Bloating is extremely common. A 2023 survey found that almost 1 in 7 Americans had experienced bloating in the past week, with women and those with co-occurring gut conditions being more likely to experience it. While bloating can occur at any time, especially if you have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), bloating after a workout is a frequent concern among people who exercise regularly.
A number of different factors can cause workout bloating, from what you ate and drank before your workout to the type of exercise you do. So, how do you reduce workout bloating? Read on to learn why post-workout bloating happens, and how to get relief — fast.
Why You Feel Bloated After a Workout
If you're wondering why bloating happens after exercise, you're not alone. It's extremely common, and a variety of factors can cause it.
Workout bloating, as the name implies, is bloating that occurs during or after a workout, in part due to changes in blood flow that occur during exercise. For most people, it feels like tightness, pressure, or fullness in the abdomen and may be accompanied by other symptoms such as gas, burping, abdominal pain, or distension (where your abdomen expands outward).
While uncomfortable, workout bloating is typically not dangerous. However, it can seriously dampen your day and make it challenging to stick to a consistent workout routine.
What Causes Bloating After Exercise
Many different factors can contribute to abdominal bloating after a gym session, but these are some of the most common things that can cause you to feel bloated:
Blood Flow Changes During Exercise
When you exercise, blood is directed away from your digestive organs towards your working muscles. This can slow stomach emptying, causing food and gas to remain in your digestive tract longer. The longer food sits in your large intestine, the more opportunity there is for your gut bacteria to ferment it, and the more gas is produced.
Swallowing Air During Exercise
Taking deep gulps of air or water during an intense workout can introduce too much air into your digestive system, which can contribute to bloating. If you find that breathing through your mouth or gulping water contributes to your bloating, you may need to adjust your breathing technique and take slower, more mindful sips of water.
Not Hydrating Enough
While it's important to stay hydrated during a workout, if you drink too much water during a workout, it can leave you feeling overly full or bloated. At the same time, if your fluid intake is too low, your digestion can slow down, and you may end up constipated. This is because when stool doesn't move quickly enough through the digestive system, gas can get trapped.
Dehydration can also cause water retention, which can make you feel puffy or bloated. Finally, electrolyte imbalances can affect your gut's muscular contractions, which may cause bloating by triggering cramps or worsening constipation.
High-Intensity Exercise
While a high-intensity exercise routine can be highly beneficial for heart and metabolic health, it can also stress the gut and worsen gastrointestinal symptoms like bloating. This is because during high-intensity workouts, blood vessels contract, diverting blood flow from the gut. This slows stomach emptying and the movement of waste through the intestines, which can cause gas to become trapped and lead to bloating.
High-intensity exercise also triggers the release of cortisol, which can cause temporary inflammation and fluid retention. Both of these can lead to feeling puffy or bloated, which is why some people feel bloated after HIIT workouts or intense weightlifting. Finally, high-intensity exercise can cause heavy breathing, leading to increased air swallowed and bloating as a result.
Wearing Tight Workout Gear
Wearing workout gear that's too tight around the abdomen can worsen abdominal discomfort. While it may not contribute directly to bloating, a bloated stomach will feel more uncomfortable if your clothes are too tight.
Dietary Factors Contributing to Workout Bloating
Both what you eat and when you eat can significantly impact workout bloating. Here are some dietary factors that can cause bloating during or after a workout.
Food and Drinks That Can Cause Workout Bloating
Certain nutrients and foods are more likely to trigger bloating after a workout due to their effects on the digestive tract. Here are some common culprits:
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High-fiber foods: Most of the time, fiber is a great addition to your diet. But when you eat fibrous foods (like legumes, whole grains, fruits, and vegetables) before a workout, they can slow down your digestion and lead to the accumulation of gas in your intestines.
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Artificial sweeteners: Some artificial sweeteners, such as sorbitol and xylitol (both sugar alcohols), are added to energy drinks, flavored waters, protein shakes, and protein bars as sugar substitutes. Since gut bacteria ferment sugar alcohols, they can contribute to gas and bloating.
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High-fat foods: Just like fiber, fat slows down digestion. If you eat a heavy meal right before a workout, the food will sit undigested in your stomach due to delayed gastric emptying and may cause gastrointestinal symptoms like bloating.
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High-salt meals: Eating a very high-salt meal before a workout can lead to fluid retention, which may manifest as bloating.
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Carbonated beverages: Carbonated drinks, like energy drinks, introduce gas bubbles into the digestive tract, which can increase bloating.
Eating Too Close to a Workout
Digestion slows during exercise, causing food to remain in the stomach for longer. That's why meal timing in relation to your workout is a key component of reducing workout bloating.
In general, large meals should be fine if eaten 2 to 4 hours before exercise, as this gives the food time to empty from your stomach. However, if you're doing a long or intense workout, you may need a pre-workout snack to fuel your session. Try to eat your pre-workout snack about 30 to 60 minutes before your workout, and make sure it contains mostly low-fiber carbohydrates. Since these empty from your stomach quickly, you can eat them closer to your workout.
FODMAPs and Digestive Discomfort
If you're living with IBS, you may have heard of the low FODMAP diet. FODMAP stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols, and refers to a group of carbohydrates that are not digested, but are instead fermented by your gut bacteria.
Many people can eat foods high in FODMAPs without experiencing digestive problems, but for those with a FODMAP intolerance (such as those with IBS), eating certain high FODMAP foods can cause GI symptoms like gas, bloating, abdominal pain, constipation, and diarrhea. This, combined with other factors that increase bloating, such as eating too close to your workout or gulping water, can worsen bloating during and after workouts.
How to Reduce Workout Bloating
While bloating after a workout is common, there are many strategies you can use to get rid of bloating and gas.
