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The Fat Foodie

I’ve now been following the low FODMAP diet for a couple of months and I have to say that I’m feeling much better overall. I navigated the 6 to 8 week elimination phase without too many hiccups and have started to reintroduce some higher FODMAP foods back into my diet. Sadly, some foods remain difficult for me to process, a list that’s quite lengthy unfortunately, but the overall benefits of eating low FODMAP foods is reward in itself.

I think the FODMAP diet journey is an incredibly individual one and everyone will respond differently to it, just as they will respond differently to certain foods. I’ve had a few encounters online recently in which people have stated that particular foods shouldn’t be included in a low FODMAP recipe because they’re high FODMAP, even though they are actually a perfectly fine low FODMAP food if eaten at the correct serving size that’s recommended in the Monash app.

This has irritated me, to be honest, because I feel it is important to learn as much as possible about the health conditions which we suffer from. I’m all about educating myself to the best of my abilities as to what foods I can safely incorporate into my low FODMAP diet because it’s vital that we try to eat a wide variety of foods in our diet in order to get the best forms of nutrition our bodies require.

I’ve seen a lot of people online who are permanently living solely on the exclusion part of the low FODMAP diet and, as any good nutritionist will tell you, that’s not good at all because they are cutting out important nutritious dietary ingredients for no good reason. They’re also missing out on being able to eat delicious foods which would actually not cause them any digestive discomfort anyway!

Also, if there’s one thing that’s abundantly clear when it comes to the FODMAP diet it’s that everyone is different. That’s the whole freakin’ point of the FODMAP diet! Individuals will be able to tolerate or not tolerate a variety of foods differently. I don’t understand why people can’t just assess their own potential response to recipes or a meal and make suitable adjustments. For instance, if you know that you can handle a small amount of oats then have one small Anzac biscuit. If you can’t, then don’t eat them! It really doesn’t have to be hard.

Anzac Biscuits by The Fat Foodie

One thing that has been hard is that I miss bread a lot. I’ve tried a number of shop bought gluten-free loaves, but I find it difficult to get past their grainy texture and general lack of flavour. (I’ve found the £3 price point for a Genius loaf pretty hard to swallow too). I’ve also made my own gluten-free loaves. They’ve turned out okay and have been tasty enough, but they still don’t compare to a normal wheat loaf.

Wholemeal Seeded Gluten-Free Bread by The Fat Foodie

I recently tried sourdough bread, but I don’t think my system liked it. It’s quite an acquired taste at the best of times due to its sour aftertaste, but I suspect my body still isn’t that keen on processing either gluten or the fructans found in wheat. I’m in the process of getting a sourdough bread culture on the go which I intend to use to make a spelt sourdough loaf, so I’ll see what my body makes of that.

Sourdough Bread Starter by The Fat Foodie

As I said at the start of this post, it’s clear that the FODMAP diet is very much a personal endeavour and I think the journey’s very much about identifying what your own personal triggers are. All I can say with certainty is that I feel infinitely better as a result of finding out about the FODMAP diet and I’m happy to help spread the word to other IBS sufferers in order to help them too.

The Fat Foodie

The Fat Foodie

Hello there!

I thought I’d add a little blog post here to update you on the progress of my dairy-free diet, or lack of progress on the dairy-free diet, which would be a more accurate description really. I went onto a dairy-free diet at the beginning of January in an attempt to try to get my IBS symptoms under control. My GP confirmed (through blood tests) a long time ago that I am allergic to dairy, so I knew that continuing to consume it wasn’t doing me any good. I figured that the continuing problem with IBS was being caused by my dairy consumption so I cut it out. With the exception of the occasional thing that I haven’t realised had milk powder in it, I’ve been dairy-free for a long while now, but the IBS remains.

A while ago I made the mistake of eating a generous portion of onion rings and was up all night ill. I’ll spare you the grisly details, but I was in a lot of discomfort to say the least. I’ve known for ages that onions were a problem for me to eat, but I’ve never really taken it seriously and have continued to use them in my cooking. However, after being ill all night I returned to bed with a cup of peppermint tea and decided that I needed to find answers as to why my body was having this reaction so frequently. At around 4am that morning I discovered the low FODMAP diet.

Monash University researchers discovered that in the majority of cases, IBS was triggered by particular types of carbohydrates called FODMAPs:

Fermentable: (In which the bacteria in your gut breaks down undigested carbohydrates to create gas)

Oligosaccharides: (which include Fructo-oligosaccharides (FOS) which are found in wheat, rye, onions and garlic and Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) which are found in legumes/beans and pulses)

Disaccharides: (found in lactose products, such as milk, cheese and yoghurts)

Mono-saccharide: (which is fructose, a carbohydrate found in honey, apples, and high fructose corn syrups)

and Polyols: (Sugar polyols, such as sorbitol and mannitol, which are found in some fruit and vegetables and are used as artificial sweeteners).

Now, I know that’s quite a lot of science to digest (pardon the pun), but bear with me.

I’ve mentioned before that I work in a book shop and since the beginning of the year I’ve occasionally put FODMAP diet books out on the shelves or sold them to customers, but they’ve been in such low quantities that I didn’t really take much notice of what they were or what the FODMAP diet was. Let’s be honest, there are so many diet books out there it’s unlikely that I’m going to look in depth at them all.

However, when I started looking into the low FODMAP diet in the early hours of the morning I realised that there could be something in it. Also, by that stage I was willing to give anything a try that could possibly stop my abdomen feeling like an end of season battle scene from Game of Thrones.

Essentially there are low FODMAP foods and high FODMAP foods. The low FODMAP foods contain carbohydrates which are easy for the body to digest, whereas the high FODMAP food carbohydrates cannot be digested properly and will therefore create diarrhoea and gas. Monash University suggests that under the supervision of a nutritionist you should dedicate two months to only eating low FODMAP foods. After that time period, high FODMAP foods can start to be introduced into the diet in small quantities to see how well your body can tolerate them.

I’m not doing the low FODMAP diet under a nutritionist, but I’ve been using The Complete Low-FODMAP Diet book which has been invaluable, as has The Low-FODMAP Diet Cookbook because it’s helped me discover meals that are suitable for me to eat. I’m also going to treat myself to Emma Hatcher’s book The FODMAP Friendly Kitchen Cookbook which came out at the beginning of the year and contains some amazing low FODMAP recipes. She also has her own blog She Can’t Eat What?! which has great low FODMAP recipes on it.

Monash University also have a FODMAP app that you can download which contains a brilliant explanatory guide, a comprehensive list of low and high FODMAP foods, a collection of low FODMAP recipes and a shopping list creator. I’ve found it very useful indeed. I also found this website which lists low FODMAP foods and high FODMAP foods (both of which correspond with the Monash FODMAP app at the time of writing).

My friends, at the time of writing this I’ve been on the low FODMAP diet for a week and I feel ten times better already. My constantly bloated, rumbling, painful tummy is starting to disappear, as have the painful IBS spasms that I put up with for so long. On the third day of being on the low FODMAP diet my partner woke up and said “Wow! Your stomach wasn’t making whale song noises all night long!”, to which I replied a curt, “Thanks, I think!”.

I guess the point of this post is simply to let you all know that from now on my food will continue to be dairy-free (because that’s a definite in my life now), but it’ll also be incorporating gluten-free, low FODMAP diet food too. But you can bet your bottom dollar it’ll still be damn tasty!

See you in the next blog post!

Love, Jane XXX

The Fat Foodie

Making Low FODMAP Food Good!

Category: Uncategorized

FODMAP Progress Update

Dairy-Free Diet to Low FODMAP Diet