How I Cured My Bloating - What I Ate Wednesday {24.4.19}


Since mentioning my bloating problem on Instastories a few weeks ago, I have been flooded with messages and comments from so many of you sharing your stories of similar issues. I could not believe how many other women suffer with the same thing! If you are completely unaware of what I'm talking about, in a nutshell I've struggled with bad bloating or what I now know to be "gut inflammation" ever since having my second baby (Eduardo). It struck a few months postpartum, long after I had reached my pre-baby weight. It was incredibly frustrating because although I looked normal each morning or for the first half of the day, every evening after dinner my stomach would stick out to the point where I looked about 4/5 months pregnant. A few people suggested I had developed an intolerance to gluten or dairy but I tried cutting both of those out and none of it worked. 

Since falling pregnant for the third time back in 2016 and then going onto have Alessia straight after and Andrea straight after that, the bloating seemed to go away as it never affected me as badly when I was carrying my babies (or perhaps I just didn't notice it as much as my stomach was never flat then anyway!). But several months after having Andrea it came back with a vengeance. Each morning I would start the day with a relatively flat stomach (for me at least!) and almost every evening after dinner I looked like I was expecting baby number 5. (I am definitely NOT, by the way!) I was extremely uncomfortable, it made me feel self-conscious and frustrated despite my efforts at working out every morning and having reached my goal weight. 

"Intermittent Fasting" has become a bit of a craze in the diet/fitness world and although I had heard of the tremendous benefits and it was first brought to my attention by my OB/GYN, I had always shied away from the idea of anything with the word "fasting" in it due to my past history with an eating disorder. I personally do not believe that cutting out food groups or restricting calories in anyway is the best option for someone like me, no matter how many years I maybe recovered. That being said, I started to notice that I had unintentionally fallen into a pattern of intermittent fasting without realising it and it was not anywhere near as restrictive or triggering as I had originally assumed it to be. 

Let me explain...when I was pregnant with Andrea I suffered with awful heartburn. This was always worse later on in the day, more specifically when I ate late at night. So I stopped eating dessert or anything sweet every evening and instead moved it around to earlier in the day. (I still had to have something yummy!) That got me out of the habit of eating late anyway, I felt better for it and just never really took it back up after giving birth. Since having Andrea my routine shifted to a little bit earlier and I now wake up at 5:30am and go to bed at 8:30pm. Our kids have always eaten around 5pm and I just naturally eat with them, or sometimes a little bit after. On the weekends we might even eat at 4:30pm, depending on how the day pans out! 

I began to notice that whenever I ate before 6pm I was less bloated and my tummy felt better. If I ate later in the evening I had a hard time falling asleep that night, I felt sluggish the next day and my bloating was much worse. I used to eat breakfast around 8:30am anyway, after the older children had gone to school and I had fed the babies, dogs and cleaned up the kitchen. Now that we live a bit farther from the school, Jonathan is normally home from drop-off a bit later and we like to eat breakfast together so I started eating at around 9am. This basically gives me an "intermittent fast" of 14-15 hours. I only became aware of this after realising that by doing it for the past week or so, my bloating had pretty much disappeared! I do not know if you can really call this a true "fast" because from what I've read online intermittent fasting generally has to start at 16 hours, but in any case it doesn't matter because this is what has worked for me and I can't tell you how much it has changed my life! I feel so much better, I no longer go to bed feeling uncomfortable and bloated, I have more energy, I sleep like a log every night...and another benefit which may be TMI...I am SO regular!! Which was never the case for me so...there you go! 

Some final points on this topic though; I am not a nutritionist or a doctor. I am just a woman who has gone through five pregnancies and this is how my body reacted to the hormonal changes that happened afterwards. I feel that this way of eating has benefited me greatly HOWEVER please be aware that everyone is different and I would encourage anyone to speak to their doctor if you have any questions or concerns. I am not qualified to give nutritional advice. What worked for me may not work for you! 

What I'm Wearing

Clothing

Top & trousers - Whistles (old)
Shoes - River Island (old)
Scarf - Hermes 

Jewellery

14K Gold 5 Letter Necklace - Maya Brenner (gifted)
PerlĂ©e Signature Gold Bracelet - Van Cleef & Arpels
Soleste Earrings in Rose Gold - Tiffany's

Makeup

Benefit Hoola Bronzer (gifted)

Onto what I ate today:


Breakfast 9:04am
I had my usual breakfast of 1/2 a cup of sprouted oats, 1 and 1/4 cups of unsweetened vanilla almond milk, raisins, a medjool date, cinnamon and a black coffee. About 30 minutes prior to this I also had another black coffee and when I did my workout at 5:30am I drank a whole 900ml bottle of water! Some people have asked me whether I get hungry for breakfast at that time of the morning and the honest answer is no, not at all! My tummy doesn't start rumbling until about 8/8:30am. 


Snack 11am
At about 11 o'clock I had a snack of a banana and some walnuts. Walnuts are my favourite - I also love pecans, almonds and Brazil nuts! 


