--:-- Mel Robbins: Hey, it's your friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Today, you and I are going to talk about something that we have all experienced. Maybe you're experiencing it at this very moment. What is the topic? We're talking about bloating.
--:-- Mel Robbins: There's a particular reason why I wanted to talk about bloating today. The reason is simple. I am so freaking bloated right now. I'm uncomfortable.
--:-- Mel Robbins: See, here's what happened. The last couple of weeks I have been on the road for work and I've been going from one city to the next city, giving speeches and having business meetings. It's been really great. I want to tell you a little secret, a travel tip. When I travel for work, I always just travel with a carry-on. You may be asking, how can you go to multiple cities for two weeks with a carry-on? The secret is simple: I wear the same outfit.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Every speech and every business meeting, I swear to God, I travel with a uniform. If you look at any of the stories on Instagram, you'll notice Mel always has on the same pair of red pants and the black shirt whenever she's giving her speech. It's true. I have this stretchy pair of red pants that I love, made out of polyester, and a great black Oxford shirt, also made out of polyester. I wear it on stage and to business meetings, and it looks fantastic. The other thing that's fantastic about polyester is that when you get to a hotel room, if you hang a polyester pair of pants in a shower and run the shower, within about 15 minutes, the steam cleans it like a dry cleaner. Absolutely fabulous.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So here I am, on the road with my red polyester pants. On Monday, I put them on. They felt great. On Tuesday, I'm in Nashville to give a speech. Put the red polyester pants on. They felt great. Wednesday, put them on in Chicago. They felt great. On Thursday, I put them on in Orlando for a speech. They felt great. Friday, when I put the red polyester pants on, not so great, everybody. I couldn't button them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: When I looked down, I realized—I have the pants here, you can see them if you look at YouTube—this poor button is hanging on by a thread for dear life. It has a singular thread because the tension on the waistband over the last week has basically acted like a saw, slowly sawing apart the threads attaching the button to the pants. That button was the hardest working person in my company for the last five days.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I don't know what happened because I take care of myself when I'm on the road. It's not like I'm downing Jim Beam or out late. I get a great night's sleep. I travel with friends. We're having a lot of fun. I love what I'm doing. But I kid you not, I will show you photos of me on that Friday. I look like I'm in the second trimester of a pregnancy. I have a food baby that looks like a basketball right in my stomach.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Here's the thing: I know I didn't gain weight. You can't gain seven to ten pounds in five days, but somehow I gained the equivalent of that in bloating. I finally got home, and I'm like, I have to figure out what to do because I am either going to be belching for two weeks or farting this out. Neither one is a great option. I feel terrible, and I don't want to wear sweatpants for the next four weeks while I'm waiting for the bloating to go down.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was just about to Google, "How do you get rid of a bloat? Five day reset." And I thought, Mel, what are you doing? Why don't you call Dr. Amy Shaw? Dr. Amy Shaw, as you probably know if you're a listener to the Mel Robbins podcast, has been on this show twice before. She is a double board certified medical doctor in the field of allergies, immunology, and internal medicine. She graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University's world-renowned School of Nutrition. She went on to receive her doctorate with distinction. She's trained at Harvard and Columbia, and she is on the front line of nutritional and medical science. Her bestselling book, *I'm So F-ing Hungry: Why We Crave What We Crave and What to Do About It*, is the manual on trying to balance your hormones and understand the science of nutrition so you can curb your cravings.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm like, what are you doing? Why are you going to Google when you can get Dr. Shaw on? Dr. Shaw can explain what bloating is, why it happens, and more importantly, what the protocol is. What could you do in, let's say, five days? Is there a five-day reset that you and I could follow so that whenever you feel bloated because of what you ate, or because of stress, or because of whatever is going on, you know what to do? That's what we're doing today.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I also know that this conversation is releasing right during the holidays. You're going to be in the thick of it—the amazing meals, the stress, the drinking, the travel. Wherever you're coming to this conversation, we have a seat at the table for you. You can have your pants buttoned or not. You can have on your red pants with your food baby. You can have your sweatpants on. Everybody is welcome here because every single one of us at some point in our lives feels bloated. For me, it's today. We're going to hear from the amazing Dr. Amy Shaw. What are we going to do about this? Please help me welcome Dr. Amy Shaw back to the Mel Robbins podcast.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: So grateful to be here with you, Mel.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Amy Shaw, can you start by just explaining what the heck is bloating?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Bloating is that feeling of distension in your body. But bloating is just a sign. It's a symptom of a larger issue. It's that our gut microbiome makes us bloated or gives us symptoms when it's unhappy. Our goal is to make our gut bacteria happy because we will get less bloating and we'll feel healthier overall. So bloating is just a symptom of a larger problem.