. We'll have somebody say a prayer and then someone else will lead the breathing exercises. And as silly as that sounds, they now like, look forward to it. It's our pre-meal ritual. My in-laws will even do it when they come over. So. Get everybody involved, and it just becomes a part of the routine. And even if everything goes haywire after that, at least you've got your body in a state of rest and digest for a minute and helped your digestion. Sometimes this pattern also happens because you're eating too fast or not chewing well enough. Digestion starts in your mouth. So if you're inhaling your food, you're making stomach acid work over time, so you wanna slow down. So kind of a recap, how to know if this is you. Bloating one to two hours after meals. You might feel heaviness, fullness, pressure in the upper belly or under your ribs. You might feel super full after just normal sized meals due to low stomach acid and just slow motility. You might be burping a lot. You might feel full, but still hungry if you're thinking. How is that possible if you've experienced it? You know what I'm talking about? You might even see undigested food in your stool, especially like vegetable fibers or grains. You might have reflux or heartburn symptoms that can be pretty common here too. And then if h pylori is involved, you might feel nauseous or you might have bad breath. So here's what you can do about it. Slow down. I mentioned this earlier, but chew your food until it's basically mush before swallowing. I know that sounds so simple, but most people are wildly under chewing. They take like three chews and then they swallow. I'm guilty of this as well. We all are. So slow down. Add some bitter foods or digestive bitters to your meals. So think like arugula, radish, ginger, lemon, liquid bitters can be helpful as well. This is gonna help to stimulate stomach acid and overall digestion. You may want to support your stomach acid with enzymes depending on your situation. I would always recommend working with a practitioner for this because this could look like a lot of different things. Digestive Bitters, HCL, digestive enzymes. These are tools, not forever solutions, so you'd wanna make sure you're taking the right thing for you. And then lastly, eat in a relaxed state. So take three to five deep breaths. Put your phone down. This truly matters. It might be helpful to test the GI map can be more helpful in this case when we can see things like h pylori infections, we can actually see your pancreatic output. We can look at other digestive related imbalances as well. The HTMA is gonna be helpful. Minerals like potassium, sodium, zinc are critical for stomach acid production. And low potassium is just one of those sneaky signs that we see all the time on HTMA that can directly impact your ability to break down food. This is also where mineral depletion ties into why digestion is struggling in the first place. So we've covered bloating, waking up, bloated, bloating after meals, but if your pattern is totally fine in the morning and then progressively more bloated as the day goes on until you feel like you need maternity leggings by dinner time. That is our next pattern, and it tells us something actually totally different. Before we move on to that end of day bloating pattern, we have to continue talking about minerals because I know some of you are listening to this like, okay, how they're cool. I'll support my digestion. I'll support my stomach acid, but I'm also drinking a gallon of plain water a day. I still feel bloated, tired. Nothing's improving, and I totally get it because I used to feel that way too. But the thing is, hydration is not about water. You need minerals. Like sodium, potassium, magnesium to actually absorb and use that water inside your cells. That is why I am a huge fan of Element T or Element. It is an electrolyte drink that makes it really easy to get those minerals in without a ton of sugar or weird ingredients. So if I am not taking my custom mineral blend, I love starting my morning with Element T. Especially on days when I wake up feeling puffy or sluggish or I just know I didn't sleep well. Which can happen quite a bit right now, having three kids and a baby. So right now Element is giving my podcast listeners a free sample pack with any purchase so you can try all the flavors and find your favorite, which is great. My current go-to. Is the raspberry salt. I love drinking this one with some sparkling water and a little bit of lime juice as a little mocktail, especially in the afternoon. I also love the chocolate salt in warm water at the end of the day as like a little hot chocolate. Sometimes I'll put it in iced coffee as well. Just sprinkle a little bit of it in my iced coffee and it takes super good. So you just have to trust me on that one. If you want to try Element Tea, you can go to Dr. Heather finley.co/lt and I'll drop that link in the show notes too. All right, next up is probably the most common bloating pattern I see in clients. This is you wake up feeling pretty good. The day goes on, the bloat just keeps building and building, and by dinner you're Googling our maternity leggings. Socially acceptable for non-pregnant women. Trust me, I have been there and so many of our clients have, we have had several clients that tell me, I have my morning pants and I have my afternoon pants. And as sad as that sounds, it's the reality of really terrible progressive bloat. So this progressive bloat usually means a sign of dysbiosis in the gut. So. An imbalance of gut bacteria. It can also indicate sluggish, motility, or intestinal