Ep. 96: The Invisible Cost Of Gut Symptoms

How often do you say no to plans because you don’t know how your stomach will feel?
Have you ever checked a menu days in advance, chosen clothes based on bloating, or left an event early just so you could be comfortable?

Living with gut symptoms affects so much more than digestion. It quietly shapes your decisions, your energy, and how present you feel in your own life.

In this episode of Love Your Gut, I share my own story of navigating bloating and gut issues in my 20s, including how symptoms once dictated what I said yes to and no to. We talk about why gut symptoms steal mental space, why they often keep coming back, and what actually changes when digestion is supported at the root.

If your stomach has been running the show lately, this episode will help you understand why and how to take action so you no longer have to let your GI issues run the show!

Connect + Next Steps

Curious what’s actually driving your symptoms?
Take the free 2-minute Gut Root Cause Quiz

Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support?
Follow along on Instagram

Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan?
Apply for gutTogether®

Connect + Next Steps

Want daily education, stories, and gut-friendly support?
Follow along on Instagram

Ready for personalized 1:1 support and a clear plan?
Apply for gutTogether®

Exhausted, bloated and wondering why your ferritin won't budge, even while taking iron? Join me for a live training covering the exact reasons why you're stuck and how to improve your energy, hair loss, gut and ferritin.

Why Iron Isn’t Enough: The Truth About Low Ferritin

Sign up for the webinar here! (early bird pricing ends Feb 7th!)

Transcript

Dr. Heather Finley: 1:14

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.