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Everybody thinks it's just from gas. Yes, it is from gas, but it can also be from your hormones. It can be water retention. It can be from medications causing discomfort. It can be from being constipated. We all go through that where we're bloated not because there's gas, but there's actual stool in there. Then there's menopause bloating, which is even more so than regular PMS bloating. There are so many other causes of bloating. It's not just that you ate too much or too many Brussels sprouts or broccoli. It can be from so many other things.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You said a big word just a minute ago: distended. That bloating is when your stomach is distended. What does that word mean?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: When your belly is pushing out from the inside. It can be from stool. It can be from air. It can be from hormones causing water retention. I don't know about you, but right before my period, I look like I'm pregnant. All of that is distension inside. It could be the wall of the intestines swollen, or there's gas inside, or there's stool or food inside. That's why it's distended. There are so many different ways, but it feels kind of the same.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for explaining that. I'm trying to help myself and anyone listening tease out the difference between, "Oh, my habits have changed and I'm gaining a lot of weight," versus, "Oh, I've got something going on where from the inside out, it's almost like somebody has blown a balloon up inside of me full of something." I know this might sound like an insensitive question, but I have to ask: how do you know if you're bloated versus you've just let your eating slide and you're gaining weight?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: It's hard to tell the difference sometimes. You go on a week-long binge—say the holidays or a vacation—and you come back, and it's almost a combination of multiple things. You're retaining water because you traveled a lot, you drank a lot, maybe you ate a lot of salt. Your gut bacteria are mad at you. There is this world that lives inside your gut called the microbiome. They're mad, and they're producing all this gas to let you know. You probably ate a lot of excess calories for that period of time. It could be a combination of all three. You won't know until you start to reset your gut what is actually happening, because the water weight will go away pretty quick. If you're constipated, hopefully that can resolve. Once you get your diet back on track, you might notice the scale starting to go down. All of these things start to resolve themselves together.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Why don't I back up a minute? In reaching out to you, Dr. Shaw, I had a food baby. I could not button my pants, and it happened so fast over the course of five days that I knew this was bloating. But can you explain what the symptoms are that might surprise someone to hear that they may be bloated and dealing with extra gas or really mad gut bacteria?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: You're burping a lot. Obviously, farting, because farting and bloating go hand in hand. You're constipated—that's a sign that you are bloated, because often when you have a lot of gas in your intestines, you can't push that stool out. You might not just be bloated in your gut. You might be one of those people who is retaining fluid everywhere. Have you ever had that issue where your rings don't fit anymore, or your bracelets get tight, or your shoes feel like they're getting tight? That's basically what's happening in your intestines happening all over your body. That's another sign that this could be bloating and water retention, and not necessarily that you gained a bunch of weight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to tell you a couple things. Number one, I don't ever sleep with jewelry on because my hands swell so much. Same thing when I exercise—if I'm going to go out for a long walk, I don't wear my rings because my hands swell. At the end of the day, my feet are typically a half size larger. I never thought that could be a sign of bloating or a sign that my body is inflamed.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The other thing I'll tell you is a quick story because it might help you listening to start to discern what you may be dealing with. About six years ago, when our daughter Kendall was in high school, she always was a big burper—just these deep, loud burps. She was such a little thing that it was shocking how loud they were. It was almost a joke in our family. Then she started to say, "I feel so fat." She was not using the B word; she was using "fat." Because she was so thin, I thought, "Oh my God, she's got body dysmorphia." I took her to a therapist. The therapist said, "I think you should get her gut tested." I thought she was dealing with disordered eating and body dysmorphia, but she said, "No, get her gut tested."
--:-- Mel Robbins: It turns out when they tested her gut, she was missing all of the good bacteria in her gut. What was happening was the food would go down her mouth, down her esophagus, into her stomach, and because she had literally no good gut bacteria, the food sat and rotted. The burping was from rotting food. It was disgusting. The constant belching was her trying to relieve the pressure, and her saying "I feel fat" was really her trying to explain, "I am bloated." We went and did this protocol of resetting her gut microbiome, and all the symptoms disappeared. This is a very real thing you may be dealing with, and your gut health is really the issue causing all this.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I was explaining earlier that I wanted to talk to you because I had been traveling for the last couple weeks, and I wear the same pair of pants. That's my little travel secret. The pants I was wearing on Monday fit. They fit on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Although I'll tell you, that poor little button holding my red pants together was the hardest working person in the room. I have my little red pants right here.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Oh, you have them.