Lunch 1:34pm
For lunch I had a wholewheat flatbread (wrap) with 1/2 an avocado and 2 hardboiled eggs mashed up with some Himalayan pink salt & black pepper. On the side I had some chopped tomatoes, cucumber and balsamic vinegar on a bed of rocket. I also drank another 900ml bottle of water. 


Afternoon Snack 4:09pm
After the school run I had a much-deserved frothy almond milk latte (third coffee of the day!) with one of my homemade Easter chocolate chip cookies. These are my weakness...I made them with mini-eggs for Easter and they never last very long in our house! You can get to the recipe I use here, although I omit the peppermint bark and just add whatever other seasonal treats I want! In this case it was mini-eggs.


Dinner 5:31pm
For dinner we had Risotto Verde from Rachel Allen's Favourite Food at Home cookbook. This is a recipe I make time and time again for our family and was one of the first things I cooked for my dad when I was a teenager! I found the recipe online here. With my dinner I drank another 900ml bottle of water and then before bed I took my multivitamin & fish oil. I take Pregnacare Breastfeeding as well as vitamin D drops but I normally take the drops whenever I remember to throughout the day...I leave the bottle out on the kitchen table as I give them to Andrea & Alessia too.

Hopefully you enjoyed this week's What I Ate Wednesday and if you do suffer from bloating or gut inflammation, let me know what has helped you! I would love to hear from you. 



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Summer Term




It's finally getting nice enough to go outside without a big heavy coat and boots so I am embracing all of the lighter spring colours and fashion! I recently picked up these pretty nude Iris & Ink espadrilles which are SO comfortable and easy to wear. I love nude shoes with a skinny white jean. The jeans are from J.Brand and the shirt is...a surprise ;) I can't actually tell you where it's from yet but just know that it is part of an exciting project I've been working on for months & months!

At the time of taking these photos I still had my Easter decor up, you can kind of see my Easter wreath peeking out from behind me! That's all put away now and as much as I'm always a bit sad to see the spring decorations go, it was also nice for our house to get a bit of a refresh!

I hope you're all enjoying the beginning of summer term, especially if you have little ones at school...I can't believe we're already here! As Andrea is 8 months old now and therefore a lot less reliant on me for breastfeeding I have been doing the after-school pickups and am loving it. It sounds a bit sad but I really missed doing the school runs since having the two babies. It makes me feel more connected to the older two, and I love our little car chats every afternoon before the chaos of having to juggle all four of them when we get back home ensues!

Eduardo's Frozen Party


Welcome to Eduardo's Frozen Party! Unlike Alessia's party, we were not so blessed with the weather. So the temperature dropped and although we were glad it remained dry, some of us were well & truly "frozen"! I actually had to keep Andrea indoors for most of the afternoon as he already had a cold and it was just too nippy for a small baby! But the other children threw their coats on and loved it...I think children forget about the cold so long as they're having fun! 


Eduardo has been totally in love with Frozen ever since he was a toddler so it's no surprise that he wanted a recreation of Emilia's 4th birthday party! Regardless of the cold weather, we were so happy to be able to host this at our home and I think it made the day even more special. The first photos that you see above are of Eduardo's initial reaction to meeting Elsa & Anna as they walked up the steps of our garden. He was so excited!


Eduardo chose to invite his class from school to his party, along with two other girls from different classes that he is also friends with. It was a totally different vibe to Alessia's party but I was really pleased that it gave me the opportunity to get to know more parents from his form group. I haven't been the best at socialising since I had Alessia & Andrea and unfortunately this change happened around the same time that Eduardo started school. So I feel like I made a better effort with getting to know Emilia's year (as she started pre-babies) whereas when it comes to Eduardo's I'm totally clueless. Added to this is the fact that Eduardo's friend group is primarily made up of girls...so I did know a few of the girls' mums but not enough of the boys'! 


List of Vendors: 

These guys styled the event, brought all of the props & games, provided the goody bags, the children's food, adult food, balloons, decorations and made everything look beautiful. They also organised the children's entertainment which included a visit from Elsa & Anna. They were amazing at keeping everything running seamlessly!

When I heard we were getting a teepee for the back garden, I didn't realise it was going to be as epic as this one! I had sort of envisaged a normal sized children's teepee like the one Alessia had at her puppy party or the ones the kids have in their bedrooms...so when the crew came to assemble it a few days beforehand I was pretty shocked to say the least! Hahaha! It looked amazing and definitely helped to keep the cold breeze out.

How incredible was Eduardo's Frozen cake?! I am so in awe of how professional bakers can create this kind of beauty...and get it to taste good too! I'm not a huge chocolate cake fan but I had absolutely no problem devouring this! The cake pops are my personal favourites though...as these kind come with triple the frosting! 

We have worked with Greg countless times before and as always I am so appreciative of how well he captures our children's happy faces on their special day. I think you can all see from the photos here how excited and on top of the world Eduardo was. We also got some beautiful shots of the girls and although Andrea didn't feature for most of the party we even got a few of him!

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