About the Fine Belly Method

I'm Dr. Liat Fine, a gastroenterologist based in Marin County, California. I trained at some of the country's leading academic medical institutions and completed my gastroenterology fellowship in San Francisco. During my fellowship, I had the opportunity to complete specialized training with one of the world's foremost experts in disorders of gut-brain interaction, which shaped my understanding of the gut-brain connection and the central role the nervous system plays in digestive health. I've also completed advanced coursework through the Institute for Functional Medicine, with a focus on gastroenterology and hormonal health.

My training shaped the way I think about bloating — but so did something else. In the first few years of my clinical practice, I kept seeing the same woman over and over, who felt she had tried everything and was still bloating every day. What struck me every time was how much was being missed. Part of the problem is how much misinformation surrounds bloating in the first place — women are often left with oversimplified, one-cause explanations that rarely hold up under real scrutiny. I realized the standard approach to bloating is incomplete, and that most women with chronic bloating have never been given a complete explanation for their symptoms.

That realization changed how I practiced. I stopped treating bloating as one thing with one fix, and started using a more structured, multi-system approach with the women I saw — looking at motility, the gut-brain axis, pelvic floor and diaphragm function, hormones, and diet and the microbiome together, rather than one at a time. For the first time, many of them had a real, complete explanation for what was going on. The Fine Belly Method is my attempt to bring that same approach and education beyond my clinic, to women everywhere working through the same thing.

Outside of medicine, the most important part of my identity is being a mother. I have three young children with a fourth on the way, and I know firsthand what it means to not feel your best while managing a full and demanding life. That shapes everything about how I approach this work.