--:-- Mel Robbins: But by Friday, I had a food baby. I literally looked like I was six to seven months pregnant. It was a balloon coming out. I had to do the trick where you unbutton your pants and stick a rubber band through the opening to extend them. I thought, "Okay, I can't gain seven pounds in five days because I can't lose seven pounds in five days." So maybe we should talk about this, since you're basically saying when you're bloated, your gut bacteria is mad at you, right? Is that the basic thing going on here?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: It is a basic thing going on. That gut-hormone-immune connection—when that's off balance, you get all these symptoms. People think, "Oh my God, it's hormone bloating," or "It's coming from something else." But really, it's because your gut bacteria are not happy. It's not only related to food; it can be related to other things. But when they're not happy, they're going to let you know.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Shah, I feel better already, even though I'm still bloated. I'm really grateful that you are grounding all of us in the science and elevating this beyond how uncomfortable our waistbands are. This does matter. I'm gathering that there's so much more to care about. I have a lot more questions about what causes this and what we can do to change it. We're going to get to your five-day reset. But let's take a quick pause because our sponsors bring this to us at zero cost. Dr. Amy Shaw and I are going to be waiting for you right after a quick word from those sponsors. Stay with us.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. Thank you for still being here. I'm with Dr. Amy Shaw. We're talking about bloating and the science of creating a happy and healthy gut and why that matters. So Dr. Shaw, what foods actually could bloat you?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: First of all, I want to give you the biggest tip, just to take a step back. The biggest tip when you're feeling bloated or distended is: don't wear those red pants with a button on them. I can't tell you how many times I've traveled and you get bloated because of the change in air pressure. You're not able to go to the bathroom for a couple of days. You need stretchy pants for your travel. Swap those red pants out for something with a little more give. I get it, it's nice to wear tight fitted pants, especially if you want to look cute. But for the travel day, wear the stretch pants.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Okay, got it. Ladies and gentlemen, let's give a round of applause for Dr. Amy Shaw, who just told us all: soft pants, people. Soft pants. You're traveling, you're feeling bloated. Let's get rid of the zippers and the buttons. Soft pants. I'm taking it away. I am following it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Where does this happen? You talked about the intestines and the stomach. Is that where this is happening, or are there other parts of your body involved when bloat is happening?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: From the minute you take food in, right, you're chewing your food, the bloating can start to happen there. We all know with gum, with sparkling drinks—these are foods that can cause bloating because you're swallowing a lot of air from the time you put it in your mouth.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Gum causes bloating?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Did you not know this?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Sparkling beverages cause bloating?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Yeah. You need to know this. This is why I'm telling you, this is the reset. Sugar-free gum, which is all gum now—you can't really get gum with real sugar anymore, I think Bazooka used to be our gum when we were younger—but now it's all sugar substitute gum. Those sugar substitutes are very irritating to our gut bacteria. Just the act of swallowing a lot of air, chewing gum can push that air down all the way. It's one tube, right? From your mouth to the esophagus, to the stomach, to the small intestine and the large intestine. So it can start from up there.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Then you have people like us who are always in a rush and always eating too fast. It can be an issue with just eating too fast. It's going through that one tube from your mouth to your anus too fast, and you're not taking breaks and you're not chewing enough. So it's not just a particular food; it's that you're eating food too fast.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Then you have foods like the ones you consider super healthy: Brussels sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage. Mel, you're being a great student, you're like, "I want to eat all the fiber in one day." That is going to create havoc in your gut because your gut bacteria are going to be like, "We love this fiber, but not all at once." It's like giving them too much work in one day, especially when they're not used to it. You're going to get a lot of gas production while they're trying to digest this.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: So it can happen in your mouth. It can happen in your esophagus because you're eating too fast. It can happen in your stomach because you ate too many really hard-to-digest fibrous foods. It can happen in your small intestine and then in your large intestine too. All the way through, you can get bloating from different causes.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Can we just stop on that? You've sparked my interest because all those things you ticked off, I did not know that sparkling beverages, gum, or eating all these super healthy foods like broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and cabbage can actually contribute to bloat. Thank you for explaining that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I want to focus on the foods you just mentioned: cabbage, broccoli, and Brussels sprouts. Let's call that the trifecta. If I hear you correctly, you're saying if you're already bloated and you throw that into your system, you're going to literally inflate the balloon even more. However, when you de-bloat and get your gut back into balance so your gut bacteria aren't mad at you anymore, introducing those into your diet—not as a smorgasbord, but as part of what you're eating—helps keep the gut bacteria healthy. Is that correct?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: That's right. If you're at a party and there's a raw cruciferous vegetable plate—
