Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: No one can see a problem????-loosing hope

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.