7-Day Debloat Protocol

If you’re a woman over 35 who feels constantly bloated, inflamed, or puffy, this episode will change everything. The 7-Day Debloat Protocol is a simple, science-backed plan to flatten your stomach, calm your gut, reduce inflammation, and drop up to 2 kilos of bloat in one week.

Today, I break down the exact reasons you’re bloated and the step-by-step method to reset your gut, reduce fluid retention, and feel lighter, more energised, and more confident in your clothes, without dieting, restricting, or starving yourself.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• What bloating really means for women over 35
The link between hormones, gut motility, perimenopause, stress and digestion.

•  Why the “healthy foods” you’re eating might be the reason you’re bloated
The FODMAP paradox and why clean eating sometimes backfires.

•  How sodium and hidden processed foods create overnight weight gain
Why the scale jumps even when you ate perfectly.

•  The stress–gut connection
How cortisol, emotional eating and sleep deprivation trigger bloating and inflammation.

•  The full 7-Day Debloat Protocol
A precise plan to reset your digestion, reduce inflammation, restore gut balance, and drop 2kg of bloat fast.

•  How to identify your personal bloating triggers
Understand sodium, FODMAPs, fibre, hydration, hormones and digestive load.

•  Simple meals that calm the gut instead of inflaming it
The combinations that flatten your stomach instead of distending it.

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Transcript

Okay, sis, you know I got your back because today we are talking about something that every woman over 35 and definitely over 40 knows too damn well, bloating. You know, that's that glamorous sort of, that really sexy sensation of looking three months pregnant, even though you barely ate anything that day. So if this is you, honey, I just want you to take a breath.

I promise you are not the problem. You're not overreacting and you are for sure not imagining it. There are real biological reasons why your stomach is blowing up like a baboon.

(0:29 - 0:47)

And today I'm going to show you exactly how we can reduce that bloating, the inflammation, calm down your gut and realistically lose up to two kilos of bloat just this week. What is up, you gorgeous, fabulous creatures? And welcome to another week, another episode of the Losing It podcast. You're here with Kylie Pax, Australia's emotional eating coach.

(0:48 - 2:01)

And if there is one thing your girl knows plenty about, it is being on her weight loss journey and even making progress, but waking up with a stomach that is reaching out to next year's calendar. And no matter how much weight the bathroom scale might tell you that you're losing, you still feel fat as fuck. So let's start today by talking about why us females, 35, 40, 50 plus, have such problems with stomach bloating.

Now, first off, it's super important to remember that just in the same way, everything on our outer body is changing. Honey, there is not a day that I don't wake up and see new wrinkles, more sagging skin. I swear my boobs and my butt are in a race to see who can reach the ground first.

And just in the same way that my outer body is changing, your inner environment is changing too. You have a completely different digestive landscape than you did in your 20s. Your hormones are shifting, stress levels are higher, and your gut becomes more and more sensitive.

So now the foods that you used to eat, like when you did your Macca's runs and all those things as a teenager, now they turn your stomach into a crime scene. So let's look at the five main reasons today why your stomach might be bloating. And of course, hello, what to do about it, because we all want to get that bloatation right down.

(2:01 - 7:31)

The first reason is, you know, you guessed it, our hormones. When your estrogen levels drop, as they start to do in your late 30s and then into your early 40s, so too does your digestion slow down. So that means gut motility slows down.

You become way more sensitive to gas, feeling full all the time, being inflamed. It's because your microbiome have changed. And let's be real, they're like the little princesses of your body.

They run the entire show. So if they are upset, honey, everybody is upset. This is why your bloating gets worse around your period, if you've still got them.

This is why some days you wake up with a flat stomach, but then the minute you eat one crumb, you can't button your Gs anymore. It's not in your head. This is an issue of hormones.

Now, the second reason why you might find yourself suffering from a bloated stomach is kind of obvious, but I'm still going to spell it out for you anyway. Girl, it's the extra salt and the crazy ass processed foods that we are throwing down our gobs like there's no tomorrow. This is the truth that you don't want to hear, but you know me, I'm not going to sugarcoat things.

That salt that they so carefully weave and craft into the foods that you feel like you can't say no to is making you look like a fat, puffy fucker fish. What is a fucker fish? It's making you look like a puffer fish. Even the foods that they package as being healthy, like your soup, dips, wrap, salad dressings, these are loaded with extra sodium that had you been making the food yourself, you probably wouldn't be putting in there.

