Why am I so Puffy

Ever wake up and ask yourself, ‘Why am I so puffy’?  Sometimes our eyes get puffy that we look like one of those puffy stickers we used think were so cool when we were kids.

Why am I so puffy?

Puffiness just doesn’t happen around our eyes.  Most likely, we’re puffy all over.  Take a look at your ankles.  If you press them and you still see the indentation from your finger, you are puffy.

You feel like a balloon, but it definitely shows up around our eyes.  Worse, that’s what other people notice first.  They look at us and notice that bloat as soon as they see our eyes.  Not a good look.  Why is this?

Cause of puffy eyes

The biggest reason for the puffiness and bloating is your diet and the salt in it.  The more sodium we consume, the more that our bodies will retain water, which causes the balloon like appearance.

I had a family member tell me one time that she didn’t understand why her ankles (and the rest of her body) were so swollen.  She told me, as she was drinking a bottle of sports drink, that she went to the doctor and he told her she needed to drink more water.  Sadly, she didn’t believe this could be the case.

Sodium in food / drink

Sports drinks contain a lot of sodium and they were developed for athletes to replenish electrolytes after a hard workout.  Unfortunately, the mainstream population has started to associate sports drinks with healthy habits.  This is just not the case.  Don’t get me wrong, electrolytes are beneficial and you can even make your own electrolyte drink – but drinking the commercial stuff just isn’t good for you – it’s not good for your diet, your body, or your face / eyes.  Believe me, if you consume these, you’ll be asking yourself ‘why am I so puffy’ all the time!

Other drinks and foods contain a lot of sodium, such as:

• Pop / Soda
• Fast food
• Pre-packaged foods

Combat puffiness

So, what do we do to reduce this swelling so that you can stop asking yourself, ‘why am I so puffy’?  First and foremost is to decrease our sodium intake.  If you cook at home, great but make sure you aren’t heavy-handed with the salt that you add!

Second, if you eat out, beware!  There’s so much salt in food that is prepared in restaurants.  This is because most of this food is not made from fresh ingredients.

Next, drink lots of water!  Make sure you’re getting enough.  This is so important.

Lastly, if you are eating pre-packaged foods or any take out, the sodium content in these products are super high.  I used to work with a girl who would eat 2 frozen dinners for lunch every day!  I couldn’t believe it.  The amount of salt she had to consume in one day had to be astounding.

One of my last pieces of advice is to not put extra salt on your food – especially before you taste it.  If you’re one of those people that grab the salt shaker without even tasting the food first, this needs to stop.  I get it – salt makes food taste better but a ton of salt is not needed.

You can gradually decrease your salt intake so that it isn’t such a shock to your taste buds.  A little decrease every other week can get you to an acceptable level of salt intake within about 3 months (of course, depending on how high your sodium intake is).  How do you do this?

Decrease salt intake gradually

When preparing meals, decrease gradually by about 25%.  For example, if a recipe calls for 1 tsp of salt, you should only add 3/4 of a teaspoon instead.  1 tsp x .25 = .75 (so 3/4 tsp should be the max.)  If, however, you generally add 2 tsp, you’ll need to only add 1.5 tsp.  2 tsp x .25 = .50 Therefore, 2 tsp – .50 tsp = 1.5 tsp.

Doing this will help your body adjust to the lower sodium gradually.  Good luck.