No one can see a problem????-loosing hope
#316770 - 10/16/07 02:16 PM
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haleym
Reged: 10/07/07
Posts: 73
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sorry guys, I am just really frustrated. I need help,I posted my eating for two days to see if i could get some tips....no bms in 3 days. Im about ready to throw in the towel. Even though my old way of eating ( lots of romaine lettuce, chicken, veggies, cheese, etc) made my BM violent and more like D at least I was going and my clothes werent so tight and uncomfortable....:( loosing hope
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Eggs and waffles for breakfast, potato chips for lunch and then rice and chicken for dinner? Plus ice cream? All I can say is that I would be doubled over in agony if I followed this meal plan.
I belong to a subset of C-ers who do much better with vegetable rather than grain sources of soluble fiber. If I ate all that processed food, particularly all that grain, over the course of two days, it would cause a dreadful attack. Waffles, potato chips, rice, rice ice cream, corn pops, rice milk, oatmeal, more rice, cornbread....It may be wheat free, but WOW---that's an awful lot of grain and processed food.
I use soluble fiber from vegetables as my base. For me that means mostly baked and boiled sweet potatoes, baked and steamed squash etc, mashed potatoes/turnips etc. with no fat added(I use a little soy milk on potatoes). You can see Heather's list for other soluble-fiber rich veggies. To that I add other steamed veggies, salads and veggie- or bean-based soups. I have rice with lunch, maybe a little fish with dinner and plain fruit for breakfast (with a little ground flaxseed). That's it (plus healthy quantities of Heather's fiber and water). I don't use dairy, ever.
Granted, everyone's digestive tract is different, and your gut may not be as sensitive to grains as mine is but I get the feeling from what you've said that you may be overdoing it with the grain and the other processed foods.
The violent reactions you had before (when your gut was moving but unpredictably) were probably not to the vegetables themselves but rather to the combination of insoluble fiber in vegetables with allergenic foods (like the cheese you mentioned, wheat etc.) If you cut the allergens out COMPLETELY, eliminate junk food and reduce the grains, you would probably be able to tolerate the veggies. If you're like me, only the veggies will normalize your gut.
Note: even if they're dairy-free, wheat-free, fat-free, calorie-free and taste-free, ice cream and potato chips are still junk food. Ice cream is particularly bad because the refined sugars promote the growth of the bad flora in the gut: the opposite action of a probiotic. Once you're stable you might be able to tolerate a little at the end of a very healthful meal, but on an empty stomach it will quite likely always cause symptoms. And even if it doesn't cause an apparent immediate reaction it will worsen your condition over time.
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Celia
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Even though they're baked, those potato chips still make me bloated. Try focusing on least processed foods for a few days and maybe that will help to calm your gut. Sweet potatoes seem to work well for me 
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IBS-C, bloating, cramps
pregnant
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Assuming you're opening this up to non-Cs:
Sunday:
You ate a very light breakfast then didn't really eat again until dinner (Baked Lays don't really count). Letting your digestive tract get that empty increases the chance that when you do start it up again it will "run rough". You want to eat like a hobbit: get something gentle in your stomach first thing in the morning to get your digestive tract up and running then keep it running through the day by eating often.
I'm not sure what you mean by wheat free and white flour when you describe your waffle unless you mean no whole wheat which is fine as far as SF but it means you got no IF until dinner. And I've never found a restaurant-made waffle that didn't contain milk and eggs.
Wild rice is IF, not SF. That means that not only did you not eat all day but when you did eat you threw IF into an empty stomach. The mushrooms are SF so they should have gone down first. Salad is usually Advanced Eating For IBS - it's very, very rare for someone who is still in the process of trying to get her gut calmed down to be able to tolerate one. It took me about 6-9 months before my tummy would accept any kind of tossed salad.
I have no problem with rice ice cream as a snack but remember it's almost certainly very high in fat so watch the portion size.
Monday:
Theoretically your Corn Pops plus wholegrain cereal should be okay - SF + IF - but like some of the other posters I find whole grains far harder to handle than IF from vegetable and fruit sources. You may also. If you want to stick with this combo, try eating the SF cereal by itself first, then the IF cereal.
Oatmeal is usually (although not always) well-tolerated by IBSers so your oatmeal snack looks fine to me.
