Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Hi - You should be able to eat plenty. The percentage of calories from fat (20-25%) is a constant, but the calories in your meal (in other words, the actual amount of food you eat) can vary tremendously. If you're eating the IBS diet, it will be hard to get more than 20-25% of your calories from fat, but you could eat a ton of food. In fact, you could eat far more food than you should, but still be within the safe fat range.

Just think to yourself that no more than 1/4 of your meal calories should come from fat. This doesn't actually put any restrictions at all on how many total calories you eat (common sense should do that though)!

Take a look at the calorie breakdowns for any of the recipes in Eating for IBS. You could have one of the main dishes, one of the soups, one of the breads, AND one of the desserts, and your total fat percentage for all of them COMBINED would still be in that 20-25% range. This would be an enormous meal, by the way, and I'm not recommending this, just showing you that you shouldn't have to restrict how much you eat, you just have to pay attention to HOW you eat.

- Heather

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Heather is the Administrator of the IBS Message Boards. She is the author of Eating for IBS and The First Year: IBS, and the CEO of Heather's Tummy Care. Join her IBS Newsletter. Meet Heather on Facebook!

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