To suspect vegetables are crucifying me?

I can’t eat vegetables! Well very few and far between.

I eat carnivore - meat, eggs, butter and cheese. I do use herbs and spices that don’t flare me but vegetation and fibre are not my friend.

It’s been life changing to finally have a flat and silent tummy!!

When this happened to me I went paleo for a bit and my raging swollen belly had never been happier. I’m not paleo now but it did help identify dairy and soya as triggers (I was always gluten free). Gums like xanthan and guar also cause severe symptoms (unhelpful that so much gf food contains xanthan…). If you have a list of foods you know is safe, cut all else out and then reintroduce one by one every few days. Your diet will be dull for a couple of weeks while you build up but it may be enlightening. I personally can’t eat too much if any veg in one go so lots of things I can tolerate in small amounts alone but not in combination.

The diet you describe is the one, as I'm sure you'll know with your condition,you have to follow before a colonoscopy because the food is easy for your gut to digest and flush out during the prep. I was going to suggest that for OP - it's on NHS sites as the low fibre/low residue diet. Vegetables are on that list but I think the suggestion is that they are very well cooked and soft.

I know my Mum's IBS was really improved when she stopped following the advice at the time of high fibre. Turned out the AllBran she'd been forcing down for breakfast for a decade was doing no good at all!

Life is too short to eat foods that make you feel unwell.

I agree with PP that you need to try and "forget" what you know and eat the things that aren't causing you upset, bloating or pain. A good multi-vitamin can make up for a lot. It may not be ideal, but eating foods that cause you pain all the time isn't great either.

@LittlePotOfCress I see you are flailing around looking for an instant answer. Food intolerances don’t quite work that way.

Please see my earlier post with a list if dietitians (including UK) with an interest in the subject and who can take you through organised elimination and introduction phases without loss of nutrient.

https://www.fedup.com.au/introduction/introduction-to-food-intolerance

I suffer from SIBO flare ups OP. They are horrendous. I can barely move and I eat nothing. I'm not saying this is what you've got but if it is antibiotics work like a dream. For me, anyway.

Time to chuck out all the ideas of what’s “good” or “bad” and what you “should” eat. Eat what works for your body. You seem to be tying yourself in knots trying to force yourself to be ok with certain foods because you should be able to tolerate them. Your body hasn’t read that book!

You’ve got loads of good information from elimination about what you can eat. Follow that.

Also check out Dr Will Bulsiewicz - his advice on going “low and slow” was one of the most helpful things I’ve found. Basic principle is your gut micro biome is most likely screwy, so once you’ve identified what you can eat safely you very very slowly reintroduce foods that are problematic - slow enough to begin building up the bacteria you need to be able to digest them properly and little enough so that they don’t cause issues along the way. Whilst it starts with an eliminiation diet, the end goal is to be able to eat a wide variety.

I can't eat rye, wholemeal or sesame. The pain is horrendous! And I can't eat huge quantities of veg generally. Or hard cheese. Again it's the pain as it works through my system. No advice, but you are definitely not alone.

Hi OP - sorry that you’re going through this.

Your food diary is a good start but there could be individual ingredients that are triggering gut issues.

I suggest contacting a dietician to support you with an elimination diet.

You start with just eating very basic foods which are the least likely to cause a reaction. Not sure what the latest advice is but it was previously something like white rice and white fish for 3 days, then on day 4 you can introduce one more item. It’s a very slow process but also very methodical.

The elimination diet can be depressing, but the insights gained should help you in the long run.

(this is assuming GP has ruled out auto immune conditions like crohns and colitis)

Yes!

A small window of eating helps me hugely too.

Gives your system a good rest and helps to heal.

I hear your pain.
For me it's cabbage and still working out what else. I'm not ok with onion it seems or meat.
Did one of those allergy tests and I was allergic to everything except cats. I was very happy about that 😁 worst offenders were nuts and chicken followed by onion.
Everything was made worse by surgery to remove appendix I haven't been pain free since and have flair up days and mega bloat when I get stressed. I second the GP visit idea. Though I'm very good at telling others to do it and not do it myself.

You have my sympathies OP. Currently mid-flare and also wishing I didn’t have to eat, it’s such a pain.

Any chance you get hay fever or have any other allergies? Even if not (because for some people no allergy symptoms are apparent), look into oral allergy syndrome (OAS) and cross-reactivity. OAS is about oral symptoms (obvs) but they can cause digestive issues too. Having had gut issues for longer than I can remember, I’ve recently discovered I have OAS and cutting out some of the trigger foods has also had an impact on some gut symptoms.

Also check out histamine intolerance. Thought that’s a slippery bugger and also wildly different for everyone, which makes tracking/eliminitation tricky, it’s a very useful framework you think it might apply to you.

I've found intermittent fasting enormously helpful in calming my gut down, basically I skip breakfast and try not to eat anything until 1:00 - 2:00pm. You have my sympathy, my list of "safe" foods is pitiful really. I can't tolerate any kind of bread, pasta etc, too much fiber, too much sugar....it's genuinely depressing at times

Are you sure you arent actually constipated and this is leakage round the sides of a blockage somewhere? This is common in kids and often turns out not to be diarrhoea at all, but a blockage in their bowel. Just thinking of the fact you take immodium sometimes...

If you know you react to certain foods, why are you putting yourself through eating them?

Just eat what you can tolerate and take a good vitamin to cover your bases for the rest.

Chicken breast with avocado is a nice combination.

I can't eat cauliflower or leeks, they leave me in absolute agony for some reason, so I just avoid them. Eat the veg I can eat and take a vitamin.

Are you using vegetable oils (or sunflower, rapeseed). These are supposed to be inflammatory. I don’t use them now and have far fewer digestive problems. If I eat out it can come back as I suspect they have used these oils.

Yours is the second thread about this in the past few weeks. Exactly the same issue.

Just eat what you know you don't react to. All this nonsense about loads of veg being good for you is making you ill and there's absolutely no point eating it as you won't be absorbing any nutrients from it.

I have ulcerative colitis and my can eat/cant eat list is very much like yours @LittlePotOfCress

Leeks, oh my god leeks absolutely devastate me!

I am advised to remove as much fibre as possible from my diet during a flare up:
remove all fruit and veg skin (peel potatoes/apples), all seeds and pips (tomato, raspberry, sesame etc) and do not eat anything wholemeal.
I also remove whole nuts, beans (except green beans) and lactose heavy dairy foods (parmasan and the cheap soya milk is fine for me)
I can't tolerate much UPF or a lot of fatty food either.
Certain additives seem to make me worse: maltodextrin, gums, emulsifiers.

Twice cooked carbs seem to be better than once cooked ie. toast, pasta cooked the day before, potatoes reheated etc.
Very safe foods for me when I am particularly unwell are avocados, eggs, live organic yogurt, porridge.

HTH

interesting you can tolerate some nightshades and not others.

I did a private allergy blood test (IGE) as I got fed up with my IBS. Turns out I have a few allergies and since cutting them out my gut has been soooooo much better.

I did find once my GI tract was annoyed it was extra sensitive.

Depending on how bad you feel this is, Dr Alan Desmond is on loads of podcasts as well as Instagram, with adverts https://www.alandesmond.com/revolution

Vegetables are trying to crucify you? Surely only brocolli and cauliflower...

Haha sorry, I'm an idiot. Seconding pp saying look into the carnivore diet. Some people do a less extreme version, so they'll have a few veggies in there. Anecdotally, it does seem to relieve a lot of health issues. Jordan Peterson's daughter Mikhaila put her severe rheumatoid arthritis into remission by eating just lamb, essentially.