Why do we care? Because it makes the food super delicious, but it also is pulling excess water into your gut. Water that could best be used in plumping out your skin. Why are we looking so wrinkled and why are we buying all these creams and wrinkle creams? Because we are leeching the water out of the places that are least important and into the places where it needs to go when your stomach is in crisis.

This water is going to sit in your stomach and your intestines and now you're puffy and swollen and you're like gaining a kilo overnight and you can't figure out why. It's not fat, it's fluid. Now the third reason why this could be happening to you, and we all fall victim to this at some point in our lives, I know I was stuck here for like basically my whole 20s and probably part of my 30s as well, is thinking that you're eating healthy, but the healthy foods that you are eating do not agree with your body.

Again, they may have fully agreed when you were in your Hungry Jacks and KFC era, when you were in your late teens, but not now. Now at your current stage of life, things like onion, garlic, even apples, cauliflower, chickpeas are a huge culprit, all those beans and lentils, sometimes broccoli and certain grains. These are the foods that fall into the FODMAP area.

So basically they're fermentable carbs that produce gas that's got to come out of somewhere. If your gut is ultra sensitive right now, due to a lifetime of dieting, as mine is, then I can eat the healthiest food, like it could be brown rice, quinoa, sometimes even crackers I make my damn self, but it's still too much for my gut, which is why I'm personally on a gut healing protocol right now. It's not always the food babe, sometimes it's just the digestive load.

The fourth reason why you could be falling into this bloated stomach trap is the one that we all know, but we also don't want to know. It's stress, it's cortisol, and it's lack of sleep. This is your mantra to live and breathe by.

If you are stressed, your gut is also going to be stressed. Why do we even care so much? Because your stress is slowing down your digestion and slowly increasing inflammation. It is literally changing the way your gut contracts.

So if you're eating while you're under stress or rushing and multitasking and inhaling your food, you're swallowing air, you're not chewing properly, you are just creating a big gas bomb that's going to have to come out of somewhere later on. And just a little side note, that raise in cortisol is also the culprit that makes you crave the salty and sugary foods to start with, which is just throwing more fuel on the fire. The fifth reason why you might be suffering with some badass bloating is because of constipation.

Now, most bloating is usually trap gas with nowhere else to go. But if you're not getting your steps in, or you're dehydrated, or you're sitting at your desk all day, you're going to be constipated and your gut is slowing down and everything is just sitting in there like a sewer. Movement and water are your new BFFs.

I promise you half your bloating could disappear overnight if you started hydrating your damn self properly and took a 30-minute walk each day. So let's talk a little about how to drop two kilos of bloat this week, baby. Now, you know I'm always going to expose myself like a flasher in a dark alley, but I want to make sure it's really clear.

We're not talking about fat loss here. We're talking about bloat, fluid, inflammation, trap gas, and digestive stress. It's still going to feel amazing once it's gone.

I'm telling you, I never feel so thin as I do on the days that I have a flat stomach. So step one is I want you to reduce your sodium intake for the next 72 hours only and see how you feel. I'm talking cutting back on processed soup, crackers, deli meat, takeaway food, all those sauces that come in jars, frozen meals, anything that's instant, basically.

We're just going to eliminate that for 72 hours and replace it with whole foods. Now, just any kind of whole foods? No, no, no. I'm going to break down the exact ones that will help reduce bloat and which ones will help make it worse.

But I promise you when you follow this protocol, your stomach is going to flatten shockingly fast, like shockingly. Now, the next thing you're going to do is slow down your fiber intake. I know fiber is important and we all want to move things through our bowels, but if you've gone from very low vegetable and fruit intake to ramping it up to 100 overnight, yeah, you're definitely going to blow up like a balloon.

(7:31 - 9:36)

So start first with cooked veggies. Make sure you keep everything cooked. I personally believe that raw is much better for you because you're not molesting any of the enzymes.

But we need to start with cooked first. You've got to increase your fiber gradually. Don't just go from zero to hero.

I promise your gut is going to thank you for this. The third step is to identify and reduce any of your top FODMAP triggers. Now, I luckily, thank God, do not have a problem with the onion and garlic, but things like chickpeas or even sometimes sugar-free gum and those protein bars, I thought protein bars were going to be the solution to my first of all protein intake and then my sweet cravings.

No, no. They just made a bloated stomach situation XXL worse. So cut those for at least seven days.

The difference that you will experience is going to be immediate. The fourth thing you're going to do is hydrate and move your cute little boob. Make sure you're getting at least one and a half to two liters of water a day.

