Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Happy to help!

Cooled white rice and cooled potatoes mean that they are not boiling hot (wait a bit if freshly cooked). Warmed up in the microwave is also better than straight off the hob. Only reason for this is that once cooked grains and potatoes cool, resistant starch forms on top, which acts as functional fibre, the same way SF does. Eating more SF than IF per meals is always a good idea, as SF basically acts as a buffer and ensures that IF does not send your digestive track into spasms, which would then result in D/C/bloating/pain. Bananas have a lot of RS by default, so that's why they are OK. As you can see from the harvard fibre link, they may not seem safe at first.

You can eat salmon with potatoes, the only thing you may have to be careful about is fat content. what you want is 25% of kcal coming from fat within a meal. there is a meal that has 400kcal, then 100kcal should come from fat maximum, 300 from protein or carbs.
So : one medium potato has 150kcal (from carbs), depending on the salmon, in roughly 100g salmon, you will have 100kcal coming from fat from the salmon and 100kcal protein. if you aim for a 400kcal meal and you eat one and a half medium potatoes , ie 225kcal coming from carbs, 100kcal protein and 100kcal fat from salmon, this makes it a non-trigger meal as you can see the overall fat content is only a quarter of kcal. Now, not everyone has to be this careful with fat, that's why Heather recommends that you keep your fat levels low overall, ie per day, but that has never worked for me. I have learnt to count fat kcal for individual meals. It's v easy to go overboard as 1g of fat has 9kcal and 1g carb/protein only has 4. So Maths skills required I'm afraid.

Brown rice may well be problematic. You see, brown rice has more IF than SF and wholegrains are even more troublesome for many than the IF in fruit and veg. Best go for white rice cakes/cooked white rice/white rice cereal, like Cocopops in the UK is fine.

In terms of veg, those three I mentioned are the most basic and the least likely to cause you problems. Spinach is likely OK if you eat it with enough SF supplement. You can check which FODMAP veggies are recommended in that link, theoretically if you eat enough SF with them, IF may not be a big problem. For me however, bean sprouts and green beans, while FODMAP friendly, still cause a lot of smelly gas, and of course they are high in IF. Mushy veggies like swedes and marrow and pumpkin should be fine. Sweet potatoes too, these all cooked and peeled should be OK. that v basic diet is really for just a week or two to get things really calm. Then you should experiment and add one thing back, wait 3 days to see if you have trouble. E.g. you eat these v safe foods for 2 weeks, everything is back to normal and you eat 2 slices of white bread then. if you have no trouble, you can eat a bit of/much fructans from then on, ie either bread or pasta or cooked barley. there are many fruit and veg listed in the FODMAP charts, most are however high in IF, so FODMAP friendly foods with SF supplement should be fine, but again, best wait and only try that once things are running smoothly.

chicken of course can be oven baked. I meant grilled so that it's as oil free as possible. you can make it with oil too, but then again you need to make sure that it's not overly fatty. the problem with fat is that it is so easy to go overboard by mistake. one tablespoonful of oil has a whopping 120kcal. as I said if fat is not a big trigger for you, then you don't need to count fat kcal meticulously, but if it is then it's worth the trouble.

spices like ginger and cinnamon are IF technically, although a tiny bit can't really hurt, but who knows. maybe again get things calm and then experiment.

jacket potato sounds good and tuna (canned in water, right? ie not in oil or not freshwater which tends to be really high in fat) is great.

I use Benefiber in Britain (wheat dextrin with nothing else added) as a SF supplement.

so that's it. I hope it's clear, pls ask if you have further queries and best of luck.

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now: stable through EFI+FODMAP dieting (no lactose/no fructose/some fructans and some polyols)

before: IBS-D(pseudo-diarrhoea), bloating, often unbearable pain esp from too much fat: Apr 2007- Dec 2010

FODMAPs: http://www.todaysdietitian.com/newarchives/072710p30.shtml

[I've tried VSL#3 -> I could tolerate v good amounts of IF (even with less SF), it worked great (but overall I find it too expensive)]

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