🎈 I’m bloated all the time

🔍 What is actually going on

Persistent bloating is not one thing, and it is rarely about a single food. It can be energy that should move smoothly through you getting stuck, where the sticking point is usually emotional rather than dietary, so the bloating arrives with stress. It can be digestion that has stopped converting food into usable energy efficiently, so the bloat builds as the day goes on. It can be a system producing more than it can move, so heaviness and fog travel with it. Or it can be too little regularity, warmth, and grounding in how you eat, so it varies from one day to the next.

🎭 The three most likely types

For this symptom there are four common types rather than three. Here is how to tell which is you:

• Bloating that arrives with stress and moves around → The Pressure Cooker ⛓️. Tightness across the ribs, chest, or shoulders travels with it, and the bloating arrives with stress, not with meals.
• Bloating that builds through the day and worsens after eating → The Depleted Engine 🪫. You bloat as the day goes on, worst by evening, and eating makes you sleepy rather than energised.
• Bloating with heaviness and fog → The Waterlogged 💧. Heaviness in body and head, puffiness, and a greasy or coated feeling in the mouth travel with it.
• Bloating with gas, low down, that varies daily → The Windblown 🌪️. Your appetite and digestion vary wildly day to day, and your symptoms move around rather than staying put.

Real bodies are layered, so expect a primary and a secondary type rather than one perfect fit.

✅ Do this today

Eat one meal sitting down, without a screen, chewing properly. For most bloating this outperforms any ingredient change.

🍚 Eat this / not this

Match this to the type you recognised above. Each line is the start of that type’s fuller list.

If you are closer to The Pressure Cooker ⛓️: eat more citrus peel, bergamot, mint, rose bud tea, jasmine, fennel · eat less alcohol, heavy fried food, excess dairy, large late meals, coffee on an empty stomach

If you are closer to The Depleted Engine 🪫: eat more congee and porridge, rice, oats, millet, sweet potato, pumpkin · eat less iced drinks, smoothies, raw salad as a main meal, excess dairy, banana, refined sugar

If you are closer to The Waterlogged 💧: eat more adzuki bean, pearl barley, mung bean, daikon, celery, turnip · eat less dairy above all, banana, wheat in quantity, refined sugar, deep fried food, beer

If you are closer to The Windblown 🌪️: eat more warm cooked grains, ghee, sesame oil, root vegetables, soaked nuts, stewed fruit · eat less raw salad, dry crackers and rice cakes, cold drinks, sparkling water, plain beans, caffeine

See a doctor if: the bloating comes with severe pain, vomiting, or no bowel movement with distension, or you notice jaundice, severe pain in the upper right abdomen, blood in your stool, a persistent change in bowel habit, weight loss you did not intend, sudden one-sided swelling, or breathlessness.

🧭 Take the quiz

The type behind your bloating decides what will actually help, and the quiz identifies your primary and secondary type in a few minutes. Your result comes with a first week you can start tonight: {{QUIZ_URL}}