I try and aim for three. Walk for 20 to 30 minutes. It's the secret sauce to getting everything moving because the fifth thing you're going to do is eat really simple basic meals for just one week.

Now, as an Aussie, I was brought up on very bland, plain food. I don't know if this is the story of all Aussies. Feel free to let me know, but it's just how my mom cooked.

We didn't have any of the spices and sauces and herbs and all the wonderful things that we now have available to us in society. When I was growing up, babe, it was chops with mashed potato and probably some peas and carrots that had been frozen and come out of a packet. I mean, bless my mom's little cotton socks.

She was a working woman. My dad was also working. I get it.

We're very busy, but this was not the ideal situation to foster healthy gut microbiome. So you're going to dial it right back for the next week. Just keep things really simple like chicken and sweet potato and zucchini or salmon and sweet potato and green bean or do eggs with some sourdough and spinach.

I actually am right into my Greek yogurt and berries and chia seeds era. But whatever you do, keep it basic, keep it simple and don't put a thousand things on your plate just for the one week. I promise you, you'll notice the difference.

(9:36 - 10:10)

Another thing that I did over the past three months to wildly reduce my stomach bloat is I reduced carbohydrates and I 10xed my protein intake. Now, this is coming from somebody who has spent the last 35 years on a plant based diet and therefore my animal protein intake was basically zero. It took me a while to join the party, but I finally realized that now that I'm in menopause, I needed to preserve what little muscle I have left and strengthen it for the years to come, which meant for me starting to include more animal protein and dairy back into my diet.

(10:10 - 13:24)

Now I had always been eating eggs, so that's totally fine. But what used to be a typical day for me, which would look like breakfast of maybe a chia pudding, coconut yogurt, berries and sweet things like honey was then followed up by fruit smoothies, raw veggies and eggs and hummus for lunch. I would then dive into some chocolate and sweet biscuits in the afternoon before hitting a big bowl of pasta or something like that for the evening.

Now, while that was fantabulous in my twenties, it doesn't work for me in my fifties. Pasta is a distant memory and I am now eating carbohydrates more in the form of fresh fruit and veggies, but also including low carb that incorporate more seed fiber than actual wheat fiber. So make sure you experiment.

I'm fine with brown rice, but white rice is not my friend. I'm happy eating chicken breast, but I still can't bring myself to eat red meat. No matter what combos you decide is right for you and your body, you will know you've hit the mark when your stomach is flat or flatter and you feel strong, amazing, empowered, energized, clear thinking, focused, capable and back in control of your life.

Now, there is one more thing that I need to mention. I feel like it's self-explanatory, but I know a lot of you out there are still right into your alcohol and wondering why your stomach is six months pregnant. Swap out the alcohol for kombucha or green tea.

Also make sure if you're wanting to have fruit that you're actually having fresh fruit, not dried fruit. And then the thing that we all know we need to do, but I really, really fucking hate doing is slowing down the speed at which you chew your food properly, yada, yada, yada. But what they say is true.

Your digestion begins before the food even reaches your stomach. So give it a chance to work. Now, the last thing I just want to say today is, of course, I need to add my little disclaimers in here.

If you are finding that you are unexpectedly losing a lot of weight or gaining, or there's blood in your stool, you've got severe pain with your bloating, any of these types of things, go see your GP sister, because of course, it might not always be basic gut issues and you deserve the proper care. Here's what I want you to take away from today's message. You are not broken.

You are not doing anything wrong. Your body is not trying to punish you. It's communicating with you.

This bloating that we suffer with is a signal that something else is going wrong and it needs to be attended to. Inflammation is a signal. That fluid retention, it's a signal.

And once you understand what your body is trying to tell you, then you are standing in your power and you can change everything fast. So try this seven-day debloat protocol this week. Send me your photos.

Message me with your wins. I love seeing your transformations. And if you want help healing your emotional eating, ending the binging and bloating cycle and losing weight without dieting, you know my Bombshell Blueprint membership is open and we are doing our final intake for the year.

Honey, you don't have to guess anymore. All you have to do is start. I'm sending you tremendous amounts of love.

I will see you again next week. Until then, gorgeous ones, bye for now. Thank you so much for tuning in.

Remember to shimmy your butt over to KyliePax.com and join me inside of the Bombshell Blueprint so you can stop emotional eating and start losing your way now. You'll also find helpful notes and resources inside my past podcast that will help you lose your way without losing your sanity. I will see you next week.