I worked Mediterranean cruises for 5 years. The women who ate the most always walked off the ship without the bloat.

Some of you already know how that night ended: a cocktail napkin with a name on it, and me ordering from my phone at the next port.

People keep asking what else those women told me. So here is my diary from that sailing, port by port, and the 7 things I learned about bloating on that cruise.

Unlimited pasta, bread, wine, cheese and dessert, 24 hours a day. The buffet never closes and room service runs until midnight. By day three, nobody is holding back.

You see it when they walk off. The puffy faces, the waistbands digging in, the look that says "I'll deal with it when I get home." I see it every single sailing, because I'm the one watching them walk on and walk off.

And it's not just cruises. A survey of 88,795 U.S. adults found about 1 in 7 had been bloated in the past week alone, and most of them never asked anyone about it.

Usually in their 50s, sometimes their 60s. Loading their plates at breakfast. Ordering the full pasta course at dinner, plus the bread basket, plus the wine. Getting dessert and not sharing it.

Seven nights in a row. Then they walked off the ship looking better than when they boarded:

Meanwhile, everyone else looked six months pregnant and was sitting on their suitcases to zip them shut.

For years I told myself it was genetics. Mediterranean genes. Lucky women. That's what I said while I hid my belly behind my uniform jacket.

Because I watched them eat twice what I ate, and I was the one walking around with a food baby. I tried everything:

Every sailing, different women, same result. And I kept blowing up after every meal, however small.

I was clearing tables. A woman, maybe 57 or 58 and gorgeous, sat with her girlfriends. The whole table was wrecked: plates everywhere, three bottles of wine deep.

When the pasta landed, she opened her purse, pulled out a little pill case and swallowed a capsule with her first bite. One of her friends did the same. Then the third. Same case, right there at the table, like the most normal thing in the world.

I couldn't help it. I walked over. "I'm so sorry, I have to ask. What did you just take?"

She grabbed my hand with a big smile. Her friend pulled out a chair for me. Then she looked at me the way your auntie does when she knows something you don't:

I was standing there in my uniform, getting called out by a woman who had just eaten enough pasta for a family of four. But she wasn't being mean. She wanted to help.

Her version was a lot more colorful than this. So when I got home, I looked up the part I could check. She was right.

Your body needs digestive enzymes to break food down, and your gut is home to trillions of bacteria that decide how the rest of the meal goes. When a big meal outruns your enzymes, the leftovers sit there, and gas-producing bacteria in an off-balance gut ferment them. That's the bloat, the gas and the heavy, stuffed feeling.

That was me after every crew meal. And it explained how those women could eat a week of pasta and still walk off with flat stomachs.

Millions of women blame the bread, their age or their willpower. Almost nobody thinks about what breaks the food down once it's in there.

She held up the pill case. "Two capsules, sweetheart. One with the big meal, to break the food down. One every day, for the gut. Not one or the other. Both."

The first capsule is a digestive enzyme. Enzymes are what take food apart. Take one with your biggest meal and it goes to work on the food in front of you. Not next week. Tonight.

The second is a probiotic, the good bacteria that rebalance your gut. And here's the catch she warned me about: most probiotics die in stomach acid before they ever reach your gut. Hers comes in an acid-resistant capsule built to get past stomach acid intact.

She was fussy about one thing. "Not just any probiotic off the drugstore shelf." A probiotic on its own does nothing for the meal in front of you, and most of them die in stomach acid before they land.

Her friend leaned over: "We've been telling people this for years. Nobody listens." The whole table watched me write the name on a cocktail napkin.

I ordered at the next port. One probiotic every morning before my shift, one enzyme with the first bites of my biggest meal. Here is how my first month went.

I laughed and told her nothing happened. Then I ordered her a kit too.

Here's what I understand now. Those Greek and Italian women weren't lucky, and they didn't have special genes. They gave every big meal the enzymes to break it down, and kept their gut in balance every single day, while the rest of us blamed the bread.