If you've never been bloated before, then count yourself lucky. For many, certain foods (which are often unidentifiable in such a varied diet) as well as other outside factors lead to a dramatic swelling of the stomach—one that may make you look pregnant with a food baby for a hot minute.
One fitness blogger, Tiffany Brien, wanted to remind the world that this can happen to anyone. Because Brien, with her washboard stomach, suffers from bloating, too. She took a photograph of her stomach when she first woke up, and then another one 12 hours later, just before she went to bed. The difference is incredible:
Brien posted those two pictures to Facebook, and they've been shared more than 14,000 times.
"No, I'm not 6 months pregnant. It's just my food baby," Brien wrote. "We are not all what we seem on social media. I thought I would share a bad day with you to show you nobody is 'perfect,' and it is okay to have an off day where your body just decides to not play ball."
"Don't worry girls, it happens to the best of us, all part and parcel of being a female!"
Brien explained her food baby is the result of "a delightful cocktail of lack of sleep, stress, hormones, and food intolerances. A mixture for a whole lotta bloat."
But bloating can really affect you, as Brien pointed out in her post. "To make matters worse it seems to happen at incredibly inconvenient times... On a[n] evening out for dinner in a lovely tight dress. I could be half way into my main course, and I suddenly feel uncomfortable and now really unattractive with a big bloated belly!"
Like many of us, Brien isn't exactly sure what food triggered the swelling of her stomach. "This photo is a bad day, a day I cannot tell you exactly what I ate that made me blow up," she said. "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."
Brien then ran through how she believes stress, hormones, and lack of sleep also contribute to the arrival of her food baby, before sharing her top tips for how to help tackle the bloat:
"Top tips:
* Get your zzz's! 💤
* Write a food dairy 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 okay, you're not alone. Promise. 😘"