Because wild rice is not SF your lunch had no SF to cushion the IF from the wild rice. Your PB with celery snack is IF plus fat - not a happy combination.
Dinner looks sort of okay assuming whatever was in your cornbread (again I'm not sure what wheat free means) was enough SF to cushion all the IF from the chili - and there's lots and lots of IF in there so you need a good amount of SF to cushion it. You can try chili over white rice - it's surprisingly delicious.
Okay, I'm not C so I can't speak from personal experience with regard to how much SF a C should get to cushion her IF. For me, when I first started out, I was probably doing 2 parts SF to one part IF. Whatever proportion turns out to be right for you, it's really important you memorize and if necessary chant repetitively the EFI mantra: SF first to cushion, then IF.
The whole idea behind Heather's approach is that IF (and fat and the trigger foods) send your gut into spasms resulting in either C or D or both. By giving your gut SF to start off with, you're both coaxing it into gentle activity and providing a "soft landing" for the IF you put into it later.
I'm sorry you're having such a tough time with this and I hope you can work things out. If not and you decide to return to your old way of eating, then my suggestion would be to try to work backwards, gradually replacing some of the tougher IF you were eating with cushioning SF.
HTH.
Quote:
Sunday
Breakfast: eggwhites and a wheatfree (white flour) waffle- mom took me and my hubby out for breakfast and I asked
Lunch: Some baked lays- was in the car for 4 hours coming home from moms
Dinner: Wildrice first, grilled chicken, mushrooms and a little side salad with Fat free dressing that I ate at the end
Snack: Rice Ice cream- wow it was good
Monday:
Corn Pops mixed with wholegrain golden flax cereal with rice milk
Snack:old fashion oatmeal made with water and cinnamin
Lunch:Left overs of wildrice and grilled chicken
Snack: All natural PB with celery
Dinner: Chili made with kidney beans, pinto beans, ground turkey, celery, tomato sauce and seasonings
wheatfree cornbread with smartbalence light butter
I have tried to eliminate all wheat and dairy to see if thats what is stopping me up. I have also added heathers fiber but only 1/2 teaspoon twice a day, I still take aloe(laxative) as I am trying to make a smooth transition off and onto heathers fiber
I am drink a TON of water
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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thats the thing. if i take out the IF i am SUPER constipated, i am already not going so thats why i tried more IF and a salad. I havent gone in 4 days...I will just get some backed up if i take out the IF or decrease it...... unfortunately i do see how this diet works for IBS-C
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Ok thanks for the help and tips. I think I am having a hard time with this because I havent had many carbs for about three years so everytime i take a bite on this diet I feel like I am gaining weight....and I am I have gained 5 lbs. believe me i know that potato chips and ice cream are junk food but to me so are, rice cakes, white bread, saltines, baked lays, baked tostitos, all the bread recipes on the site, potatoes in general, white rice and pretty much all the foods on the "safe" list except the veggies.....so what Im I supposed to do...... I really cant get the hang out if it. Baked lays and rice milk products are suggested on the is site so thats what I eat thinking that thats what im supposed to do. I need a sample of IBS-Cers daily diet so I can see what these lists actually look like in a day.....honestly i cant keep doing this when I keep gaining weight and not having BMs
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Hi Haley,
I'm sorry that you're struggling with the diet. I think (and I'm sorry if I'm wrong) that your main problem is that you look at your diet with this all-or-nothing approach. You used to eat minimum amounts of carbs so now it seems that all white carbs are unhealthy and constipating. The truth is somewhere inbetween. We all need to find the right ration of SF:IF that works for out bodies. So yes, you do need to have IF in order to have BMs, especially since you're a C. You can still have wild rice but maybe mix it 1:1 with white rice.
I found that the recommendations on this website are rather broad and it doesn't mean that I can necessarily eat all those foods. I believe that especially now that I'm trying to get stable I should not eat too much of rice ice cream, baked chips, crackers... I mean, some of these things still have tons of ingredients that I can't even pronounce and they just don't sound like something I would want to put into my healing body. I'm not saying I don't slip sometimes but I try to base my diet around the least processes products possible. That means cooking my oatmeal from oats instead of instant, buying cereal without colorings, buying bread from the bakery at my local grocery store as opposed to the bagged items. If I want a treat I either make my own cookies/brownies or have a piece of quality chocolate (and yeah, sometimes I have more then a little piece and then I may suffer later but I LOVE chocolate ).