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's cruciferous? What is that word?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Those are the family we're talking about: the cauliflowers, the broccoli, the Brussels sprouts, the cabbage. They're like siblings, the cruciferous family. They have amazing sulfur compounds that are so good for cancer reduction and inflammation reduction. They're powerhouse vegetables. But often at a party, they're on a tray raw. I don't know about you, but I've had a few too many of those at once, and you definitely feel it. If you're already bloated, don't go to the raw vegetable tray and pick up the cauliflower and the broccoli, because you're going to really hate yourself later that night when it starts to digest and produce all this gas. I'll tell you who else is going to hate you: the person you're sleeping next to, because you're going to be lifting the sheets up as you're farting. You don't want to create a hot box in there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's great about you telling us that is that if I'm feeling uncomfortable in my pants and bloated—especially during wedding season, the holidays, or on vacation—I would walk up to a raw vegetable plate and think, "Oh, I should clearly have some broccoli and cauliflower because I feel bloated." I didn't know until you just said it that that would literally stoke the flames and make me feel worse if I'm already bloated and my gut bacteria is mad. So what do I eat instead?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: I want to tell you another one that will do the same thing. Say you're at a party and you wake up the next day feeling bloated and hungover. You take a whole bunch of ibuprofen or aspirin. That is going to make you more bloated.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What? This is my morning routine after a party. What are you talking about?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Medications are a big cause of bloating, especially NSAIDs.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What's an NSAID?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Ibuprofen, Motrin, and naproxen are a class of medications called NSAIDs—non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications. They all have the same mechanism of action. Some people like naproxen, some like ibuprofen, but they're all the same parent medication. Aspirin is very similar. Their side effect is bloating. So you ate a bunch of cruciferous vegetables, took a bunch of ibuprofen, and it's the week before your period. You wake up and think, "Oh my God, I look six months pregnant." That's what is happening. I'm going to tell you what you need to do to reset that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Thank God. I hear a lot about gluten and bloating. Is there a connection? What are the foods, other than the cruciferous ones you just explained, that tend to cause bloating in people?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Gluten is definitely one of them. We all know so many people who feel bloated after pizza, bread, and pasta. Sometimes it's not necessarily the gluten itself. You can have sourdough bread and be okay, but have pizza and you're not. It's not necessarily the gluten itself, but the way it's prepared. Also, I think 68% of the world population is lactose intolerant.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: That means when you eat dairy foods, you get bloated because your body can't break down the lactose sugar. Everybody's different. 68% of the world population can't digest a glass of milk or a big scoop of ice cream. They get bloated from it.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What are some other symptoms or things you've seen in helping people reset their gut, Dr. Shaw?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: I talk about this all the time: your mood and cravings have a huge connection to your gut. We talk about the gut-brain connection. To bring it back to hormones: when you're bloated, right before your period, or in menopause, you feel bloated, but you also feel really sad and crave certain foods. What we're learning now is that this disordered gut bacteria—whether it's hormonal or situational—is disrupting things in our brain. We have this gut connection. If you're feeling kind of down, fatigued, or having cravings for strange things, that could be your gut bacteria talking to you, saying, "I don't feel good," and sending signals to your brain that we need to be healed.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Nobody in modern medicine talks about this. Very few people, when they go to the doctor and say, "I'm depressed, I'm anxious, I'm tired all the time," have a doctor say, "Let's look into your gut health." It's not even considered. They say, "Here's some medicine, here's some antidepressants, or go talk to someone." They don't think it's related, but it's completely related. We have study after study saying, "Take some fiber, and all of a sudden people get improved cravings and mood. Eat some fermented food, and all of a sudden they feel better." There's a huge connection with mood and feelings of anxiety.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Shah, what are some other foods that can make you feel bloated?