I Think I Have An Under-Active Stomach

Hey Loveys,
Happy Tuesday!
I hope your week is going well! I feel like I haven't had time to even think all week, so it's nice to sit down and write a blog post! Believe it or not, I think writing is a great way to calm my nerves after craziness that is my life. I like thinking back on what I've done during the week, so I can actually appreciate my life and the small things instead of just letting it pass by! :)
I got this week off to a great start in terms of workouts. Yesterday, I got an invitation to hit the weight room with a brand new colleague of mine, Christi. She's taking the place of Jenny who used to join me in the weight room and I'm really excited about it! She's so super nice, and so great to chat with. She's really into fitness like myself, so it's nice working out with a like-minded individual. We decided to train back yesterday since 1. I LOVE training back, 2. My lats really need strengthening if I ever want to accomplish a pull-up, 3. My legs were sore from my 10km race on Sunday so I wanted to do something upper body. Luckily she agreed and was cool with it!
She's very knowledgeable in the weight room so I let her take the lead. She knows how to make more of a "plan" on the spot as opposed to myself who seems to just hop from machine to machine with no real structure. We decided to do super sets since there was two of us and we could just swap machines in between sets. Love this girl already, super sets? Yes please!
We started with a warm-up set, something I'm not familiar with, but learned that it was a good thing. It definitely got me warm without making me exhausted, I liked it. We paired lat-pulldowns with 1-arm dumbbell rows. 1 warm-up set, 2 challenging sets and on our 4th and last set we upped the weight and assisted each other in finishing the sets and basically pushed us to failure. We then finished with 2 sets of pull-overs with a 6kg medicine ball. Those were killer. They were kind of like plyometrics because while 1 of us was doing the pull-overs the other had their hand in the way of the ball so the person doing the pull-over could hit the other person in the hand with the ball as hard as they can.
*Fitness Brag!* I upped my 1-arm dumbbell row weight to 35lbs dumbbells! :D! So happy! I had been using 30lbs and thought it was enough, until the lovely Christi noticed I should be using more and, for lack of a better term, forced me to up my weight. Haha, I felt so tough and so proud.
Anyways.. we did the same set-up of exercises with assisted pull-ups and leg lifts on the ab bench. I feel like we did something else as well but I can't remember what it is... weird. Either way, I was pooped by the end of the workout, but surprisingly I'm not too sore today. My lats are a but tender when I touch them, but I'm not super stiff or anything - bonus! I'm excited to have more workouts with Christi - I will let you know how they go in the future!
This weekend I mentioned I did some studying, and basically during my current course I'm learning how to do proper case studies and how to use the tools provided to assess clients. One of the assessment forms is called the Lifestyle Assessment Form and it goes through a ton of questions that you have your client answer, and different symptoms that they can rate on a scale of 1 (rarely) to 3 (very frequently) so a professional is able to get a bigger picture of how you're feeling everyday and how to make dietary changes to help improve said symptoms. I was tackling the questionnaire on myself and found some interesting findings.
Basically my questions lead me to learn that my biggest issues are stemming form my Digestive System. Knowing that, I was able to go into deeper specific symptoms of the digestive system and I've come to think that I might possibly have an under-active stomach.
What the hell is an under-active stomach? Well I'm going to show you the symptoms and how I rated myself on them (warning, some of this might be TMI... lol):
- Excessive gas, belching or burping after meals... I rated myself a 2
- Stomach bloating after eating... I rated myself a 2
- Sleepy after eating... I rated myself a 3
- Longitudinal striations on fingernails... I rated myself a 1
- Eat when rushed/in a hurry... I rated myself a 2
- Halitosis... I rated myself a 0 because I've never had this (it's a super excessive amount of yeast)
- Full feeling after heavy meat meal... I rated myself a 2
- Heavy, tired feeling after eating... I rated myself a 3
- Nausea after taking supplements... I rated myself a 1
- Acne... I rated myself a 3
- Undigested food in the stool... I rated myself a 1

This is me, often.

Interesting right? Those were my highest rated group of symptoms in the whole digestive system questionnaire. So what is an under-active stomach? Basically it means your stomach doesn't produce enough enzymes for the proper digestion of food. Pepsin, which is the enzyme responsible for the digestion of protein is only activated in the presence of hydrochloric acid (HCl) in the stomach. So people who have low HCl levels will have trouble digesting foods, thus having an under-active stomach. One of the side effects of an under-active stomach is that it affects the proper functioning of the colon. That stood out to me because I also learned in my course recently that when you normally break out around your chin, it could mean there is something funky going on in the colon.
Basically everything in the body is linked in some sort to your digestive system, so as of today I'm taking digestive enzymes with my meals and I'm hoping that helps give me more energy, and just make me feel better overall. I think this weekend I'm going to pick up some HCl to use to test my digestive system. I think probably I should really tighten up my gluten intake as well...
PS - if you're a fruit eater at meal time, I recommend switching it up and eating your fruit as a snack by itself, and this is why... Sugar is digested in the intestine and passes through the stomach quickly. Protein and fats remain in the stomach for several hours (hence why you eat protein and fat to feel fuller longer at meal time). When sugars, which normally pass through the stomach within minutes, are mixed in the stomach with protein and fats, fermentation occurs causing gas and bloating. Betcha didn't know that did you? :)

I bought this when we went grocery shopping on Sunday, and chia/flax is really good for digestion as well so I'm using this in my morning shakes so fingers crossed this helps too!
You know what... I think I just need a vacation. Le sigh... :)