No matter how well you eat otherwise or how perfectly toned your stomach is on a regular day, an indulgent evening of food and drinks can leave you with a protruding pooch. To tell you the truth, having a flat stomach all the time – even after a meal – isn’t really normal. When you eat some food or drink any liquids, they take up space inside your stomach and intestines, and this can mean some kind of expansion. The trouble starts when there’s excess air or gas in your intestines. You can experience a bloated stomach because of a whole host of reasons, including food allergies, food intolerance, irritable bowel syndrome, constipation, and pre-menstrual syndrome.
Most often, eating certain foods that either produce gas or cause your body to retain water can lead to a belly bloat. Even the way you eat or how quickly you gobble up your favorite dish can be the reason for bloating. To avoid such an uncomfortable, annoying scenario and to ensure the perfect start to your day, you need to identify and avoid these belly bloaters for breakfast!
1. Wheat Products
Like in other grains, gluten is a protein that’s present in wheat too. Gluten is known to cause bloating and cramping. If you’re gluten-sensitive, the chances of you experiencing any sort of discomfort is higher.
Foods like bread, cereals, pasta, cakes, pastries, biscuits, and doughnuts can lead to bloating or other minor symptoms. If you experience these after consuming these wheat products, it’s better that you completely cut out wheat-rich products from your diet. You’d do well to replace wheat products with porridge, rice crispies, corn flakes, buckwheat pasta, or quinoa.1
2. Dairy Products
If your breakfast is centered around too much Greek yogurt or cheese and you experience bloating every time, you need to reconsider having dairy products for the most important meal of your day. Bloating and abdominal discomfort after eating dairy products could be because you’re lactose-intolerant. 2
Consumption of dairy products like yogurt, cheese, milk, ice cream, and cream can cause discomfort in the way of gas, stomach ache, or bloating. If you experience these continuously, take dairy products off your breakfast menu. Start using soy milk, almond milk, fat-free yogurt, or soy cream cheese if you’re lactose-intolerant.
3. Coffee
Black coffee can trigger bloating since it is acidic in nature. If you have a sensitive stomach, coffee can cause the inflammation of your stomach lining. This can further aggravate symptoms of belly bloat. If you add sugar or any other artificial sweetener, it can make your bloating problem even worse than it already is. 3
4. Excess Fruits
Eating too much of fruits for breakfast may seem like a healthy choice at first glance. But, it’s perfectly possible for you to go overboard with your affinity for a fruit-rich diet, especially with delicious, sugary fruits like peaches, plums, cherries, apricots, nectarines, apples, and pears. These fruits are rich in fructose, a type of sugar that’s difficult for most people to digest. This can mean that there’s a lot of leftover sugars for your gut bacteria to feed on, which in turn releases gas that leaves you feeling bloated and uncomfortable.4
5. Sugary Pastries
Scones, muffins, croissants, donuts, pop tarts, and tarts are the perfect ingredients for a very luxurious breakfast spread. On the flip side, they can also make you load up on refined carbs, which your metabolism converts into sugar. This sugar can bind itself to water and make you feel all puffed up.5
6. Soy Protein Bars
If you’re a health-conscious freak or a fitness buff, eating protein bars may seem like the way to go. But, if your protein bar is high in soybean content, it may give you a bloated belly. Like all other beans, soybeans are high in oligosaccharides. This, once again, is a tough-to-digest sugar that can result in the production and buildup of gas and consequently, excessive bloating. In addition, if your bar label claims to contain “low-calorie” or “zero-calorie” sweeteners, it’ll only aggravate the protruding pooch issue further.
7. Greasy Foods
A giant grilled cheese sandwich or bacon quiches are one of the biggest morning mistakes you could ever make. Processed meats like sausage, bacon, ham, cheese, and other greasy foods tend to be high in salt content. The extra sodium can cause you to drink more water than usual, leaving you feeling bloated. These foods are also high in fat, which doesn’t make things any better. Since fatty foods take longer to digest, they stick around in your tummy pretty much until midday, making you feel even more bloated.6
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