Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Some questions for TOTALLY stable IBS'ers

I'm food stable although not anxiety stable by which I mean if I follow Heather's guidelines I never have an attack unless my anxiety cranks up. And even my anxiety attacks are pretty mild these days. So consider that a heads-up when considering my advice.

Eating every two hours. I'm a big proponent of not letting your stomach get empty but I don't think there's anything magical about every 2 hours. I'd say that if you get:
breakfast
snack
lunch
snack
dinner
snack
you're doing fine. (I also find a "pre-breakfast" of hot decaf tea and applesauce with Acacia helpful to wake up my digestive system.)

The size of the snack depends on how close together the meals on either side come and how big the previous meal was. For example, whether I have a mid-morning snack depends on how late I ate breakfast (that is, how late I got up - my schedule is totally fluid) and how big breakfast was. I always have a mid-afternoon snack because there's usually a big gap between lunch and dinner. And my post-dinner snack is usually small - a cupcake (no icing, no egg yolks) or a couple of cookies with IBS-safe tea. Sometimes I'll break the bank and have "ice cream".

The SF to IF ratio. I'm not sure about "Heather says to NEVER eat more IF in a sitting". I don't really remember that from what I read - although it's been a long time since I read through her books - and my own belief is that you should eat as much IF to SF as you can get away with. I'm IBS-D and even I find that the further along I get the more IF I can handle with relatively little SF to cushion it. And even I sometimes feel that if I get too much SFS I can get clogged up (especially if I'm not good about getting enough fluid). So I say if you feel you need more IF to SF, give it a try.

HTH.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

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