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I used to plan my outfits around my stomach.

Don’t believe me? I wrote Why I Wear Big Sweatshirts back in 2015.

Clothes didn’t reflect my mood. Or the weather. But my stomach.

Some mornings I woke up flat. By 9am I looked 5 months pregnant and nothing about what I’d eaten or done explained it. If you’ve ever unbuttoned your jeans under a desk, you know exactly the feeling I mean.

I spent close to a decade chasing this down. Tests, diets, practitioners, supplements, a few things I’m mildly embarrassed to admit. Most of it did nothing. One thing changed everything.

Here’s the full list.

8 Things I Tried For A Decade Of Chronic Bloating (And The One That Actually Worked)

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1. Cutting out gluten, dairy, and sugar. And more. All at once.

This is the first thing almost every doctor, blog, and well-meaning friend tells you to do. I did it for months. Wait, make that years.

I felt slightly better. Sometimes. Not always. And definitely not healed. Still bloated most afternoons, still guessing.

Cutting foods one-by-one until you’re almost at zero can quiet symptoms. But it doesn’t tell you why the symptoms started, what’s going on underneath or how you’ll actually get better….and un-bloated.

2. The low FODMAP diet, by the book, for a full month

This one actually has research behind it. A 2020 review in the Journal of Gastroenterology and Hepatology found that 52 to 86% of IBS patients report meaningful symptom improvement after cutting FODMAPs.¹

I was in the group it helped, a little. Less gas, a little more comfort.

But I couldn’t live on it. FODMAP is meant to be a short-term elimination and reintroduction process, not a permanent way of eating. The second I reintroduced foods, the bloat came right back.

3. Drinking an entire bottle of Cal-Mag-Citrate

My GP handed me a ‘prescription’ to head to Walgreens and drink an entire bottle of Cal-Mag-Citrate.

So I did. I was desperate.

And don’t get me wrong. It worked. Everything moved through me. But the gas and gurgling got worse. And I later learned just how toxic the stuff is. Not to mention, it was simply a band-aid, and not even one that sticks longer than 20 minutes.

4. A single daily probiotic, taken for weeks

I picked one off a shelf, took it every morning, and waited.

Nothing. I didn’t know yet that a probiotic is only as useful as whether it matches what’s actually going on in your gut, and mine didn’t.

But it was even worse than that — the probiotic made me feel horrible. Like the problem had just escalated.

5. A full round of testing: celiac panel, gallbladder ultrasound, blood counts

Almost everything came back normal.

That should have been relief. Instead it was its own kind of exhausting: nothing showing up on paper while I still couldn’t fit into my own jeans by dinner.

Normal labs don’t mean nothing is happening. They mean the standard panel isn’t built to catch it.

6. Massively cutting calories

Yes, really. In fact, I did this my whole life, and thought it was in the name of “health.”

But once I got sick, bloated, and felt miserable, I cut even more. I told myself, “Fewer calories in means fewer problems out.”

Only that’s not how it works. And to be honest, I can’t explain why but the less I ate, the more bloated I felt. This was likely due in part to the fact that when I was starving I’d reach for fat-free, sugar-free everything.

7. Running like my life depended on it

I know what you’re thinking because I did, too. “If I workout more, my stomach will deflate.”

So I tried that theory. Hardcore. I ran miles upon miles. Did HIIT for hours upon hours.

And later in the day? Bloated as ever.

8. A food diary, tracking every single bite for months

I logged everything I ate along with the calories contained in those foods, looking for the pattern.

The pattern never showed up. Because I was tracking all the wrong things. The real issue couldn’t be found in generic food tracking with meticulous calorie counting. It was in my gut itself.

The one thing that actually worked

By year eight or nine, I stopped looking for the next food to cut and started looking for what was actually happening inside my gut. Not what I was eating. What my gut was doing with it. And why it was doing the things it was.

And that’s when I healed for good.

After about 15 years of trial and error, tears and frustration, I overcame it all. And I created all of this, including everything the 21-Day Quick Gut Detox is built around. It’s not another elimination diet, and it’s not a 3-day juice cleanse that leaves you back where you started a week later.

It’s a done-for-you 21-day meal plan with the grocery list already made, my own 10-day cleanse, and the exact journaling system I used to finally see the pattern the food diary never showed me. You get lifetime access for one payment, no subscription, plus the full text of A Gutsy Girl’s Bible and a private community of women doing this alongside you.

Bloating relief and a clear digestive baseline in 3 weeks. A plan instead of guesswork.

If you’ve done the diets, the tests, the practitioners, and you’re still bloated by 3pm, I built this for you. It’s the very thing I wish someone had handed me in year two instead of year nine.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. Root Causes of Bloating in Women (And What Your Gut Is Trying to Tell You)
2. Best Digestive Enzymes for Bloating
3. Shop by symptom > bloating

Xox,

SKH

1. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31986083/ ↩︎