Get it on: 5 Tips to Support Digestion on Date Night
Most of us have been in a scenario like this…
Your man (or woman or whomever) has planned a beautiful date night at a great restaurant. You put some extra attention into getting ready, maybe you’re wearing your favorite lacy underthings (or no underwear at all you cheeky minx) and you feel scrumdiddlyumtious in your outfit. You’ve been making eyes at each other over the incredible meal. He’s been lightly stroking that sensitive part of your inner wrist while you hold hands across the table and there may have been a foot sliding seductively up a leg.
When you get home (or get in the car, sometimes you just can’t wait) things start getting hot and heavy and then…
You realize you ate way too much. It’s sitting rather heavy and the bloating doesn’t feel particularly sexy. You’re simultaneously trying to relax and enjoy his ministrations while also tensing, attempting to hold in a fart. Before you know it, the delectable meal has become your mood killer.
Good digestion creates the opportunity for good sex. It’s rather difficult to feel sexy, desirous, and in the mood when we’re bloated, gassy, and uncomfortable. Luckily for your libido, there are some really easy ways to avoid these frustrating digestive inconveniences while enjoying a delicious meal on date night.
1. Bitters at the start of the meal
The bitter flavor helps stimulate all the good digestive juices like stomach acid, enzymes, and bile which help our food break down. When you start the meal by eating, drinking, or tasting something bitter, you’re priming your digestive fire so it’s ready to break down the food you eat. Better breakdown=less bloat, reflux, and gas.
3 ways to get bitters: order a small starter salad with arugula, dandelion greens, endive, or radicchio. Have a cocktail or mocktail that contains bitters, like an old-fashioned. Last but not least, pop an herbal bitters spray in your purse and spritz your tongue 15-20 minutes before you eat.
2. Ditch the huge salad
A small bitter greens salad to start, wonderful. A full-sized salad for your entrée with tons of raw veggies, not so much. Raw vegetables are harder on your digestive system and take longer to break down than cooked ones which means they can be a recipe for bloating.
3. Use food as foreplay
I’m not (necessarily) talking about feeding each other chocolate covered strawberries. I’m talking about slowing down at dinner, really taking in the meal and your partner with all of your senses. Eat mindfully. Savor the food. What do you see, hear, taste, and feel? Like sex, eating is better when you get all your senses involved. Savoring is not just helpful for stoking our desire but also for putting us into “rest and digest” while increasing saliva production and other digestive juices (sexy right?).
4. Practice Hara Hachi Bu
This Japanese practice translates to “belly 8 parts full” or eating until you’re 80% full. It takes approximately 20 minutes for your brain to register that you’ve eaten enough so when you stop after you’re 80% full vs. 100% it prevents that uncomfortable, over-stuffed feeling later.
5. Take a walk after eating
Gentle movement after a meal helps your system do its thing by speeding up gastric emptying (food moving from the stomach into the small intestine), stimulating peristalsis (the wavelike muscle contractions that help move food along), and clearing any gas which helps discomfort and bloating.
Now, I love to wear my “not for walking” shoes i.e. heels on date night so if you’re like me don’t fret. A casual, 10 minute stroll does the trick.
This goes without saying but I’ll say it anyway, there’s no pressure to have sex EVER (and if there is pressure, kick that person or those stories running in your head to the curb), even on date night. AND it can be really fun to have sex on date night, working yourselves up into a tizzy over the course of an evening until you can have at each other. So use this toolkit to help facilitate the right conditions for sex to unfold, allowing deliciousness to continue into the bedroom.