Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: Using fat in IBS diet

Your daughter is not getting anywhere near enough Insoluble Fiber. In fact, I'm not sure she's getting any except for the flax seed (I think) and the graham cracker (not much). If she has C she desperately needs Insoluble Fiber on top of a Soluble Fiber base. Also she does need fat in her diet. Use Smart Balance Light as her "butter" and cook with olive oil or canola oil.

It sounds like you might have read the section on the Break The Cycle Diet and be following it for too long. Eating all Soluble Fiber foods is a very, very temporary measure - 3 days at most. IBS-D can get away with it for longer but to resolve C you MUST add Insoluble Fiber.

For breakfast try one of the fruit muffins on the Recipe Board. Try the Fresh Strawberry muffins and the Nothin to It Muffins with blueberries mentioned here . You can do a pre-breakfast of applesauce to "wake up" your daughter's tummy before giving her stuff with fat and Insoluble Fiber in it.

Instead of chicken and rice soup for lunch try a vegetable soup. This one has lots of veggies. You can start out making the recipe with mostly Soluble veggies (lots of carrots and zucchini) and gradually replace those with more Insoluble veggies (like the beans) over time. Serve this with French or Italian bread or with saltines.

Dinner can be broiled chicken and rice but you need to add an IF vegetable of some kind. Start with just a little of the IF and gradually increase the amount. And cruise through the Recipe Index: there are burgers and chicken nuggets and all kinds of different recipes to try. Plain chicken and rice gets awfully boring.

Smoothies are an excellent way to get fruits into your daughter. I like this one. If your daughter's tummy is sensitive to very cold things let the fruit thaw before you make the smoothie. And of course the fruit and vegetable breads from Heather's EFI Cookbook and the desserts on the Recipe Board make great snacks.

It might be helpful for you to read through *all* the background information about Heather's approach. Here's a post that will direct you to all of it. Also, here's a post from a woman who manages her IBS-C with Heather's approach where she describes what she eats each day. This might give you a sense of where you want to get to with your daughter's diet. Note that her first meal of the day is Soluble Fiber; she adds the Insoluble Fiber after her tummy gets the Soluble Fiber first.

As I said in my earlier response it's helpful to eat a lot of smaller meals: it helps get more calories in; it keeps your daughter's digestive system running throughout the day so it doesn't start and stop (that's tough on IBS); and it helps avoid an overfull tummy which is bad for IBS. Try explaining to your daughter that she needs to eat like a Hobbit.

Finally, try a Soluble Fiber Supplement like Acacia. Start at a very low dose and go up slowly. Once you work up to it, you can put a teaspoon of Acacia in one of those half cups of applesauce and it's a great tummy starter first thing in the morning. Be sure your daughter drinks lots of fluids.

I hope this helps. If you have any questions, just ask.

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