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: We talked about cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage. We talked about artificial sweeteners in Diet Coke and gum—those are huge causes of bloating. We talked about sparkling drinks. We talked about dairy for so many people, gluten for so many people, high amounts of sugar for so many people. In my gut reset plan, I have every single person take out the foods they think are triggering—like gluten, dairy, white sugar—and put themselves on a food elimination diet for at least a week, if not four weeks, to identify which foods are triggering your bloating. For me, it was gluten, dairy, and sugar. For a lot of people, it's all three. For some people, it's just one or two. You have to do a food elimination diet.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Did you know, Mel, that food sensitivity testing is not validated? All those tests people get for food sensitivity—in 2023, we don't have a validated food sensitivity test. We can test for food allergies, like if you're going to have anaphylaxis to peanut. But there's no test better than a food elimination diet for checking your food sensitivities, the foods that are causing you to bloat.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let me see if I'm following you. I was about to ask you: how would you know if you're lactose intolerant? How would you know if you are sensitive to gluten? You asked me, "Mel, are you lactose intolerant?" I'm like, "I have no idea." I have whole milk in my coffee every morning. I eat cottage cheese. I love that skyr yogurt. I don't know. I'm ingesting this stuff. I don't burp afterwards. I don't fart afterwards that I know of. So am I bloated by it? I don't know. Are you saying the only way to determine whether you are getting bloated or triggered by certain foods is to eliminate them from your diet and then see what happens when you add them back in?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Yes. The gold standard for food-related gut discomfort is to eliminate the foods and add them back. When you add them back, that's really the test. I don't know if you've ever gone a long time without eating a certain food, then added it back and got a huge bloating reaction. That's the sensitive food you are eating. You're only going to know if you're lactose intolerant or not tolerant to dairy if you stop eating it and then add it back and see what happens. That's the gold standard for checking which foods trigger you.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: There are certain foods that trigger everyone, but there are groups that trigger only a few people. Insoluble fiber is a thing that bloats everyone.
--:-- Mel Robbins: What is insoluble fiber?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Those vegetables I was talking about—the raw vegetables. They're made up of insoluble fiber. There's also soluble fiber. For example, things like baby spinach that's cooked really well has a lot of soft fiber, which is easier to digest for the body. Raw broccoli or cauliflower has a lot of insoluble fiber. It's really hard for the body to digest and takes a lot of work. It's like marathon training—eventually you'll get there, but you don't want to start with huge amounts in the beginning.
--:-- Mel Robbins: And then, alcohol. Let's talk about that. Oh, do we have to? Come on, this is coming out during the holidays, Dr. Shaw.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: No, let's talk about alcohol.
--:-- Mel Robbins: The truth is, I have this love-hate relationship with alcohol. I tend to go for periods where I don't drink at all, and I feel a thousand times better. I sleep better. I know it's better for my health. Then particularly around the holidays, or in the summer, or when we're celebrating something, I'll have a drink. The next thing you know, I'm sliding into drinking a little bit more frequently. I definitely notice I don't sleep as well. I definitely notice I'm tired in the morning. I have not really noticed bloating, but maybe I'm not understanding the signs or symptoms to look for.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Let me tell you the problem with alcohol.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Dr. Shaw, I cannot wait to hear the problem with alcohol. But first, I want to make a drink. No, I'm just kidding. I do really want to understand the connection between alcohol and your gut and why it's problematic. So how about this?
--:-- Mel Robbins: Let's take a quick break, hear a word from our sponsors. And when we come back, Dr. Shaw will explain the problem with drinking alcohol and how it impacts our gut bacteria. Stay with us.
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--:-- Mel Robbins: Welcome back. It's your friend Mel, and you and I are here with a private session with the amazing Dr. Amy Shaw. And we're talking all things bloating. Perfect for right now, right? We're in the thick of the holidays. We're talking bloating, healthy gut bacteria, and now we're adding alcohol to the mix, just like you did over the holidays. So Dr. Shaw, what is the problem with alcohol as it relates to your gut health?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: The problem with alcohol is that number one, a lot of us are ingesting it later in the evening. I told you that our body, just like our brain needs sleep, our gut bacteria need sleep as well. They need rest. If we're eating big meals and lots of drinks late into the night, you're already shortchanging your growth hormone, your cleaning, all the things that happen during the night in your gut. So you're just more likely to be bloated in general.
--:-- It doesn't mean that every single person is going to wake up the next day bloated. It's just contributing to this overall circadian rhythm misalignment that we have in our world. People are going days without seeing natural light, and then they're eating really late at night with bright lights. We're in a world where our circadian rhythms are getting thrown off all the time. One of the biggest causes of bloating is that we're eating late at night and we're drinking alcohol late at night.
