Does anyone fancy a Low FODMAP thread?

[LoveCauliflowerCheese]

Am going to try this diet to try and deal with ongoing gut issues. Thought it might be nice to have a group to share recipes with.

I'll put this thread on my watch list, but I am not really in a position to join you yet. I am trying a few other options first. Is it IBS you suffer from? I have it quite badly. My gut is the first and last thing I think about each day, and it dominates throughout the day too. I wanted to try FODMAP, but my request for a consultation with a dietician was turned down.

I've had gut issues for a year or so. Initially a doctor put me on omeprazole for a couple of weeks which helped.

But the symptoms came back. It's mainly at night. I feel as though something is moving around in and squeezing my intestines.

Have massively cut down alcohol. Which helps a bit.
But it's not gone.
Am planning in trying a plan in a book I have bought next week. It has shopping lists & menus for a 7 days. So thought it would be interesting to see if it brings relief.

Am also going to ask my Dr if they will investigate further for me. Have been avoiding the doctor this year because it didn't feel like an emergency tbh.

Have you considered going on a whole food plant based diet? At least temporarily to help your body and gut heal. Look at forks over knives website and read success stories. Amazing. I can’t do 100 percent plant based just yet, so I do it 75 percent of the time. However, I would do if I suffered from a health complication. At the moment I’m healing my rosacea this way, which I guess is sort of a health complication, as it’s something not quite right in my body. But after doing this diet (cutting wheat and dairy). I eat very healthy 90 percent of the time. My rosacea is almost gone. And this diet has reversed heart failure, diabetes, IBS, cancer for others and the list goes on liz

Also, most doctors will just take the easy route and prescribe you a pill, which does not actually solve your underlying health issue and will just make it worse in the long run and make you need more pills. Read “how not to die” or the China study and medical medium. Diet can change your life.

Following with interest. I've been having stomach issues for the past 6 months and also get occasional facial flushing and puffy eyes after eating. I also have a history of long phases of urticaria every couple of years. I had some blood and stool tests a few months ago and all it showed was that I was anaemic. Coeliac negative. I'm pretty sure it's food-related, as the stomach problems are so intermittent. Low fodmap sounds really daunting though.

I'm going LFM today to see if it helps.

@Mamabear12 I eat a huge amount of plants but really don't want to be vegan. (I eat fish no meat).

Going shopping with my LFM list now. Will let you know what I make from the recipes later on.

The book i'm starting with is called The LFM Diet for Beginners & is by Mollie Tunitsky if anyone fancies joining me?

I have chronic health issues, all auto immune stuff. Doctors really don’t do nutrition when they train apart from a vague ‘don’t overdo fat and sugar, your body will absorb what it needs from whatever you eat ’ kind of thing. So they are not the best informed people to go to for help with gut issues.
The basics for better gut health are
Gluten free
Dairy free
28g of fibre a day. Soluble and insoluble. Read up.
More plants
Less refined.
A LOT less sugar.
Keep a diary of symptoms and energy levels.
Gas, bloating and burping read up sebo:FODMAP helps but won’t shift it until it’s dealt with.
Diverticulitis type probs: fermented foods and insoluble fibre, you need more bulk and better micro bionome (beneficial probiotics for your gut)
I am not a nutritionist but have been to many and this is the first £70 of advice you will be given as well as a list of supplements they will recommend which are the things you will be lacking because a poorly performing gut will not be absorbing an adequate amount of micro nutrients to supply you with all the minerals and vitamins you need.
When you start making changes , changing one thing at a time is more sustainable then going cold turkey. As in find a plant based milk you can tolerate in you tea/coffee, there’s many different brands and varieties now so you don’t have to gag on soya! Then when you are used to that change, do another.
It took me two years to stop missing cheese but the benefits were instant. I have a piece of cheese occasionally now and although I love the saltiness of it, it mostly feels quite greasy and slimy. Don’t miss it at all now 15 years on. Sorry OP.

That's an interesting list of advice, @PerseverancePays. I'm so at sea with what might be causing my issues. I have swung from one theory to another over the past 6 months (including coeliac, ibs, diverticulitis, lactose intolerance and even gynae causes).

I've tried keeing a food diary and experimenting with cutting out gluten and dairy, which seemed to help but not totally consistently. I was steeling myself to go back to the gp, but I think I might try following your list first tbh. My family must be getting so bored with me changing my mind about what I can and can't eat. I certainly am!

Sadly I've tried pretty much all the non-dairy milks I can find and loathe them all. Black tea for me now.

Sometimes it takes cutting out things for a month or two to heal your gut. Then you can re introduce and perhaps have daily again or a few times a week.

I would consider cutting tea/coffee a few weeks to give your gut lining a rest. Start the day w warm lemon water.

Try intermittent fasting to help your body heal. The GP won’t be much of a help. Researching different diets, culprits etc is your best bet.

I did whole30 first to help reset and then went more plant based and added back in brown rice, oatmeal. After 4 days on whole30 (maybe even sooner, but didn’t think to check until after 4 days), my bp went from 120/80s to 100/60s!! And it’s still in 100/60s now.

I already only drink the occasional decaf coffee, but I do drink quite a bit of tea. I do 16:8 intermittent fasting. Interesting what you say about bp - I've been on bp medication since I had dc2 12 years ago!

