Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Welcome to the Boards.

Here's what I do:

Food:
- I follow Heather's Eating For IBS Diet.
- I buy 95% of my food at normal super markets. (I can't find soy sour cream or hot dog/hamburger buns without dairy and/or HFCS there, so I buy those at Whole Foods.)
- I don't eat weird foods.
- I don't consider tofu to be a food
- I wouldn't recognize quinoa if it walked up to me on the street and bit me.
- I loathe beets.
- When a recipe calls for milk, I substitute rice milk and it tastes the same to me.
- My husband, who does not have IBS, uses Silk Soy Milk on his cereal every morning and loves it.
- If you want to actually just drink a big glass of milk (oh, ick), try one of the flavored soy milks or almond milks.
- Some of the soy ice creams are to die for. Soy sour cream is a more than acceptable substitute in cooking. Soy cream cheese I'm not crazy about, but some people like it.
- I think I've eaten zucchini twice in the past year, although I do like butternut squash a lot.
- I eat boneless, skinless chicken breasts, from which I make all kinds of yummy things, including chicken nuggets which I serve with oven baked fries to get my fast food fix and Crockpot Bourbon Breast of Chicken which is outrageously delicious.
- I use ground white meat turkey to make burgers and meatloaf. I also substitute it for ground beef in my world-famous chili and spaghetti sauce and bump up the seasonings and nobody notices the difference.
- I eat fish and shrimp and am looking to expand my seafood repetoire.

Supplements, herbs, etc:
- I think using an SFS is crucial, but there are people on the Board who do fine without one. I take Heather's Acacia, but there are a lot of other ones out there. I take 7 teaspoons of Acacia a day and it costs me 65 cents per day - less than $20 per month. (This includes shipping; I buy 3 packs at a time.)
- When I first started out, I drank a lot of peppermint tea. Heather's was too strong for me, so I just bought Lipton. Now I drink very little.
- I tried the peppermint caps, but didn't like them, so I don't take them.
- I don't have a lot of trouble with gas, so although I tried Heather's fennel tea, it was never a big deal for me. If you suffer from gas, you probably want to try it. I've heard that if you go to an Indian market, you can find loose fennel seed there quite cheaply.
- Traditional Medicinals makes a tea called "Eater's Digest" which is peppermint, ginger, and fennel and quite good. You could try that.
- I don't take a probiotic.
- I don't take digestive enzymes.
- I don't take any herbal supplements.

In other words, it is quite possible to follow Heather's approach without bankrupting yourself, eating anything weird, taking any bizarre supplements, or undergoing any strange rituals. I suggest you do the following:

- Get a copy of "The First Year: IBS". Your local library may well have it. As someone else has said, read and re-read.
- Follow the eating guidelines laid out in the book. (They're also on this Website, but the book is nice to have.)
- Take an SFS. Start low and go slow.
- Drink fennel tea for the gas.
- Keep drinking your peppermint tea.
- Give it more than a week and see how you feel.

HTH. Good luck.

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

Print Remind Me Notify Moderator