2:05

Most people that have gut issues think that they're just about discomfort, but the real cost is the decisions that you stop making because of your gut issues. And I know this personally. So welcome to the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast. I am your host, Dr. Heather Finley. I'm so excited that you're here and this is a really important topic. In my early twenties when my GI issues were at their worst, my stomach dictated my life. I said no to plans all the time, not because I didn't wanna go, I did. In your early twenties, you should be saying yes to everything, to traveling, to being a bridesmaid in all the weddings. To going on dates, all the stuff, but I didn't know how my body or my gut would behave. I remember I tell this story a lot, but I remember uninviting, my now husband to events, even things like weddings as my plus one, not because of him. He's amazing but because I was so bloated and so uncomfortable and already exhausted. Honestly embarrassed about how I had to eat in social situations like that because the thought of sitting somewhere, feeling trapped, trying to pretend I was fine. Getting bloated, just wanting to go home after that is what gut symptoms do quietly. They don't just hurt you internally. They really shrink your world. You start planning your life around bathrooms. You check menus days in advance, and if plans change, God forbid last minute that your day. You choose clothes based on how much bloating they can hide. You leave events early or you're there physically, which is often what I would do. I would stick it out. I'm not a quitter for sure, but I would be there physically, but never fully relaxed. And maybe the biggest one is you're constantly scanning your body. Is my stomach okay? Can I eat this? What happens if I do? How long until I feel uncomfortable? That all takes energy. That's not. Just physical discomfort. It's mental bandwidth, it's safety, it's trust in your body. Most people don't realize how cluttered their mind is with food and symptoms until it's not anymore. I certainly didn't. I thought that all everybody thought like this and everyone was thinking about their food and body, and I remember so many instances of. Friends just like looking at the menu and ordering right away, or saying I'll just order what she has that sounds good. And not even like looking at what the ingredients were and thinking that would never be possible for me. So what's important to understand is that this constant vigilance doesn't just come from nowhere when your digestion feels unpredictable. Your nervous system stays alert when symptoms flare. Without warning, your body learns to brace itself. When you've been uncomfortable for long enough, your system starts to protect you in the way that it only knows how. So that protection shows up as tension, hyperawareness anxiety around eating social plans, and over time the stress response affects digestion. Stress will change how blood flow is distributed. It will affect stomach acid, enzyme output, gut motility. It even influences immune markers that we see on stool testing or functional stool testing like secretory IGA, which helps protects the gut lining and regulate bacteria Low. Secretory IGA is something that I often see low. In our clients, which is many of them who have been pushing through for years, they're busy, they're high functioning. Like I said earlier, they're not quitters. They are the most disciplined people that you know. They're doing everything they can to keep life moving forward while their body just quietly absorbs. The cost. Stress also depletes minerals. Minerals are required for nerve signaling, for muscle contraction, for digestion, even making enzymes and even contraction of your gut muscles to move things through your gut. So when your reserves run low, digestion will slow. Food will sit longer. Bloating will increase, tolerance decreases, and your system becomes even more sensitive, and that is why. So many people feel like they're walking on eggshells with their gut. Why food feels so risky, why symptoms keep returning. Even after trying supplements or protocols or different elimination strategies, your body hasn't had the chance to rebuild capacity, and when digestion isn't supported. Um, or when your digestion is supported, something really meaningful, shifts your food that you're eating, stops feeling like a threat. Your nervous system doesn't stay on high alert. You can stop thinking about bathrooms when you leave the house. You choose clothes because you like them not to hide symptoms. You stay at events because you're comfortable and to engage and enjoy them, and that mental space comes back. Even think of this from a career standpoint, I know I definitely did not have the bandwidth or the capacity to build this kind of business while I was stuck in my GI issues. And we see that with a lot of our clients. They're not gonna go for that promotion, they're not going to start the business. They're not gonna do the thing. Because they don't have that mental capacity there. And that's actually the freedom that I bet you're looking for. Not perfectionism, not control, not a life organized around avoiding symptoms. Just the ability to say yes again without negotiating with your gut first. So if your stomach is deciding. What you say yes to right now that really matters and it's something that can change when your body is supported in the right order. I believe that your gut should support your life, not shrink it. If you have ever thought, why does this keep happening to me? You are not alone. I know I had so many instances on my journey where I would just look at other people and think like, how on earth can they eat? Whatever they want. How on earth can they like go on a trip and not come back with debilitating GI issues or how on earth can they just like have zero routine and have no gut issues? And I often would just compare myself to other people and that was my first problem is what do they say? Comparison is a thief of joy for sure. We even find that with clients in our program where I'm like, stay. Focused on your own story. Just because someone is getting faster results than you or even slower results, then you need to focus on what you're doing and stop comparing yourself to other people. That's the biggest thing, but this can be one of the more discouraging parts of gut work. You can do the test. You can take supplements. You follow the plan. You're an organized person. You're a high achieving person. And maybe for a moment things feel better because you're following this rigid plan. Then slowly, or sometimes even suddenly, maybe there's a trigger, like a sickness or a travel or something. Your symptoms return. And we hear this all the time from clients like, I cleared sibo, but I'm still bloated, or My tests were all normal, but I don't feel better, which I'm gonna record a podcast episode on that because the other day on my Instagram stories, I was talking about the difference between conventional and functional testing and why. When your conventional tests are normal, functional tests are the next best steps. So, sneak peek there. That is, that episode is coming. Sometimes we'll hear I, it worked for weeks and then everything came back. So what's happening here? It's easy to think that this is failure. Like, see, that didn't work. Or see I'm back to square one, but it's just physiology and I wanna explain this to you so you can have a little bit more grace for yourself. A lot of gut work focuses on what's living in your gut instead of fully supporting how your gut functions day to day. So what does that actually mean? A lot of people will treat infections like h Pylori or SIBO or any kind of bacterial overgrowth, parasites, et cetera. Without