Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Some people have trouble with soy at the beginning - it is a beanish type thing and can cause gas. You can try Beano if you want to continue to eat it or you may find that by adding it in a little bit at a time you'll gradually adjust to it. You may also find that once you begin to follow Heather's guidelines and your gut calms down you'll be able to tolerate it fine. Or you can forget about soy and use rice milk or almond milk as your dairy substitute.

Yogurt is dairy and dairy is a trigger food and should be avoided totally.

Then you're in luck because the one thing that really stands out for me in your menu is how little you're eating before dinner. IBS usually does better if you feed it a little bit throughout the day. Eat like a Hobbit: "Daily hobbit meals include Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Elevenses, Luncheon, Afternoon Tea and Supper, supplemented with plenty of snacks in between."

Try a pre-breakfast of applesauce mixed with your SFS. For breakfast, one of Heather's breads or a muffin from the Recipe Board or your toast with a non-dairy spread along with a hard-boiled egg white for protein. Mid-morning snack could be another slice of bread or another muffin or a smoothie (yummy and a great way to get some fruit in you). Lunch should be heavy on SF (the noodles in the chicken-noodle soup are not going to do it). Make sure you're having that deli turkey on a roll or on hefty slice of good French or Italian bread with low or non-fat mayo or (even better when you're first starting out) a little cranberry sauce or chutney. Throw in a few pretzels. Afternoon snack could be pretzels or pita chips (make your own if you can't find any low-fat enough) or more bread or muffin or one of the yummy sweets from the Recipe Board. Avoid trigger foods at dinner and don't eat too, too much. When you're first starting out you may have trouble with *any* IF even green beans. Try sticking with the veggies from the SF list for a while like zucchini. Before dinner have something small: another 1/2 cup of applesauce with SFS or a few pretzels or a sweet.

Two general points. First, I believe that until your gut has pretty much calmed down it can be difficult if not impossible to identify triggers (pork is OK, soy is not, and so on). That's because as long as your tummy is annoyed at you, almost anything except pure SF can set it off. (web page) So until you're stable, your best bet is to follow Heather's guidelines to the letter.

Second, it sounds to me like you've tried to learn the basics of Heather's approach from the Bulletin Board and that really doesn't work. Try reading this to get a good overview of what this approach involves at least as far as food is concerned: web page

I hope some of this helps. Heather's approach has been miraculous for me and I hope it's the same for you. Please feel free to ask questions.

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

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