I would also stay away from gluten free/wheat free products unless you truly suspect that you can't tolerate wheat. Gluten free flours don't bake as well as wheat flour and thus the breads usually have more additives than you may want to have in your diet.
I understand that you're worried about your weight but at the end of the day it's the amount of calories we consume that affects our weight, not how many carbs we eat. I think you're too worried about gaining weight which puts additional stress on you. How about just not weighting yourself for a while and focusing on healing your tummy instead? I never weight myself when I constipated even if it means that I don't step on the scale for a couple of weeks. As long as you keep watching your portions you should be fine on this diet. There are people here who even managed to lost weight.
Good luck and I hope your C gets better
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IBS-C, bloating, cramps
pregnant
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As I said before, without IF nothing moves. What I am saying is you need to cushion IF with SF. That's the whole basis of Heather's approach - you need the SF as a cushion to keep your colon from spasming when you hit it with IF.
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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]
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Heather's lists are guidelines, not commandments. She would want you to use your powers of observation and your common sense within those guidelines. Plainly, as you have already sensed, eating so heavily of grain products is not working for you.
You can substitute vegetable foods that are rich in soluble fiber for the grain products. I can't guarantee you that you won't have a problem with sweet potato, but it's generally regarded as a food unlikely to cause allergic symptoms. It's also easily digestible. That would be a good food to try basing your meals around. Don't think in terms of elaborate menus for now. Think in terms of soothing your gut. btw, vegetable foods in general have a much lower caloric density than grain products: good for weight control.
Here's an easy menu plan for an unhappy gut. For the next few days, try eating nothing but baked or boiled sweet potato and one steamed vegetable of your choice: I suggest yellow squash. Take acacia with plenty of water, too. That may or may not cure your constipation---in the short term you may need an enema in any case to dispel all that grain---but it will not make you worse and it will begin to correct the imbalance of flora in your gut. IOW it will calm things down. Later you can begin to think about menus and adding insoluble fiber. Ultimately you will need to go back to eating lettuce to get your gut moving regularly again.
I can give you further suggestions and rationale later. I injured my hand with the kitchen knife chopping vegetables last night, so I'm typing one-handed while the other hand is bandaged. The hazards of eating veggies---this is one thing you don"t have to worry about when you eat Lay's potato chips! I am healthy but a klutz. LOL
Hang in there. Dietary change requires time and patience, and I know it seems like forever when you're having an attack, but you'll get there.
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Celia
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Yeah I guess its just very hard to understand for me because I did low carb for soo long that all but the carrots, mushrooms and squash seem like junk food on the safe list. My diet used to consist of Ezekial toast with PB for breakfast, and coffee, romaine lettuce salad with grilled chicken, and then for dinner it ws chicken and veggies, eggwhites or chicken in a low carb tortilla and a sugarfree fudgsicle for dessert( only 4 carbs and 40 cals)
I ate this way for about 2 years except the occasional dinner out with my hubby and holidays and stuff.
This way allowed me a BM every other day, but gas after every meal....then usually twice a month when i was stressed or didnt get enough sleep or who knows why I would get backed up and not be able to "go" for 3-4 days and then all of a sudden of the 3rd or 4th day i would have to run to the bathroom with D. And as I said GAS and bloating after every meal. and my tummy always feels distended
So i dont know I think I just need to scale things back and maybe try one thing a at time, I went from 0 to 100 because I got so excited that this was the answer to my misery
So now I think its better for me mentally if I just go back and try each thing. So I am going to go back to my eating and try adding heathers fiber. maybe that will help and allow me to get off the aloe that i have been taking for 2 years. Also I am going to continue to not do any dairy. I never drank milk b4 but as I said I did have a little cheese here and there and the fudgesicle nightly.( im a sweets girl and this was my only lil sweet i would allow myself)no more though 
so ill start with thsoe things and see how i do....but its just soo confusing cause you look at posts like tatyana wrote and basiclly all she ate was rice,oatmeal, and fruit. I would be a blimp! but thats what made her have 3 BMs a day so I think ok maybe thats what I need to do....but i try it and no it has the opposite affect on me.....
anyway so i guess i jsut ahve to go back and take baby steps. thanks for your reply...still pretty down but trying to have faith
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