permeability as well. What many people know as quote unquote leaky gut. And honestly, blood sugar issues and stress can layer on top of all of this. This can be referred to as like the stress layer cake, so adding more stress to your body, whether it's. Actual stress from like your job or whatever it might be, or just all these things adding stress to your body, blood sugar issues, dysbiosis, et cetera. So this happens because throughout the day, everything you eat is feeding your gut bacteria, which is not a bad thing. We do want that. But if bacterial balance is off, especially in your large intestine or small intestine as well, or your gut motility is slow, you are going to get a big buildup of fermentation, which equals gas, which equals bloating, and before you automatically think sibo, remember this pattern doesn't always mean bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine. Dysbiosis can also happen anywhere, in the gut, so it can be in the large intestine too. Like I said earlier, blood sugar swings will also play a big role here. So if you're skipping meals and you're undereating throughout the day, or you're loading up on fiber into one giant smoothie or salad, your digestion might be getting overwhelmed later on. Fiber is awesome. Most people need more fiber. But more is not always more. Your gut likes it spread throughout the day, not one, just gigantic fiber bomb at lunch. So how to know if this is you. You might have a flat or normal stomach in the morning. You might feel more, more bloated with carbs or fiber or larger meals. You might have bloating or gassiness that increases as the day goes on. You might have that six months pregnant by bedtime. Look, sometimes needing to unbutton your pants. We've all been there. So here's what you can do about it. Number one, focused on balanced meals. Make sure you're getting protein, fat, fiber, and color. That's what we teach our clients, PFFC, at every meal. To stabilize blood sugar, you can walk after meals. This is one of the easiest ways that you can support motility and reduce bloating. You can consider using things like bitters, ginger, tea, magnesium at night if your motility is sluggish. You can watch your fiber timing, so do not o overload all your fiber into one meal and spread it out, and then support your nervous system throughout the day, not just at bedtime. These would be some baseline things that you would want to do, and then of course, you can get into the weeds with actually rebalancing gut bacteria, et cetera. But you really wouldn't wanna do that without testing. I don't wanna bomb your gut with antimicrobials or various probiotics without actually knowing if you need it. We have so many clients that go to their doctor. And they're told, oh, you just have sibo. And they take antibiotics and they feel better, and then their symptoms come right back because they didn't actually have sibo, they had other stuff going on in their large intestine that needed to be addressed as well. So this is where the GI map can actually be really helpful. It's a great test to just see bacterial patterns, inflammation, enzyme output that could be. Causing some of this. You can also look into an HTMA if you're seeing a lot of stress patterns for lows, patterns, chronic undereating history, and just depletion that's slowing down digestion. Alright, last and probably the most shocking bloating pattern of all is when water bloats you. So let's talk about it. This feels personal because when it started happening to me, I was like, great, what am I supposed to do now? My body isn't even tolerating water. Um, I promise you are not broken. It's just information every time you're having symptoms. As frustrating as they might be, it's just your body giving you information and so you can either push against that information or you can lean into. What information is this communicating to me and how am I going to address it? So this can happen from histamine issues, electrolyte imbalances, intestinal permeability, or otherwise known as leaky gut. And then surprise, surprise, stress definitely plays a role here as well. So histamine intolerance can be a part of this because your body can react to all sorts of things. Um, histamine related wine, fermented foods, and even plain water if your gut lining is irritated or inflamed. Electrolyte imbalances is another huge one. If you're drinking tons of plain water, like I mentioned earlier, but you're not replacing your minerals, you're just diluting your electrolytes even more. And this can definitely impact bloat and swelling. And then if you do have intestinal permeability, which likely, if you were listening to this podcast, you have some level of it. This is like an inflamed gut lining that's just extra sensitive to anything coming through. If you're bloated after plain water, if you're worse after fermented foods like wine, bone broth, leftovers, if you have other histamine symptoms like itching or flushing or runny nose or headaches, and then if you feel better with electrolytes or mineral rich drinks, which most people do. Then that could be a sign that you know that these things could possibly be at play for you. So what to do about it? Add minerals to your water, even if it's just a pinch of sea salt, like Celtic salt in the morning. Experiment with natural antihistamines like nettles, tea nettles are super mineral rich, so this is really just a win-win overall. Nettles is a great option. To either drink hot, you can cold brew it however you like it. You can support your gut lining with things like immunoglobulins, collagen, glutamine