Hi guys, Kris from Custom Fitness here, your Amarillo personal trainer. Today we’re going to be talking about bulging belly syndrome. If you have any questions about today’s blog, then please give us a call at (806)-322-3188
Are you or someone you know experiencing bulging belly syndrome? Alright, so it’s not a medical term, but it’s something that if you go out in public these days and you people watch for a little bit, you’ll notice that more and more people are having issues with this. It can be anything from gaining too much weight and just not doing anything intentional about health and fitness, to those people who are following a great plan, but they just can’t seem to get their belly under control to do what they want it to do.
Now, there’s a few different reasons this could happen and we’re just going to brush the surface on this today, but … why is it happening? There’s really three different areas that we see most often that it’s coming from. Number one would obviously be weight gain or fat gain. That can be coming from elevated stress levels, lack of sleep, obviously over consumption of food, lack of exercise, there’s a million different ways, but the sleep and stress are a lot of things that people just really don’t think about. They figure that even though they’re stressed out and they’re not sleeping, that they should still be losing weight. And the body’s in crisis mode at that point, it just doesn’t do it.
Number two as to why you might have a bulging belly, would be digestive distress. You say, “What on Earth is that?” Well, digestive distress can come from several different reasons, like yo-yo dieting, autoimmune issues, things like that. But most often the digestive distress boils down to inflammation where the stomach is just so inflamed on the inside, the intestines are inflamed. So think about it like you cut your finger and it starts to swell, it gets infected. The same thing happens to your intestines as they start to be unhappy with the foods that you’re feeding them or they’re … you’re getting the wrong kinds of foods or maybe you’re not chewing your food well enough. Those kinds of things can all start to affect those inflammation levels, as well as several other factors.
Number three, again one that a lot of people don’t think about. If you are … especially a postpartum mom, someone who’s had children, it’s high likely to affect you. Some people are born with this condition, some people have gained too much excess weight and end up causing this condition. And that’s call diastasis. That’s where your abdominal muscles where you would normally have the line straight down the middle from the six pack if you were to have a six pack, then that is actually connective tissue and that starts to separate.
Whether or not you have a six pack is not the question, it’s just that’s where it’s at … those muscles start to separate and open and that actually leaves less muscle wall between your skin and your intestinal wall, which makes your stomach less happy. But that can lead to some bulging abdominal issues as well, because then you’re not able to contract the abs the same way, everything’s kind of spilling to the front, if you will.
So, how do we fix these things. First off, it’s the long game, it’s not the short game. And it doesn’t matter which one of these you’re looking at. A lot of people try those quick fixes for diet and weight loss and those kinds of things and as I stated before, weight loss sometimes … the yo-yo effect as we go down and we gain again and we go down and we gain again, that in itself can cause digestive distress and cause problems within the body to make it harder and harder to lose weight each time.
When you’re looking at how to fix these issues, any one of them, it’s looking at the long game. It’s looking at consistency over time with healthy behaviors. So as we move forward in this, if you have the issue of excess weight gain, then you’re looking at healthy behaviors over time. If you have the issue of digestive distress, then you’re looking at possibly reducing the allergenic foods in your diet and focusing more on whole foods, really again consistency over time. Trying it out, seeing what happens. You could also go for a food allergy blood test and see how your body’s responding to those things, as well.
The third one, the diastasis is where a lot of people feel like they are completely lost. Some people don’t even know what diastasis, you’ve never heard the word, don’t know what it is. As I said, it’s that separation of the muscle tissue typically after pregnancy, but again could be born with it, could cause it from weight gain. The best way to fix that is to get checked out and that’s something that we can do here. And then start a diastasis recovery program to know what movements to do to heal that and what movements not to do. It’s equivalent to a broken bone and if you don’t know what movements to do to stabilize that bone and keep it in place so it doesn’t keep moving, then you end up with worse problems. It’s kind of the same idea there.
If you’ve got some issues with belly bulging or you know someone who does, those are things that easily can start to see progress within the first month of being consistent in your healthy intentions, whether it’s exercise, nutrition. Obviously when we’re talking about the gut, we’re looking a lot at the nutrition factor. That’s usually about 75 to 80% of what you’re needing to do.
As you start to look more at that and be more intentional about that, you’ll start to see some great changes there, especially for the men in your life who have that hardened belly, that hardened gut that starts to … it not only grows, but then it becomes super hard. That typically is a hardened fat there, a visceral fat that’s causing that distension and that issue and that can lead to a lot of bigger problems, like cardiovascular disease. Those are things that we can easily start to chip away at and bring health back with healthy eating habits.
If that’s something that is of interest to you, obviously we do all of that here at the studio, so you can do all those things on your own. Or if you feel like you need a little extra guidance, you need to a plan, you need to know what to do and what on Earth is the problem, we’d love to talk more with you. We’ve also got a challenge coming up on September 10th called Clean and Lean where it’s going to be focused on eating more whole foods, working through some of these issues, and really helping people to reduce that gut size.
The best part about Clean and Lean … and this is the first day of announcing it, so go tell all your friends, is that we’ll be checking compliance on this. It’s more of a habit challenge than anything. Yes, you’re going to see results. You’re going to get more energy. You’re going to build muscle, you’re going to lose fat, going to lose some of that gut, but as you’re going through it, if you stay 80% compliant with the program to where you’re doing it daily and following what we’re asking you to follow, you are going to get put in the grand prize drawing for two nights in Vegas, which I think is a pretty awesome prize for staying consistent. You get to go and have fun and have some joy thrown in there, as well, because we all need that, too.
Again, the challenge starts 9/10 and if you sign up now, you get to workout for free until the challenge starts. So we’d love to have you come join us, come check us out, see what all we do.
So, if you are wanting the accountability and help with creating an action plan to see results, or are wanting to someone to help create a workout plan to push you to your greatest potential, then that’s what we’re here for. We work with our clients not just on fitness, but also nutrition. What we do is we will ensure that you are supported throughout every aspect of your health and wellness journey, and that includes making those eating changes. We have an entire team of dedicated professionals to help you with your health and fitness goals. To get your consultation set up, give us a call at 806-322-3188 or email us at info@customfitness.biz At Custom Fitness, we are YOUR personal trainers in Amarillo, Texas. Have a great day.