--:-- So not only does alcohol cause bloating, it also is usually consumed later in the evening, closer to bedtime for a lot of us. Now, there are people who have it earlier in the day. I would say if you are going to have alcohol around the holidays and you are trying to manage your bloating and just have better health in general, start earlier in the day. That way your body has time to metabolize it. It's not going to disturb your sleep as much, and it's not going to disturb your gut health as much.
--:-- Mel Robbins: So what would be your recommendation for how much time you need between your last meal and your last drink with calories or sparkle in it, whether it's alcoholic or not, and when you fall asleep? Do you need three hours, two hours, five hours? What is going to help your gut process what you ate and drank and also get the rest that it needs, which helps your gut bacteria not be so mad at you?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Exactly. Our gut bacteria are our biggest allies. We want them to be our friends, and we don't want to starve them to death and kill them in all these ways that we're doing. Fasting, at least circadian style, is something natural. Taking a break from food for 12 hours sounds like nothing, but most Americans are eating 16 hours a day and just taking a quick break for eight hours or less. We want to extend the time that your gut gets rest.
--:-- So it might be two to three hours before bed you stop eating, and you're only drinking water or decaffeinated tea, clear liquids, and then go 12, 13, 14 hours. So it may be 6 p.m. to 6 a.m., 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. That would be ideal timings according to circadian rhythms.
--:-- Mel Robbins: You just said that the average person is eating for 16 hours a day. I stopped for a second and thought, oh my God, you're right. Because you start eating the second you wake up and you eat until you go to bed. I've never heard anybody talk about the fact that we're eating for that long of a period of time. I've noticed that whenever we talk about intermittent fasting or fasting for a 12-hour window as a health and digestion and gut bacteria tool, people go crazy. But when you focus on the fact that it's not healthy to eat for 16 hours a day either, that was sort of an aha moment for me.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Me too. When I read the circadian rhythm data that says the Nobel Prize in medicine a few years ago went to the scientists looking into how circadian rhythms actually run our bodies, that 80% of our body's functions work on circadian rhythms, this means that our gut needs rest, our bacteria needs rest. When it's dark outside, that is a time that our body switches into a different mode. When I understood that, I thought, wow, why is it that we're eating so late into the night and not giving our gut a break? We know we need sleep. So why don't we ever talk about giving your gut a rest, which is just as important as giving your brain a rest?
--:-- That could improve so many things in our body. You have an early dinner, you have a great night's sleep because now you have your growth hormone pumping, repairing everything. You wake up and you feel like a different person, like a million bucks. We know that, but we still don't do it. In America, at least we don't do it. I think the circadian rhythm science is just going to get stronger and stronger because people are just starting to understand what an impact that's going to have. Taking a break, just a break. It's not intermittent fasting per se. It's just how our bodies were designed. Thousands of years ago, you didn't have Uber Eats to call at midnight.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I'm just laughing because I'm sitting here thinking, it's not like we call sleep intermittent wakefulness. It makes a lot of sense that your medical recommendation based on your expertise is that your gut needs 12 hours of not having to digest food in order to have your gut bacteria remain healthy and have your gut in balance. It makes sense.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Yeah. And we know how much poor sleep we talk about all the time. Poor sleep makes you depressed, poor sleep makes you eat more, poor sleep. It's the same thing when you get poor gut rest and you're eating all the time. The studies are very clear.
--:-- Now, why intermittent fasting got such a bad rap is because the colloquial science, the fitness world, said, "Oh, if you want to do intermittent fasting, the way to do it is eat late into the night and then don't eat all day. Don't eat until 12 or one or two." That has not been shown in the science to be helpful in weight loss. It has not been shown to be the way to do it for optimal health because our bodies don't work on that cycle. We are supposed to be eating during the wakeful hours. That can be delayed. We don't need to eat first thing in the morning. But eating an early dinner and having the fasting start in the evening is something that I don't see a lot of fitness and health influencers talk about, which is the way it's supposed to be done. We're supposed to give our body time to digest so we get better sleep, better growth hormone production, more rest to our gut so that we can wake up less bloated and be happier and healthier.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I have this morning routine so that I'm not as bloated: the three Fs. Fantastic. And you know what? That's F number four. Dr. Shaw, if you've got a simple morning routine that can help us not be bloated, I'm all ears. But I also want to take a quick pause and be sure that before we learn your 3F morning routine, that you and I are properly digesting everything that we've already learned from you. So why don't I try to recap what we've learned, and then you can jump into your 3F morning routine?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Yeah.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Number one, bloating means that your gut bacteria is mad at you. Number two, bloating can be caused by a ton of different things, not just what we ate over the holidays, not just stress, not just hormones, but a ton of different things. That's important to know because when you feel bloated, what I've learned so far is that it's a symptom that your gut is out of whack and those bacteria in your gut are mad at you.
