Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards

Greetings from Boston,
I am 56 year old female - yoga instructor - IBS for 26 years. Decided recently I can't live this way anymore. My symptoms are not that severe but I know it's cramping my style so to speak and decided I need to surrender to it and make some changes. Recently (past 3 months I did raw vegan) I'm basically vegan / veg anyway but this was very radical. Initially I just had D 24 /7 for about 3 weeks - so I got off it -- for a few days eating brown rice -- then got back on it an severely increased my fruit intake. This really helped. I started having sort of normal bowel movements eating mainly fruit and lettuce. But how long can one eat like that? I was tring to follow Doug Grahams 80-10-10 raw vegan with 10% of calories from fat. That equals like 5 raw almonds per day as your total fat. The problem with this diet for me was -- I can't eat like 30 bananas per day and 2 pounds of lettuce. I am NOT a rabbit or an ape! So I ended up pigging out on raw nuts all the time to try to get my calories and guess what -- The IBS got worse. So then I started eating whole wheat bread to get my calories and guess what? The IBS got worse.

I finally stumbled on Heather's site. I had decided to give up bread altogether because of a possible gluten reaction but after reading her site I decided to give white bread a try.

Today I spent a day at the beach and here is what I ate.

Before leaving the house: Smoothie from soy milk, 2 bananas and some strawberries. Then I had another banana. That was breakfast so a lot of insoluble fiber there. Lunch was a very large piece of Italian Bread and a banana -- Then I had a big snack later -- 3 slices of fresh white bread, a banana and a big peach. I ate the solubles before the peach cuz I know the skin is rough. So far so good! But I somehow felt I needed something else before driving the 45 miles back home.

I took a risk and ordered a fried haddock sandwich (I was at the seashore so the fish is very fresh) and they served it on a bulkie roll with some lettuce. I skipped the fries and the tartar sauce. I know soda is bad but I had 12 Oz. of ginger ale afterwards.

When I came home I needed a snack so I had another smoothie but this time with just stawberries and soy milk.

Well guys that is my first day on this new regimen. I know it was not perfect but I somehow seemed to survive the fried fish sandwich! Perhaps I will pay tomorrow morning.

I would like to say that although I cheated a bit with the fried sandwich and the ginger ale -- I still feel better than when I was eating a ton of raw cashews every day.

I am going to try to stick with this and would really like any support or encouragement that you can offer.

Thanks for being here! This board rocks! :-)

Dee

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