Okay, does this ever happen to you guys?

I work late nights at a Hotel cocktail lounge and sometimes it just gets so insanely busy that there is NOOO time for a break. There's hardly any time to breathe let alone think about food. 

I'll get slammed for like 4 hours straight and then as soon as I have a second, I'll run to the guys at room service (they love me) and see if they can make me a salmon salad. Then I'll go back out to the floor and bust my ass for another 15 minutes then I'll run and get my food and bring it back up stairs with me where I try to grab a bite ( or 5) of it in between all the other shit I'm doing.  

I get a 5 star meal packed with the best protein, the best veggies, butter lettuce, goat cheese and a lemon vinaigrette and eat it like a starved dog without any recollection of how it smelled or tasted. (Sometimes if I'm feeling really slutty I'll throw in a pretzel roll with basically a stick of butter and just die and go to my own little heaven for a second). 

I hardly (aka NEVER) feel satisfied after eating like this and then THE WORST PART, I go home two hours later with a fucking food baby the size of a football and just wonder to myself...

HOW THE EF, am I so bloated?!?!

I probably just walked 10,000 steps, I haven't sat down in at least 6 hours and I ate a SALMON SALAD Jesus Christ I just CANNOT. 

SO. with me going back to school and all to be a health coach (holla at me ;) ) I'm learning A LOT. There is so much info that I can't wait to share with you guys but for today, we're talking allll about this eating healthy, staying active, and still getting bloated situation, because it's pretty effing annoying. 

Here's the main thing that we are all doing wrong and some tips on how to fix the problem, for good. 

EATING UNDER STRESS

The number one, worst thing you can possibly do if you are trying to avoid getting bloated. When we are stressed our brain can't differentiate from 'real life about to be swallowed by a shark' stress versus 'short staffed hectic night at work' stress. 

All it knows is that it is in a fight or flight mode. So when it comes to stress and our digestion, there's a few things that happen here. 

First, our blood leaves our stomach and get's pumped to our arms and legs (essentially, to run if we need to) and causes our body to NOT try and focus on digesting ANYTHING. It's only thought is to RUN. Nothing else. 

So our nervous system turns our stress on, and our digestion OFF. 

So right off the bat we know that if we want to digest anything we need to be relaxed. A good analogy for this is basically any other culture other than Americans haha. 

This shows that WHAT we eat is actually just 1/2 of the equation. HOW we eat is the other half. 

I even decided to test this out the other night after learning all of this amazing information. I was at work, hungry, but not busy. I decided to go grab a pretzel roll with butter and a salmon salad just to have something to munch on and I ate it over the course of about 30 minutes. 

I didn't get bloated, i felt satisfied and I didn't even feel too full. I FELT AMAZING. 

So the question that we all need to focus on is HOW do we focus more on staying in a calm state while we eat so that we don't overeat, become bloated, and cause in digestion?

Try these 6 tips next time you sit down for a meal and see how it QUICKLY helps you and makes you more aware of how you really feel. 

1. HAVE A 20 MINUTE MEAL.

Okay NO MATTER WHAT, from here on out, I want every meal you have to take 20 minutes. Next time you eat something, just turn the timer on on your phone, eat normally, and turn the timer off when you're finished. 

You might be SHOCKED with how quickly you we're able to put down a meal haha, I usually hover around 10 minutes.

Next time you eat try to just make sure that you add 5 minutes to your eating time. Do this until you've hit 20 minutes and then repeat that for 7 days and notice how different you feel. 

When we eat too quickly, we don't give our brain and our stomach enough time to make the connection that we are eating. So we stuff our faces with all this food and then BAM. ALL OF THE SUDDEN our brain realizes what is going on and tells us to STOPPPPP. 

At this point we've already over indulged and if we're in a stressful environment or ate while we were internally stressed, then alll that food is going to sit there until your body feels like it is safe. THEN it will start the digestion process. 

If we eat slowly over a period of 20 minutes, we will be able to properly work with our body and allow it to signal us if we are full or not. 

2. PUT UTENSIL DOWN 3 TIMES DURING A MEAL

This will help you hit your 20 minute mark. Have a few bites and then set your fork DOWN. JUST CHILL the ef out for a second, okay?! Make this your goal, maybe even make it 5 times! This will help you to eat less instead of having one bite in your throat with another bite in your mouth and another bite on your fork. 

3. BREATHE BETWEEN BITES

Okay, this is interesting. Oxygen helps to speed up the metabolism. I know this makes sense because when I work out, I'm hungrier throughout the day and I usually always go to the bathroom more regularly when I work out. Just FYI. 

There's actually something called Villi (Pronounced VEAL) in our intestines that's PRIMARY job is to absorb nutrients and it does this by extracting large quantities of oxygen to break down a meal. 

• When the blood lacks oxygen for the villi to pick up, the nutrient absorption decreases. 
• When the blood has plenty of oxygen, the nutrient absorption increases. 

SO BREATHE in between your bites. This is basically the OPPOSITE of what I would do while I was stuffing my face with salmon behind a wall at work so, I'm working on this too haha. 

4. CHEW YOUR FOOD AND EAT WITH YOUR SENSES. 

Did you know that your digestive process actually begins in your mouth? Your mouth starts releasing enzymes that break down your food which is why REALLY chewing each bite and USING your sense of taste and smell is so important. 

When food is inadequately broken down, it can easily pass through your GI tract without absorbing the appropriate nutrients. 

ALSO did you know, there's actually a muscle at the base of your stomach that CONTROLS the passage of food into your small intestine. You know how we relax that muscle? SIMPLY CHEWING. So just chew that ish. 

5. EAT UNTIL SATISFIED, NOT FULL.

Why the hell do we eat until we're too full anyways when we KNOW we HATE the way it makes us feel? Well one, it's a habit. And because it's likely that throughout the day or the week, we are constantly depriving, denying, disconnecting and dieting. 

Once you start the "20 minute meal" like we mentioned above, you'll notice at a certain point that you actually are satisfied and you'll probably start moving away from getting SO full. 

Next time you go out to eat with friends, play the "slowest eater" game with yourself. 

Just be the last one to finish your plate and I bet that 1. you'll notice how FAST everyone around you eats, and you'll notice that as the dinner goes on, you won't finish your food or you'll realize you weren't quite as hungry as you thought you were. 

Keep me updated on how you feel after trying 1 or all of these tips!!

XX