--:-- Now, you've told us what food to avoid. I realized I was making a major mistake because I was beelining it for the broccoli and the cauliflower on the crudité platter. I'm not going to do that anymore. I don't know about you, but as I've been listening to Dr. Amy Shaw, I'm here in the tough love and I am starting to take this very seriously. Number one, we got to get the comfortable pants whenever we're bloated. So don't torture yourself. But number two, I really get why it's important to prioritize your microbiome health and to take it seriously. Dr. Shaw, thank you for sharing all that with us. Knowing all of that, I'm excited to learn this 3F morning routine formula because I know you say that you kind of pull it all together in these three Fs and you do it every morning. So tell us about it.
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Every morning, I wake up and I'm like, "Okay, fasting is number one. Have I fasted for 12 hours?" If I have, I'm not going to have my first meal yet. Because I might have stopped on some days later, seven or eight. I might say I wake up at six and I'm like, "Okay, I'm not going to eat yet. I'm actually going to go exercise." So fitness is the second F. So fasting, fitness, and then when I'm ready to eat, it's fermented and fiber food. Those three Fs — fasting, fitness, and the food — make up my morning routine so that I'm not as bloated. I fix my circadian rhythm so our gut bacteria are happy with us. We start our day with something that is nourishing for that gut microbiome so that over days and weeks time, we can experience less bloating, we can have better body composition — who doesn't want that? — and better hormone health.
--:-- Mel Robbins: First of all, I love it. It's super simple. Secondly, I love the fact that when you said fasting, you basically wake up when you wake up and you go, "Okay, wait a minute. I'm just not going to eat until I give my gut a 12-hour rest." So even if you were at a wedding or at a party last night and you were out and you stopped on the way home for some pizza at 11 o'clock at night, you're sound asleep by midnight. When you wake up at nine o'clock in the morning, ask yourself, "Okay, first step is fasting." 12 hours would be that I don't have my first meal until 11 o'clock this morning. And then you said fitness. How much fitness? How long do you need to exercise? Can it be a 10-minute walk? Can it be anything? What is fitness for you?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Fitness for me, and more for the morning routine, is anything. Total in the day, I want to get about 30 minutes. You want to get 30 minutes of sunlight and movement. So the best way to get this done and over with and checked off is go for a 30-minute walk and you're done. It makes so much sense because our bodies are designed to see light in the morning. We're seeing all this research coming out about how important it is to get natural light. You just check it all off in one walk.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Did you know that the best probiotic, the best de-bloating, is actually exercise?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: No, I did not know that.
--:-- Mel Robbins: I didn't know that. I was just about to ask you, how does taking a walk for 30 minutes outside stop bloating and help my gut bacteria be happy? How does that help?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Just like your gut bacteria need sleep — they're like live organisms, they need rest — they also love when you get sunlight and when you exercise. It makes them very happy. They do this crazy dance that produces these chemicals in your body called short-chain fatty acids. They go all over the body. They calm your inflammation. They make you happy. It is the best probiotic you could ever take.
--:-- Mel Robbins: That is so cool. We're trying to produce short-chain fatty acids through so many different things. Everyone's like, "Take this pill to produce short-chain fatty acids. Do this." All we have to do is exercise in sunlight, and all of a sudden our body produces it for ourselves.
--:-- The other thing that I like about what you're saying is the second that you said your gut bacteria is mad at you. If I think in simple terms, which I like to do because if a concept is simple, I can apply it to my life. When you tell me the game here, everybody, is make your gut bacteria happy. And when you tell me that there are some things that you can do every single day to just make your gut bacteria happy, which is going to help with bloating, which is going to help with how you feel, which is going to help with your mood — one of which is getting good sleep and getting rest from needing to digest, which you just said is about fasting. The other one is take your gut bacteria for a walk, 30 minutes outside, and all of a sudden it's doing its happy dance and it's making you feel better. We all know this to be true. And then you said the third F is fiber and something else. So what does that mean?
