Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

I’ve heard it said about every kind of food, “I can’t eat that. It will give me gas.” Veggies, cheese, milk, fruit, meat, processed foods, uncooked foods, healthy oils, everything. I’ve been sitting in Weight Watchers meetings for almost four years now. I’ve heard that phrase refer to everything.

Sometimes, it’s hard for me not to roll my eyes. Sometimes it’s hard for me not to turn around and “bless” these people with my “vast” knowledge about gastrointestinal pain. Gas is the whole reason why I decided to start eating healthy. My stomach was killing me and a stupid doctor told me that the reason why I was in pain was because I was fat.

What would I tell them if I didn’t hold my tongue?

I’d turn around and say, “Yes, you’re right. I’m sure eating vegetables DOES give you gas. Any drastic change in your diet will. If you go from eating no vegetables to eating five a day, you are going to have a moving experience.”

With any change in your diet, you need to SLOWLY work up to it. For example, if you were to suddenly go from eating meat once a day to going on the Atkins diet, you will experience a change in your body. It might be so unpleasant that you’ll come away from the experience thinking that meat and cheese don’t agree with your body and they give you gas (or the runs or “stops you up,” depending on how your body reacts). That might not be true, however. If you gradually added more protein to your diet, you might find that your body agrees with it very well.

The same goes for uncooked foods, brown rice, vegetables, healthy oils, fruit, meat, cheese, nuts, granola, whatever. So many of our perceptions of food are based on fad diets where we drastically changed our intake without giving our bodies a chance to acclimate.

If there is a food that you have been avoiding, try gradually adding it back into your diet and see how your body reacts. It might be the final missing piece of the weight loss puzzle that you need to finally get to goal.