The battle of the belly bloat is real. Even hard-bodied, super fit, former pageant queens with flat tummies are susceptible to the post-eating pooch. We know this to be true thanks to 26-year-old fitness blogger and former beauty queen, Tiffany Brien. In a Facebook post that has now gone viral, the Belfast, Ireland beauty shows before-and-after images of her belly taken just 12 hours apart. She did this in order to send a reality check to her followers that no one is perfect and that even those who are dedicated to fitness and clean eating can have a bad day with their bodies.
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“No I’m not six months pregnant. It’s just my food baby,” writes Brien. “These two photos are 12 hours apart, left before bed and right when I woke up.” Although it looks like Brien spent those 12 hours conceiving her “food baby” by consuming the gassiest of meals, that’s not the case, proving that the annoying belly bloat that keeps you from slipping into your skinny jeans can happen to anyone. “Don’t worry girls, it happens to the best of us, all part and parcel of being a female! It is a delightful cocktail of lack of sleep, stress, hormones and food intolerances. A mixture for a whole lotta bloat,” she adds.
While Brien has plenty of more flattering photos on social media to prove she normally has a bikini body and a flat stomach, she still has bad days like the rest of us. “I am in no way perfect. In fact I am miles away from being a role model when it comes to looking after myself fully in this sense. We all have our areas of weakness,” she writes. “I am trying extremely hard to sleep more, relax more and eat right (not less, just right).”
Her post has been shared more than 4,000 times and has garnered just as many comments by supporters and fellow belly bloat sufferers. “I LOVE your honesty,” wrote one commenter, “…and it takes real courage these days for people to be truly [sic] honest in words and pics with all the bodyshaming blablabla. Your [sic] lovely Tiff, don’t ever change!”
