Bloating after eating: flat at breakfast, tight by dinner.

Bloating after eating shows up at your belt. At eight in the morning it does up on the usual hole. By nine at night, on the sofa, you've undone it.

In between came lunch in ten minutes over your emails and a big, late dinner. 'Bread and sugar bloat me,' people often tell me. Sometimes that's true. More often it's how that bread got eaten.

How to spot it

Bloating changes through the day. Fat is still there when you wake, and I cover it in the article on belly fat after 40.

• You're flat in the morning. Your belly swells after meals, most of all after dinner.
• It feels tight and gassy. Taut as a drum, and often heavy.
• It shows more if you're slim. With little fat, bloating is hard to miss.
• You get sleepy after lunch. Bloating and heavy eyelids together point to a meal that needs adjusting.

Why do I get bloated after eating?

Nearly always because of how you eat, more than what. Food goes down in big pieces, with air, into a body that's busy elsewhere.

Digestion starts in your mouth. Your teeth break food down and saliva starts on the carbs. Skip that and your stomach and gut get work that isn't theirs. Eat fast and you swallow air too, as with chewing gum.

Your body digests or it runs. Blood and energy go to digestion, or to your muscles and alarm system. It can't run both at once. Eat while answering emails and your body thinks you're still in the meeting.

What's left behind ferments. Your gut bacteria work slowly on fibre. A lot of sugar at once speeds fermentation up and makes gas. Fruit at the end of a meal does it, queuing behind the rest. So does fibre added overnight: a big bean salad bloats you too.

Bloating remedies that start at the table

Twenty minutes for the meal. Sitting, away from the screen, fork down between mouthfuls. You chew more, swallow less air, and fullness has time to register: your brain takes about twenty minutes.

One breath before you start. Two breaths in through your nose, the second short, then a long breath out through your mouth. One to three times, as you sit down. Breathing is how you switch from alert to digesting.

Fruit between meals. Mid-morning or mid-afternoon, with a few nuts. On an empty stomach it doesn't queue. Try it if you bloat most straight after meals.

Fibre, a little at a time. Vegetables and pulses are good for your gut, but it doesn't adapt in a day. One extra portion at a time, and water. Without it, fibre does the opposite.

A light dinner, then a walk. Towards evening your liver and gut cope less well with fat and sugar. Being bloated in the evening often starts there. A fatty meal can sit in your stomach for up to six hours, a light one about an hour. After dinner, walk ten to fifteen minutes at an easy pace. Hard exercise on a full stomach slows everything down.

Start with your next meal: twenty minutes, sitting, no screen. Keep it up for a week and check your belt each evening. If it changes, you're on the right track, with nothing taken off your plate.