Eating for IBS 

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Can it not be that when you travel you are just generally more active and you use up more calories?

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Hi Susie, I tend to be active while traveling and use up more calories. I always track my calories, though, and when I'm referring to my calorie consumption, I always make a note to talk about my net calories. I take and deduct any calories burned from exercise from my daily calorie intake. This way, I completely remove exercise from the equation and we can compare apples to apples, then.

After exercise (walking) on the original trip posted about in this board, I still averaged around 2,200 calories per day (total calories eaten were around 3,200/daily). This was less than normal by a lot, but should note have caused weight loss of anywhere near 5 lbs/week (15 total) I don't believe. In fact, if I were to go out at home, eat 3,200 calories per day, and try to walk off 5 pounds per week while only weighing 160 lbs, I think it would be extremely difficult to lose 15 pounds over the course of 3 weeks.

Before that trip, I was running about 20 miles/week, lifting 3 times weekly, and swimming/doing other exercise a couple times a week. I stopped all of that and ate the same number of calories on the trip that I had been eating, and gaining 1.3 lbs/week on even with all that exercise. I replaced all of that exercise with brisk to moderate walking typically done while sight seeing and went from gaining 1.3 pounds per week to losing 5. It just seems odd to me. The only change was the fact that I was vacationing and eating horrible food for IBS/FM while on the trip (I had felt great leading up to it, and actually felt decent on the trip as well).

My average diet consisted of:
Whole, meat or margherita pizza
Gelato/Ice cream/desserts
American style breakfast
Pasta, or gnocci
Salads w/ EVOO and Balsamic
Huge McDonalds meals
Candy/candy bars, etc

I made the focus of the trip to keep the weight on before leaving, and decided the way to do it was to eat high calorie foods, frequently and not care how I felt. I consistely felt worse on the trip, but overall, I felt ok and still much better than I had been 9 months ago. I could tell the food affected me, but for just a 3 week period with a lot of walking being done, it was manageable.

I did have horrible D for a few days, as mentioned in another post. However, I tend to 'feel' better on days that I have D (rare) than on days I seem to be constipated.

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Likely IBS-C and Fructose Malabsorption
Undiagnosed and going through testing process

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