Ever wondered why some foods don’t agree with you?

We often get questions from our BUF Girls in regards to digestion and the discomfort that can sometimes stem from over indulging or even reactions to specific foods. So today we’ve called in the big guns and asked Eat Fit Food‘s expert Dietician and Nutritionist, Jaime Rose Chambers, to answer some of those mystifying questions.

Here’s what she had to say…

You may have noticed that after a cleanse or a good clean up of your diet that you feel AMAZING! With clearer skin, a flatter tummy, better digestion, more energy and a sparkle in your eyes. So why don’t we feel like this all the time? Inevitably after a cleanse we return back to our usual diet and many of these incredible benefits disappear and it’s back to feeling bloated and sluggish again. So how do you find out which foods or way of eating are making you feel so terrible? Because after all, there’s no reason you shouldn’t feel AMAZING, all the time, right!?

I’ve put together a list for you of potential food issues and ways of eating in our regular diets that can upset digestion, as well as some strategies to improve them:

Food intolerance 

A food intolerance is due to the inability to digest some foods, which can cause gas, bloating and erratic bowels. Common problem foods are some fruits and vegetables, wheat, lactose and artificial sweeteners. Food intolerances can come on at any time in your life but are often following a change in diet, dose of antibiotics or after some form of gut trauma or infection.

Solution: A low FODMAP diet can uncover any foods that you’re not digesting properly. It can be confusing so it’s best to do a properly structured low FODMAP diet with a Dietitian. This will uncover exactly which foods are causing you grief.

Food Chemical Sensitivity

Food chemicals are found naturally or are added chemicals in food, the most common being salicylates, amines and glutamates. In sensitive people, they can build up in our system and irritate the nerve endings around the mouth, skin and in the gut causing tummy pain, nausea, headaches and irritable bowel. Sensitive people are usually born with a lower tolerance to these chemicals but can also come on after a change in diet, drug reaction or a virus.

Solution: Food chemical reactions often only occur if you overdo a particular problem food. So simply avoiding bingeing on those foods can keep symptoms at bay. However, if you’re just not sure what foods are a problem or if symptoms have a cumulative effect and develop over time, following a low food chemical diet for about a month can help to reduce the chemical levels in the body and the symptoms that go along with it before challenging different food groups to find the culprit. A Dietitian can put together a comprehensive food chemical elimination diet plan for you.

Food allergy

A food allergy is uncommon to develop as an adult but not impossible. Food allergies involve the body’s immune system and can cause stomach pain, nausea and erratic bowels as well as eczema, hives and red swelling around the face and in the most severe cases, anaphylaxis. The most common food allergens for adults are shellfish, fish, peanuts and tree nuts.

Solution: Most adults typically know what they’re allergic to because they get an almost immediate reaction to the problem food. Your GP can test you for these allergens with a simple blood or prick test.

Coeliac Disease

Coeliac disease is an auto-immune, allergic reaction to gluten. The body mistakes gluten as foreign and begins to attack the small intestine, flattening the finger-like projections called villi that absorb the nutrients in our diet. The long-term consequences therefore are severe nutrient deficiencies. Many cleanse programs eliminate gluten for a period of time and we often feel fantastic after this. However you can have an intolerance to gluten where you can get away with eating small amounts of it, but coeliac disease requires strictly avoiding any trace of gluten for life.

Solution: Coeliac disease can be diagnosed through a simple blood test, which can detect raised anti-bodies in the blood as well as the gene susceptible for coeliac disease. If that is positive, the final ‘gold standard’ test is an endoscopy and biopsy of the small bowel. You MUST however continue to eat gluten throughout this process, otherwise the reaction cannot be detected.

Portion size

Cleanse meals, particularly Eat Fit Food’s Cleanse is specifically structured in it’s portion sizes of meals and snacks so you never feel overstuffed. Once we go back to our usual diets though, it’s really easy to go back for seconds or start using our huge plates and bowls again and overdo the portions.

Solution: Keep some of the containers from your Cleanse and serve or measure your meals from them to keep portions just right.

Too much of the good stuff

Overdo it on some nutrients and it might just make you feel pretty uncomfortable. Some typical offenders are:

• Fibre – we need fibre, quite a lot of it actually but go overboard too quickly and you’ll really feel it, commonly causing a very bloated and uncomfortable belly
• Fat – although healthy fats are incredibly good for us, sometimes if you’re not used to digesting rich, fatty food, it can wreak havoc on your bowels
• Sugar – refined sugars in large doses can cause a rush of fluid into the bowels causing loose stools or diarrhoea.

Solution: Ease fibre into your diet slowly to allow your bowels to get used to the extra roughage. Go easy and have fat and sugar in moderation, not only to avoid the uncomfortable side effects but because it’s easier to manage your weight as these foods are very dense in calories.

Erratic carb intake

Carbohydrates single-handedly regulate our blood sugar levels. Therefore the type and quantity we have determines whether our energy bubbles along happily all day or we spike and crash. Cleanse programs contain good quality carbohydrates in the perfect quantities distributed over the day, but return back to real life and this often means Turkish toast on the go, white burger buns and pizza causing erratic energy levels and erratic bowel function.

Solution: Plan your meals and snacks so that as many of them as possible come from home so you can control what you’re eating. Choose good quality carbs like whole grains, sweet potato, whole fruit or plain dairy in EVERY meal and snack and eat every 2-4 hours to regulate your blood sugar levels.

Clean through the week and a blow out on weekends

Many people are highly regulated during the week and feel wonderful by Friday, then completely blow it on the weekends. If it’s a big enough blowout, it can take all week to crawl your way back to normality, only to do it all over again.

Solution: Enjoy yourself but don’t overdo the weekends. Plan the nights you want to drink and decide how much you’re going to have and what you’re going to drink. Allow yourself a meal where you have what you want but try to balance it with some healthy foods too – for example, enjoy a few pieces of pizza with a salad side. Aim for there to be just the one ‘treat food’ per meal as well so it’s easier for your gut to process, so if you go for pizza, don’t have the gelato as well.

More booze than you realised

Alcohol affects our sleep quality and can upset our bowels and make us feel very sluggish so when it returns to the diet, we often return to feeling pretty rubbish as well.

Solution: Monitor your alcohol intake; keep a journal or go out with a plan as to what and how much you’re going to drink. The recommendations are 1-2 standard drinks on just three days per week.

Slack with the exercise

Exercise is well known for its benefits from helping us to sleep better to boosting our mood and helping with digestion.

Solution: Revamp your exercise program. Find a regime that is something you feel you can do forever that works into your lifestyle. A combination of both general activity as well as some structured exercise is ideal. Check out the amazing range of BUF Girls online programs to help you out.

Exclusive Offer from Eat Fit Food for our Sydney & Melbourne BUF Girls!

To read more great articles by Jaime Rose Chambers check out her website here!