Fitness blogger and former beauty queen Tiffany Brien has shared an image on Facebook which makes everyone feel instantly better about the dreaded food baby bloat.
Normally, fitness bloggers post body-perfect images of themselves. Nothing is really wrong with that, except that it makes some of us feel, well, rather like crap.
Which is probably why Brien’s photo has so far received almost 4,500 shares and as many comments.
Brien posted a photo of her mid-section, pre-bed (the image on the left) and after she’s woken up (image on the right).
“No I’m not 6 months pregnant. It’s just my food baby…These two photos are 12 hours apart, left before bed and right when I woke up…. I know right!!????” she commented.
Brien continued to say that we don’t always post the truth on social media (amen to that), so she decided to share a “bad day” with everyone. By “bad day” she meant a day that her body just decided to “not play ball”.
“This photo is a bad day, a day I cannot tell you exactly what I ate that made me blow up. I have gone over everything I ate and I was relatively clean so it could be something I think is ‘healthy’ that my body now thinks naaa no likey. Sometimes your body becomes intolerable to something you’ve always eaten, you just have to work it out. Fun game though? No. Not really.”
Dinner. Image: Tiffany Brien Facebook.
Besides food, Brien said that stress (she says her office job is quite stressful), lack of sleep (which she puts her hand up for being guilty of) and hormones (she apparently screwed hers up after pushing her body to the limits over a bikini comp a while back) also play a role in the food baby bloat.
"Yes it gets me down when this happens," she said. "No there's nothing I can immediately do about it. But you can aid it and eventually overcome it."
Check out one of Brien's fitness videos. Post continues after the video...
Helpfully, Brien jotted down some tips we can all do with to avoid (as much as possible) the food baby bloat.
Top tips:
* Get your zzz's!
* Write a food diary and reflect where and when you bloat.
* Don't over exercise to compensate for a bloated belly. It's not fat. Exercising will most likely make it worse.
* Look into gut health supplements -- multivitamins and probiotics.
* Drink peppermint tea to soothe your tum.
* Relax and be happy... It'll be ok, you're not alone. Promise.
There are also foods you should and shouldn't eat to beat the bloat, which you can read about here.
Now, if only we can prevent the food baby bloat happening when we are wearing our favourite body con dress, that would be ace.
* Featured image via Instagram.