--:-- Dr. Amy Shaw: Fermented and fibrous food. The first meal of your day is your best chance. Research shows that the first meal of the day is statistically shown to be our best chance at improving our health in general, but definitely our gut and hormone health. I want to tell every woman out there: use this opportunity to improve your hormone and gut health.
--:-- A perfect breakfast would be something like yogurt, nuts, berries, and maybe some ginger tea on the side, like a chai, because ginger and peppermint are two things that you can really take to make your gut bacteria happy. A tofu scramble or an egg scramble with veggies. You want high protein, so 30 grams of protein. You've got your fiber in there with your vegetables. If you're having a yogurt or probiotic cottage cheese, or you're going to have a little spoon of sauerkraut or a little glass of water with some raw apple cider vinegar, you're going to get your fermented food. Use your breakfast as your chance to kill it. My hormones and my gut bacteria are so happy because I started my morning with a high-protein, high-fiber, high-fermented food breakfast.
--:-- Mel Robbins: It makes sense because if you apply this advice around making your gut bacteria happy, you just gave it 12 hours of rest from needing to take a break from the constant eating. You then made it do its happy dance with the walk and the sunlight. And now the first thing that you're putting in your stomach is not something that is going to cause all kinds of gases — I don't even know if that's a word, but you know what I mean — it's not going to make the balloon inflate. You're dropping into your stomach the things that it needs to work properly for you and stay happy. That makes a lot of sense.
--:-- Isn't that pretty amazing what you and I just learned from Dr. Amy Shaw? What you've listened to so far isn't the whole conversation. We were only 40 minutes in with Dr. Amy Shaw, and there was already so much information that she threw at you and me. So here's what I decided to do while I was in the studio with her. I decided, let's just hit the pause button right here. I want to give you a chance to digest this information about bloating, about how your gut works. I want you to try the 3F morning routine because that's a great place to start.
--:-- We've got a lot more to cover with Dr. Amy Shaw, and you and I don't have time to listen to a two-hour episode. That's why we're dividing this into two different amazing episodes. In the next episode, which is dropping right after this one, we are going to cover so many more essential questions about your gut health. We're going to cover: Do probiotics work? Should you take one? How can you do the probiotic thing naturally? What are the steps to creating a healthy microbiome naturally in terms of ongoing? Does stress impact your gut health? And what can you do about it? And the burning question, which is why I reached out to Dr. Amy Shaw in the first place: Dr. Amy, what is your medical recommendation — knowing that this is not medical advice, but you know what I mean, as a doctor — how do I do a five-day gut reset that I can follow anytime I feel bloated?
--:-- So guess what? The very next episode of The Mel Robbins Podcast is Dr. Amy Shaw walking you through that step-by-step, walking you through the five-day gut reset. Right now, you've got what you need. Try the 3F morning routine. Follow all the advice you just heard. Stay away from the crudité and the alcohol. Get your sleep. And by God, make sure you forward this to all your friends who are bloated and complaining about it. And be right back here when the next episode drops so we can walk through that five-day reset.
--:-- In case nobody else tells you, I'm going to tell you: I love you. I believe in you. And I believe in your ability to create a better life. Thank you for investing this time in yourself and in your health. Thank you for spending your time with me. I love you, and I will see you and all that gorgeous gut bacteria inside you with Dr. Amy Shaw when this conversation continues in the very next episode. See you there.
--:-- Mel Robbins: We're rolling. Are we rolling? Oh, God. Oh, my God. Okay, here we go. Okay. Okay. Okay. I am so bloated. There, I said it. Wait, how do I want to... and how do I actually... I'm trying to request access. It's not doing it. This does not feel right. Okay. Okay, great. Let me see if there was one other thing that I wanted to say. Let me think about this. Okay, let me try this. I have so many questions. I'm trying not to go all over the place. Hold on a second. I just lost her on screen. I don't know what I did. Can you bring her back? I don't know where you went. Oh, I can go down to Zoom. Hold on. Oh, there you are. Okay, great. Awesome. Anything else? All right. I think we're amazing. Thank you.
--:-- Mel Robbins: Oh, and one more thing. And no, this is not a blooper. This is the legal language. You know, what the lawyers write and what I need to read to you. This podcast is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. I'm just your friend. I am not a licensed therapist, and this podcast is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional. Got it? Good. I'll see you in the next episode.
