Abdominal Bloating/Distention

Greetings friends,

I am hoping to get some ideas/suggestions for help in diagnosing why I get persistent abdominal bloating. How can I discover the cause and how can I cure it?

I am a 30 year old male weighing 195 lbs at 6'3".

I have always been very skinny as a young lad but I ate horrible food. I had the worst cravings for stuff like McDonald's, Coca Cola, Pizza, snacks, etc... I know a lot of people like this stuff but I seriously ate way too much of it - WAY too much.

But still, during that time right up until college I was skinny as a toothpick. My weight was around 160-175 by late high school.

Then sometime during college about 7 years ago I suddenly made a drastic switch. I almost completely abolished those foods. and my diet has only become more and more extreme ever since (towards the healthier side, I hope). I have not had a soda in at least 6 years - not even a single sip. I've not eaten at those fast food joints unless I really had no choice which is extremely rare.

I almost exclusively eat home prepared meals- breakfast, lunch and dinner. From fresh, usually organic ingredients. I shop at a health food store and even then rarely venture into the inner isles for the processed foods- I am mostly on the outer ring of the store picking up fruits, vegetables, meats and dairy. And then I get home and make my own food.

I eat a regular 3 meals a day and rarely have snacks between meals, and for me a snack means a handful of raw almonds (truly raw ones unlike the pasteurized "raw" ones sold today). For drinks I mostly have tea but one vice I have is coffee: I do enjoy a a cup or two of coffee per day. But it's organic, swiss-water process decaf coffee :) I drink it black with half a teaspoon of raw unrefined sugar.

However, despite how healthy my diet supposedly is now I have been dealing with abdominal bloating for the past 7 or 8 years, again starting sometime around college. It is chronic, persistent and it is depressing me. It makes me feel miserable.

It is funny to look at myself in the mirror with skinny armys and legs, even a skinny upper torso with ribs visible and then this exaggerated, bloated gut. It's just awful.

It's not something that comes and goes, it remains stubborn.

Most of my attempts to remedy it have been from stopping certain foods for a few weeks to see if it has any effect. Such as I stopped dairy, fruits, even stopped drinking water thinking it was water retention. But so far nothing is really showing any results.

It even withstood my most dramatic attempt to kill it - a water fast lasting 21 days. I did this two years ago and it just was amazing that after 21 days of absolutely no food going through my digestive system that I still had this bloated belly. It looked worse then actually because it looked even more exaggerated against my even skinnier arms, legs and upper torso.

It's probably my number one grievance with my life and it makes me so depressed sometimes.

The worst thing is it's so hard to try and figure out what is the cause of it - what is this bloating? Is it gas? Is it water retention? Is it fat deposits? Is it compacted feces? Just what the heck is this bulk I am carrying around?

Is there any way to determine this? Ultrasound? MRI? CAT scan? Anything at all apart from them cutting me open on the autopsy tables?

I guess once I can determine just what the heck this bulk is I can then be a lot close to finding out the next question which is what could be causing it before the final, third question of how can I cure it and prevent it...

Thanks for reading my excessively long story. Think of this bloated post as my bloated abdomen!

Any ideas you can offer me at all that may help would be greatly appreciated, especially if you have experienced the same problem and have reversed it.

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