Daily Times

If you’ve never been bloated before, then count yourself lucky. For many, certain foods as well as other outside factors lead to a dramatic swelling of the stomach. And one fitness blogger, Tiffany Brien, wanted to remind the world that if the same happens to you, you’re not on your own. Because if Tiffany, with her washboard stomach, can suffer from the bloat, so can anybody.

She took a photograph of her stomach when she first woke up, and then another one 12 hours later, just before she went to bed. And the difference is incredible. Eager to reassure others that you’re not always exactly as you are portrayed on social media, Brien posted the two pictures to Facebook, and they’ve since been shared over 14,000 times.

“No I’m not six months pregnant. It’s just my food baby,” Brien wrote. “We are not all what we seem on social media. I thought I would share a bad day with you to show you nobody is ‘perfect’ and it is ok to have an off day where your body just decides to not play ball,” she added. Don’t worry girls, it happens to the best of us, all part and parcel of being a female! And clarifying what she thinks is most likely to have caused the arrival of her food baby, Brien explained that “it is a delightful cocktail of lack of sleep, stress, hormones and food intolerances. A mixture for a whole lotta bloat”.

But bloating can really affect you, as Tiffany points out in her post. “To make matters worse it seems to happen at incredibly inconvenient times. On an evening out for dinner in a lovely tight dress. I could be half way into my main course and I suddenly feel uncomfortable and now really unattractive with a big bloated belly!” But as with many of us, Brien can’t be exactly sure what food has triggered the swelling of her stomach.