The Quiet Rise

It is uncomfortable to talk about bloating, but if you live with it, you know how much it affects your daily life. You can eat “healthy,” exercise, and still have a stomach that looks swollen. That was me for years.

So I decided to approach this like a system, not a guessing game.

Instead of asking “What foods are healthy?” I started asking: “What foods keep my stomach calm?”

The only way to truly identify bloating triggers is to reduce food variety to a minimum. Then, test foods one by one.

This is the process:

1. Reduce diet to very few simple foods (for me, it was beef, chicken breast, and eggs at first).
2. Remove high-FODMAP foods completely.
3. Add foods back one at a time. Wait and observe. If bloating appears — remove the food.
4. Move to the next suspect.

It’s slow. It’s boring. But it works.

Foods That Cause Bloating (For Me)

Everyone is different, but these foods consistently caused bloating for me:

• Raw apples
• Oatmeal (even gluten free)
• Oranges
• Juices (orange, cranberry, pomegranate, etc.)
• Gluten (wheat, rye, etc.)
• Raw bananas
• Dates
• All raw vegetables except bell peppers
• Kale!
• Milk products (except fermented and cooked like plain yogurt or homemade cottage cheese)
• Whey protein
• Cookies, cakes, pizza
• Strawberries
• Watermelon
• Cantaloupe
• Candy
• Gum
• Dried prunes
• Nut butters (peanut butter, almond butter, cashew butter)
• Rice Cakes

Some of these are considered “healthy.” But healthy does not mean healthy for me.

That was a very important lesson.

Foods That Do NOT Cause Bloating (For Me)

After a lot of testing, these are the foods I can rely on:

• Eggs
• Egg whites from whole eggs (not carton egg whites)
• Beef
• Fish (salmon, tilapia, cod)
• Shrimp
• Chicken breast
• Mushrooms
• Zucchini
• Squash
• Rice flour
• Almond Flour
• Flax seeds (small amounts)
• Chia seeds (small amounts)
• Paleo protein powder
• Kiwi
• Blueberries
• Blackberries
• Raspberries
• Raw (green) buckwheat – cooked
• Cooked sweet potatoes
• Cooked potatoes
• Cooked homemade cottage cheese
• Cooked plain yogurt
• White jasmine rice (Not all! Lindbergh Organic Jasmine Rice works for me).

This list became the foundation of my diet. From these foods, I can build meals, baked goods, and travel food — without bloating.

The Most Important Thing I Learned

The goal is not to eat everything. The goal is to find your safe foods and build your life around them.