What’s Puffing You Up? (Part 2)

May 11, 2023 Ashley 0 Comments

So, we’ve learned some potential puffy-makers at this point….

But what do we do to figure out which one’s to blame? Which one is actually causing our moonlike mug (and body) in the morning? Well, as mentioned in part one, the first step is to get rid of everything. Yes, all at once. Once the puffiness reduces, then you can add each thing in, one at a time, each week. (And stow the one you re-started the week before again as you start the next potential suspect the next week.) The week you get puffy – bam. That’s your bad guy. If it’s not the last thing on the list, then give yourself a few days to flush out the water retention – and continue. Why? Because there may be more than one face inflater on the list. And you probably want to know all of them. But if you try to take away one thing at a time, the risk is that you’ll stay puffy because two or more items are causing the problem. In other words, if I’m still puffy after I take away gluten (but am also still consuming salt and sugar), that doesn’t mean gluten isn’t making me bloated. It may just mean that the fact that I’m still eating salt or sugar isn’t allowing the inflammation to reduce.

(Ah, the familiar face of someone who sees everything she’s not allowed to eat on the label…)

In application, it might look like this:

First, you reintroduce gluten for a week after eliminating everything. You see nothing, so you proceed. You take out the gluten again and add in sugar only for a week. Sugar makes you puffy, so you stop immediately, wait a few days to lose the fluid and inflammation, and add back dairy only after. Dairy does nothing, so you stop it and have salty food for the next week. Poof – you turn into a parade float so badly after the first day that your rings won’t come off. Keeping out other variables each week ensures that only the food you’re eating (like the sugar or salt) can possibly be causing the problem. Attempting to do it the other way (eliminating one thing at a time), you also may have a compound effect. In other words, perhaps gluten and dairy both have a small inflammatory effect on you. Alone, either doesn’t cause a visible issue. However, when compounded with each other, the small inflammation from each piles on top of each other to make for more of a problem than either do alone. So, your follow up experiment might be to try your two “safe” foods together to see how innocent they really are.

Okay, so you did it. The whole experiment.

And now you know what makes you puffy.

Now what?

(“Treat yo self and make up for lost time!”)

Well, that’s on you, boo boo.

What you do with that information depends on what provides you the most quality of life and what’s most sustainable for you in practice. (In other words, what you can do long term without going crazy and demolishing an entire Baskin Robbins with your face.) As for me, I’ve never been able to maintain an “all or nothing” approach when it comes to diet. I’ve tried. I hated it. I’ve modified since. By making certain foods perma forbidden, you may generate that Eden-esque apple for yourself. And that may end in dietary disaster. (That or make everyone else miserable with your “holier than thou” platform about how you never eat badly. Come off it, gym-bro Bradley. Nobody cares.) Far better is to follow a 90/10 rule – or something close to it – where you avoid those bad things most of the time. Then, once in a while, you treat yourself to them. Some people make it a weekend cheat day. Some people reserve it for special events. Some people just choose to avoid the puff-ifying foods prior to an important date and save the bad ones for those weekends they plan on staying at home and hiding their puffy mug from the public.

Or, you could just choose not to care and feel happy knowing that it’s “just water weight”…

And that it’ll come off as soon as you stow the snacks.