actually restoring digestion, they'll calm their symptoms without rebuilding their whole digestive capacity. They'll cut out foods without giving the body what it actually needs to tolerate food again. And when the underlying terrain of your gut stays the same, of course the body returns to the same patterns. You can think about digestion. Like a system that's been running on backup power for a long time. You can remove a stressor. You can clear something temporarily, but if that system is under-resourced, it can't maintain that change. That is where we see a lot of well meaning practitioners and clients fall short. People will work on calming their nervous system through breath work or meditation or mindset work, but their body is physically depleted. Their minerals are low. Their motility is sluggish. Their stomach acid is non-existent or low. Their gut lining is torn apart or leaky as the internet calls it. Most people are trying to calm their nervous system while their body doesn't have the raw materials required for nervous system regulation. And the nervous system can only regulate to the level the body can support. You cannot regulate what you don't have the resources for. I don't know a better way to say that. I see people, and this is why we see people doing protocol after protocol. Without ever creating a sense of safety in the body, when digestion has felt unpredictable for years, your system will stay guarded. Food will feel risky, symptoms will feel personal. Your body feels braced, and that bracing will change your digestion. So even when a protocol works temporarily, the body will eventually just return to what it knows, because that's. Safe, even if it doesn't feel good. So this is why symptoms can feel stubborn or really confusing or really frustrating. It's not that nothing works, it's not anything like that. It's that you did things in the wrong order, or that there were perhaps missing pieces. When the order is off, the results won't stick. And there's one more thing I wanna talk about because I hear this constantly. It's, I wanna feel better, but I just don't have the time right now and I get it. Most people with gut issues are some of the busiest, high functioning people that I know. They're managing careers, families, school, travel responsibilities. You're already stretched, but here's what often gets missed. Being too busy usually isn't about the time. It's about your capacity. When your gut is under supported, everything takes more effort. Thinking about food takes effort, managing symptoms. Takes effort. Recovering from meals, takes effort. Recovering from stress takes effort. You get the point. So of course, it feels like there's no space to do anything else because your life revolves around your symptoms. So waiting for life to quote unquote slow down. Rarely works because life doesn't slow down on its own. What actually happens is that symptoms will just slowly take up more room. So you're planning more, you're avoiding more, you're thinking more, managing more, not going for that promotion, and that management becomes its own full-time job. This is why so many people don't start support until they hit a breaking point. Most of our clients come to us, don't be this person, and they're like, I am. So desperate. I literally can't function. I can't tell you how many clients we've had where they're like, I had to quit my job. I had to stop working. I had to take a step back. Not because they didn't care, but because they underestimated how much energy their symptoms were already consuming. So supporting digestion and getting relief from your digestive symptoms is not just another thing to add to your plate, it's actually giving your body enough support to stop. Taking so much from you. When your digestion is working better, and I'm just grouping this all as a whole, but like when you're less bloated, when you're less constipated, when your acid reflux is gone, et cetera, et cetera, all meals will take less mental energy. All symptoms will stop interrupting your day. Recovery will happen faster, decisions will feel easier. Time doesn't magically appear. It's your most invaluable resource. Your capacity has to match. That capacity really changes everything. Most people think they don't have the time to heal when in reality their symptoms are using all of it, and that's the part that people don't always expect. When digestion is supported in a way that restores function, the biggest change isn't always physical first. It's mental food stops feeling like a constant calculation. You're not scanning your body before, during, after meals. You can leave the house, you can travel. You can choose clothes because you like them, and the mental space coming back is often the first sign that your system is shifting. So physically things will be more predictable. Bloating can resolve or become easier to understand. Bowel movements will become more regular. Energy will improve because the body isn't constantly compensating or bracing itself. You have more margin and that margin is what creates freedom. Like I mentioned at the beginning, I would not have ever done this what I'm doing now, had this big business with a lot of stuff going on and been able to manage it as a mom of three if I did not also simultaneously support my health. Your freedom with your life doesn't come from tighter rules. It comes from capacity. Capacity to adapt, digest, tolerate stress, tolerate life. And that's where you start saying yes again, yes to all the stuff that you have wanted to stay yes to. While life feels. Bigger instead of smaller. And that's really what sustainable gut support looks like. Not endless protocols, not organizing your life around symptoms. Support that restores function so that your body can do what it was designed to do. So this was a shorter episode, but hopefully potent for you if you're feeling called out, if your gut is deciding what you say yes to right now, that is information. It's not something that you need to push through or ignore, and it's not something that requires more restriction. Your symptoms are asking for support. That is the work that we do inside of gut. Together we take that mental load away from you so that you can stop micromanaging your day-to-day. And so that we can help you get to a point where your digestion is restored. We're rebuilding capacity. We're creating enough support that life opens back up. You're more present with your kids. You actually apply for that job. You start that business. You go on that trip that you've always wanted to go. I'll never forget, we had a client, Louise, who came to us and she said, I just wanna go to Europe and I just wanna eat pizza with no symptoms. What did she do? She did exactly that. With no symptoms. We've had so many dieticians in our program that said, I want to start my own business and I know I can't until I feel better. And I take that as a huge compliment that another dietician or health professional would come to me and say like, I know that when I do this. Then I'll be able to start the business, do the thing. So if you want deeper support, you can apply for one-on-one support. I will say it's the beginning of the year. This is when everything gets crazy. So submit your application, the link is in the show notes, or continue listening to episodes where you're gonna get more information. But if you really wanna make a change, get the one-on-one support and get together. That is what we specialize in. That is what we're good at. And we get it. Your gut should support your life, not shrink your life. And when you give the body what it actually needs, that freedom will follow. So thanks so much for listening in today. I'll see you next week on the next episode of the Love Your Gut podcast.