COMFORTABLE AT 7AM. TIGHT BY 4PM. TOLD IT’S YOUR AGE. HERE’S WHAT CHANGES AFTER.

It’s a pattern many women recognise in their forties. The same breakfast you’ve eaten for years, the same walk at lunchtime, and yet a different outcome. You wake up comfortable, feel tight by lunch, and by the evening you’re reaching for looser clothes.

When nothing on the plate has changed, it’s natural to keep searching the plate anyway. But food is often not the variable that moved. Timing is: how long food stays in your gut before it moves on.

The longer food sits, the more it ferments, and the more gas builds as the day goes on. That’s why the change tends to show up in the afternoon and evening rather than first thing, and why it can feel so unpredictable from one day to the next.

When digestion changes, a lot of women reach for an overnight gut detox to use for a couple of weeks while things settle. Things often don’t settle, and two weeks turns into a subscription and then a nightly habit that lasts for years.

Many of those products contain senna or cascara, which are stimulant laxatives. The usual guidance is to use them for no more than about a week unless a doctor advises otherwise, because regular use can leave the bowel relying on them.

If that sounds familiar, the first step is a conversation with your doctor about anything you’ve taken for months, before you stop or change it. The second is to look at what actually changed in your forties, because a laxative forces a result without addressing that at all.

Two habits work with the timing rather than against it. The first is free: give your gut a longer overnight stretch by finishing dinner a little earlier and skipping the late snack.

The second is a nightly routine you can keep. Korē Daily Gut is one sachet in water once a day before bed, with a 4-fiber prebiotic blend, DigeZyme® digestive enzymes and fennel. There’s no senna, cascara, aloe or sorbitol in it, so there’s no special night before an important day to plan around.

It’s designed for daily use rather than a short cleanse. If you’re taking other medication or have a medical condition, check with your doctor first, and if you’re new to fibre, start with half a sachet for the first few days.