Time Your Meals Strategically
Remember when we said that eating high-fat or high-fiber meals before working out can lead to bloating? That's because they slow down digestion, which can cause gas to get trapped in your intestines. However, while some foods can cause bloating when eaten before a workout, fuelling your workout with the right foods is key to performance and recovery, particularly if you're going to exercise for an extended period.
The timing of your pre-workout meal is also important. Generally, it's best to eat something a few hours before your workout (typically 2 to 4 hours). If you're eating less than one hour before working out, it's best to have a liquid meal or snack so that it empties from your stomach by the time you want to exercise (liquids empty from the stomach faster than solids — generally within about 30 minutes). A pre-workout smoothie is a good option in this scenario.
For easy reference, here's how to time your meals:
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Large meals: Eat 2 to 4 hours before a workout
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Snacks: Eat 30 to 60 minutes before a workout
Choose Easier-to-Digest Foods
The main goal of eating before a workout is to replenish the short-term storage form of carbohydrates known as glycogen. That's why carbohydrates should make up the bulk of your pre-workout meal. Try to include simple carbs like:
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Pasta
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Rice
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Bread
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Potatoes
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Bananas
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Lactose-free yogurt
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Smoothies
It's also important to eat a small amount of protein, which can help with performance and recovery, and may also reduce the incidence of digestive distress. Fat and fiber should be kept to a minimum in the pre-workout window to reduce the likelihood of digestive upset while you're exercising. It's also important to avoid sugary foods before a workout, as they can contribute to bloating and diarrhea.
If you're having trouble with your pre-workout nutrition, speaking with a registered dietitian who specializes in sports nutrition can be helpful. They can help you plan pre-workout meals that provide enough simple carbohydrates to fuel your working muscles while minimizing digestive symptoms.
Improve Hydration Without Overhydrating
Since body fluids are lost through sweating during exercise, it's essential to drink enough fluids before, during, and after exercise to maintain proper fluid balance. Studies show that drinking hypotonic (lower in salt and sugar than your bodily fluids) drinks containing carbohydrates and electrolytes provides the greatest benefit for hydration while you're exercising.
However, many sports drinks are high in FODMAPs and can worsen digestive symptoms. To make your own low-FODMAP sports drink that's gentle on digestion, combine 1.5 cups of water, ½ cup of coconut water, 2 tablespoons of maple syrup, ⅛ teaspoon of salt, 2 tablespoons of lemon juice, and 1 tablespoon of orange juice (optional). Chill in the fridge or serve over ice.
During high-intensity exercise (>70% VO2max, a measure of your maximum heart rate), reduced stomach emptying may limit how much fluid you absorb. If you regularly engage in high-intensity exercise, you may need to train your gut to improve digestive comfort. You can do this by gradually introducing small amounts of fluids and carbohydrates during workouts, increasing them slowly over several weeks.
Incorporating Digestive Enzymes
Digestive enzymes can help reduce workout bloating if it's triggered by difficult-to-digest carbohydrates. FODMAPs like galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) and fructans aren't digested because humans don't produce enough of the enzymes needed to break them down. While some people can digest lactose (the sugar found in milk and dairy products), others don't produce enough lactase and may experience gas, bloating, cramping, and diarrhea when they eat dairy products.
Digestive enzyme supplements break down FODMAPs in real time, which can prevent gas, bloating, and abdominal discomfort, reducing workout bloating.
FODZYME is a digestive enzyme supplement that breaks down FODMAPs before they can trigger symptoms. FODZYME is specifically designed as a powder applied directly to food, which ensures maximum contact between the FODMAPs and enzymes and provides more active digestion time than encapsulated formats. For people with IBS or digestive sensitivities, this supports digestion of high FODMAP foods and alleviates gas and bloating.
Additional Tips for Preventing Workout Bloating
In addition to what you eat, when you eat, hydration strategies, and using digestive enzymes for bloating, small changes to how you exercise may help prevent bloating after workouts:
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Breathe evenly and deeply: Swallowing too much air while you exercise can lead to intestinal gas buildup and bloating. Try a breathing technique where you slow your breathing rate, breathe deeply and evenly, and let the breath fill your belly during physical activity.
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Try moderate-intensity exercise: A 2023 study found that 12 weeks of moderate-intensity walking 3 times a week led to significant improvements in abdominal pain, bloating, and quality of life. Another study from 2024 found that adding 18,000 additional steps weekly was associated with significant improvements in bloating. If you regularly engage in high-intensity exercise and experience bloating during or after your workout, try reducing the intensity to see if it helps.
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Don't skip rest days: While exercise is important for overall health, rest days to help your body recover are just as important. Be sure to factor in one or two rest days per week to ensure adequate recovery for your working muscles.
When to Consult a Healthcare Professional
While the occasional post-workout bloat is completely normal, prolonged or extremely painful bloating could be a sign of a more serious underlying condition. Here are some signs that you may need to consult a healthcare provider:
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You have persistent bloating that doesn't improve with diet or lifestyle changes.
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Your bloating is severe and interferes with your daily activities.
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You've experienced unintended weight loss.
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You're also experiencing vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, or blood in your stool.
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Your bloating worsens over time or appears suddenly.
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You notice significant changes in your bowel habits or appetite.
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You feel a hard or painful lump in your abdomen.
If you experience any of these symptoms along with post-exercise bloating, it's important to speak with a healthcare provider to uncover the cause, as it could indicate a more serious medical condition like inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), celiac disease, or colorectal cancer.
Experience Workout Bloating Relief with FODZYME®
Bloating after a workout is common and can be caused by a variety of dietary and lifestyle factors. If high FODMAP foods are to blame for your workout bloating, digestive enzyme supplements like FODZYME can help.
Get relief from your workout bloating with FODZYME today.