You're very kind, Andrew, but Heather has already written the book. Books, really. If I have a role in communicating her ideas, I think it's in my ability to indulge in, shall we say, flights of fancy like GI-ergs to try to explain by example while Heather has to stick more closely to reputable thinking. Reality can be so terribly limiting, don't you think?

Quote:

---

Two last question.....what are the 50/50 items? Are they brown rice, quinoa, corn meal, and oats. Am I right or are there any others.
I'm honestly not sure about quinoa - my impression is that it's high SF and high protein (and high fat for a grain but not in an absolute sense) but I truly don't know about it's IF content. My understanding is that brown rice, corn meal, and oatmeal are about 50/50 SF/IF *and* the IF in them is a form that IBSers seem to find relatively easy to handle.

And If I eat these with IF should I still be taking a SFS supplement before I eat them.
Brown rice, corn meal, and oatmeal all show up on Heather's SF list so I consider them all to be SF foods that can serve as a cushion for IF and don't require you to consume additional SF.

One final note about these three foods: Tolerance for them is somewhat variable. I don't tolerate oatmeal well but do great with corn meal and have since the day I started the Diet. (I hate brown rice so I've never tried it.) It's not so much that oatmeal triggers an attack as it is that my digestive tract simply feels unsettled when I eat it.

Thank you and I really do appreciate your time. I think as gratitude to this diet other stable people should continue to post to the board and help those of us who still don't quite have it down.
You're quite welcome.

I'm not quite sure what to say about people who become stable sticking around to help. I think a fair number of us do so but it is natural as IBS becomes less of an issue to move on to other aspects of your life and simply spend less time on the Boards. After all, isn't that what you would dearly love to be able to do at some point?

One thing I found very helpful - in a mildly obsessive-compulsive way - when I first started the Diet and found the Boards was to go back and read old posts. I set up my profile so that posts would display from oldest to newest which meant the oldest posts ended up at the top and I just started reading. It may be my imagination but it seems to me that when the Boards first started up the people on them were more focused on following Heather's guidelines and on helping other people on the Boards understand and follow them, too. You might give it a try and see what you think.

---