would definitely recommend working with the practitioner to figure out what's gonna be best for you. You can focus on meal hygiene, so of course nobody is not gonna benefit from this. Slowing down, chewing, eating in a relaxed state. And then again, stress management really is everything because of the connection between the gut and the brain, rest and digest, et cetera. So when it comes to testing, you know, a lot of the tests that I've mentioned can be really helpful. If this is the case, if your body is just so reactive, a GI map is gonna look at inflammation markers like calprotectin. It's gonna look at Secretary iga, which gives us clues about your gut immune system. It will also look at some. Other immune related markers and some histamine related markers. So there's a marker on here called eosinophil activation protein, and then an HTMA as well can look at electrolyte balance and mineral ratios and stress patterns. So now that we've covered. All these patterns of bloating and what they mean. The biggest question I always get is when should I test and when can I just focus on the foundations without starting with labs? So that's what I wanna end this episode with. And after hearing all these different bloating patterns, you might be wondering, do I need testing or can I fix this on my own? And that's honestly such a good question because I do think that some people jump to testing way too soon. Or you go to a provider and they don't even get you on some foundational support before all of a sudden you're jumping right into like a SIBO protocol. And so that's where. I would say you probably don't need testing or a fancy protocol if you haven't worked on foundations. If you aren't balancing your blood sugar or eating enough and eating regularly, if you're not supporting your sleep, none of this has to be perfect. But if you're not making an effort to get good sleep, if you're not managing your stress, if you are not slowing down at meals and chewing your food. And then if you're not supporting your minerals or just digestion and motility, with some of the more, just natural ways then. I wouldn't jump straight into testing unless you were solely just gonna do a mineral test, because the testing might just show you what you already know, that your gut is a little stressed, and that you need to work on foundations. And I, I say that with love. If you've had no major gut trauma, like antibiotic use or long-term birth control, or a mold exposure or sibo. And you haven't worked on the basics. I would always start with foundations. We always explain it to our clients, like building a house. We, of course, get really excited about the fancy wallpaper that we're gonna put up, but if you haven't poured the foundation, then you're never gonna be able to put the wallpaper up. And so we have to think of some of these foundations just like that. But testing really can save you time. If you've worked on all these things, you're eating enough, you've got minerals on board, you're managing stress as best as you can, and you're still bloated all the time. Maybe there's literally no pattern to your bloating. It's random, it's severe, it's confusing. This is when testing can be a game changer, especially if you have a history of antibiotic use, birth control for years, sibo, anogen overgrowth, gut trauma, head injury, or restrictive dieting that could have altered your gut environment. Testing can really help us. Give, give us the roadmap to figure out what's really going on. So the two or three tests that I think can be helpful, which is gonna vary by the individual on order and you know which tests, but I. HTMA is where we almost always start because minerals are really just foundational to every system in the body, and especially if you're having really severe motility issues. And a lot of the stuff that I talked about in this episode, then it's gonna tell us a lot about your stress patterns, how well your nervous system is functioning, all of which impact digestion and motility. The GI Map can be great to layer onto that because it will tell us about bacterial imbalances, pathogens, h pylori, how you're digesting food. So this can be a go-to. And then sometimes you just need some basic blood work as well. So looking at Iron labs, because low iron will also slow gut motility, thyroid labs because your thyroid is directly connected to gut function. So this can be helpful depending on your. Particular case. All right. Here's what I want you to remember from today. Bloating is a symptom, not the problem. Your body is not trying to annoy you or sabotage you. It is trying to tell you something. And once you learn how to listen, whether that's noticing when you're bloating shows up, supporting your digestion, or just deeper with testing, things can change. Bloating should be the exception, not your everyday experience, and that's 100%. Possible. So if this episode was helpful, I would love for you to screenshot it, share it to your stories, and tag me. I love seeing what's resonating with you and chatting with you over on Instagram. And then if you are ready to skip the guessing game and just get to the bottom of your bloating once and for all, that is exactly what we do inside gut. Together we combine testing like HTMA and GI Map with one-on-one coaching and protocols to help you really, truly address this without obsessing over every bite of food. So you can learn more and apply@gottogetherprogram.com. I will link that in the show notes as well. But thanks for hanging out with me today. I will see you on the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.