Hi Chris,
I did no-starch a couple years ago, and I have done low-starch (an elimination/detox diet), and now I'm trying this, and I just don't have a good answer. On no-starch, I felt overdone with meat and eggs. On low-starch/detox, which was actually a diet designed to reduce foods that commonly are responsible for food intolerances (no gluten, no dairy, no eggs, no soy, no corn, no beef, no nightshades, no processed sugar, no strawberries or bananas or grapes, no coffee, no alcohol), I was overdone on chicken salads and nuts. On Heather's, I feel overfull of white glumpy grains all the time. My IBS has seemed to be helped by all of them, to some degree, but I've also experienced flares on all of them. I quit no-starch because it was really difficult and I couldn't keep my weight up. I quit low-starch/detox because I wanted to try Heather's approach, and the detox diet says no white rice, no wheat, no potatoes (nightshades). That diet--I followed the elimination diet that the Clean program people follow--kept symptoms pretty stable, despite the vast amounts of insoluble fiber and fat (avocados, nuts, olive oil), and it gave me the best energy. On both no starch and Heather's, I feel a little sluggish. On Heather's, I'm thirsty all the time. Which has long been something that happens to me when I eat a lot of grains. I'm not convinced this is the best route for me, but I'm determined to give it a try for a couple months and see if I can reduce flares. Problem is, I'm like you in that I sometimes can go for months flare-free. Then I'll go for weeks where I'm flaring every few nights and there is no obvious trigger but everything seems troublesome. I, too, have an anxiety component. I'm in that phase right now, after a couple really rough weeks. Kicked off a bad patch with a cup of coffee, had two bad nights on our family vacation, a couple semi-bad nights since, and now if I so much as feel a twinge, I'm off and making myself nauseated thinking about how bad is this one going to get? It's hard to know what comes first. I'm thinking about getting those hypnosis CDs, but don't want to shell out the $89 right now when I'm still waiting to see how I do with the acacia I just bought! (The peppermint caps are going back--I felt pepperminted all day after taking one and I had what feels like acid indigestion or an ulcer for a few days afterward.)
I'm here tonight, so I'm violating my own round of latest thinking, which is that I tend to do better when I'm not overfocused on this IBS thing. The Internet is not my friend when I'm in flare mode; it just makes me more anxious. Been busy the past few days, and it's kept my mind off what might be happening in my gut. But I also kept my mind on it enough tonight that when we went to the fair, I opted out of any fair food. Drank water while everyone else had corn dogs and fries, then ate a hunk of (homemade) zucchini bread when I got a little hungry.
The FODMAPS lists don't clear anything up for me. On each of them, there are things I eat all the time with no trouble. And on each of them, there are things that have maybe caused me trouble in the past. Maybe. Sometimes. Never consistently.
Just wanted to comiserate. This diet stuff is so confusing . . .
Print
Remind Me
Notify Moderator
|
Posts
Re: Not getting much help from EFI diet - any suggestions?