Lazylinguist; have you had any kind of help at all? Do you know what you’re working with? It’s difficult without a label to pin your research on I find.
I don’t have any specific gut issues, just chronic fatigue and depletion of minerals which in my mind points to a malfunctioning gut often linked to auto immune disorders.
I only found out during the first lockdown that I’m highly allergic to potatoes of all things. I’ve had a lifetime of incessant and very painful mouth ulcers, which are less frequent with gluten free, but still there. During the first lockdown I was ill enough to not want to leave the house and was eating everything left in the cupboards, until I had the last tin of tuna on a baked potato. Worst outbreak in months! I don’t eat a lot of potato because it inflames my rheumatoid arthritis, but guess what , nearly every GF product is bulked out with potato starch!
Good luck on your healthy gut journey, thankfully it is very much in the media now with all kinds of articles, books and websites to trawl through.

Linguist coeliac disease doesn't always show in blood tests. Not everyone produces the marker they look for.

I've had occasional intermittent, unidentified allergy issues throughout my life. Developed a tendency to acid reflux after having my dc, but I know my triggers for that and it's largely gone away now for some reason (unless I have red wine or fortified wines, even cooked in food).

The gut issue is new. I've spoken to a gp twice about it. They tested for coeliac, did a stool sample to check for blood after they realised I was anaemic, and I haven't gone back since. My main symptom is lower abdominal pain, radiating to my lower back, but it's got better rather than worse since it started. I can go for days or a week with no problems now, but when it first started after a short bout of constipation 6 months ago, I had pain every day, trapped wind and occasional nausea.

I wondered about diverticulitis, since two things that 100% definitely give me pain are linseed and quinoa, which are both super high fibre and I guess could get lodged in diverticula. I guess I should go back to the gp, but I'm not confident they will sort it out! Apologies for the essay... And for derailing your thread, OP.

I also get a bit achy and definitely have brain fog.

After my third dc my blood pressure went up. Actually it was during my labour and they were worried about pre eclampsia. Anyway; I had to take BP medication for 3 months. Thankfully it gradually went down and I stopped the medication over a year ago. But it was the higher side of normal in the 120/80s. I have a BP machine to check my levels once in a while to make sure it doesn’t go up. After a few days on the diet I was worried it would go up bc I felt like I was putting a lot of salt on food (not really as it was just in veggies and bc I wasn’t eating processed foods I wasn’t getting much salt). Anyway, to my utter ans great surprise my reading was 105/64.

I started a quest to heal my body as I also developed rosacea after my third baby, which I think were thanks to the BP pills. I think they messed up my gut and made me sensitive to foods I wasn’t to before.

Anyway; my skin is almost back to normal after being on a healthy diet. I feel much better etc.

I truly believe diet can reverse most if not all illnesses. It just takes trial and error to figure out what’s the right balance for you. What foods are giving you issues. The issues can also be temporary and once you heal your gut again you can eat them in moderation.

So today I ate:

Breakfast:
Tea with lactose free milk
Coffee with oat milk
Scrambled Egg with peppers & lactose free cheddar in a gluten free wrap

Lunch:
A gluten free crisp bread with lactose free cream cheese
Olives

Snack:
Black grapes

Dinner:
Tuna salad with new potatoes capers, radishes, baby gem lettuce olive oil/ lemon juice/ mayo

Drank 2 pints of water

Feeling quite bloated still. I guess it will take time to kick in.

Breakfast:
Red pepper omelet
Tea/ coffee with lactose free milk

Lunch
Gluten free crispbreads with lactose free cream cheese
Strawberries
Earl grey tea

Dinner:
Tuna steak on BBQ
In gluten free wrap with a small amount of humous
Salad
AF beer

Annoyingly I also ate asparagus without realising it was HFM 🙈
Will get the hang of it!

Tea /coffee no lactose milk
Egg/ gluten free wrap

Blueberries/strawberries

Watercress soup

Salad nicoise

A Beer

Just curious if you have eggs every day? It’s a highly allergenic food. Perhaps if you still feel bloated, try to not have it every day and see if that helps.

Don't have eggs every day. They are low FODMAP. Easily digested. I'm not allergic to them.

Dd currently doing low fodmap as advised by dietitian, trying for 4 weeks. I have found the fodmap app really helpful as you can scan barcodes. Did was already dairy and gluten free so bit such a big step but lots of hidden things in products. Got some asofetida to add the oniony flavour.

Chickpeas should be eaten in limited amounts so hummous isn’t low fodmap unless a very small serving but probably best to try to be as strict as possible to see if it works for you, not a long term diet.

Following with interest

Awaiting p/c from dietician at the end of the month as I have been having bloating, wind, urgency since August last year

Seen gynae, rectal specialist, still none the wiser, peri-menopausal to, as I am 48.

Had terrible experience with linseeds/ flaxseeds last year and have not really recovered

I started low fodmap 2 days ago. I've always had dodgy guts & am 50 now. I have the worst wind, bloating & awful abdominal griping pain & any stress I feel goes straight there. I've always been really reluctant to get sucked into the whole world of obsessing over what I eat - I'm lazy and self-indulgent by nature and just found it easier to keep taking buscopan and applying hot water bottles. But the other day I ate an absolutely lovely apple and was doubled over for hours & so I looked into fodmaps and decided to give it a good go.

Breakfast - I've replaced my comfort stodge of shreddies with hot milk & buttered white toast with cornflakes/lactofree milk and Waitrose spelt sourdough/butter. I'm pleasantly surprised I can't really tell the difference with the milk - I thought it was going to taste like those awful oat milks. The sourdough is a bit of a chore to get through after the dissolving cheap white bread I'm used to but lots of butter makes it bearable. At £2.50 a loaf it's staying in the freezer so it doesn't get wasted.

Lunches - omelette with cheese/bacon & salad; rice cakes with wensleydale and cranberry and some roast chicken.I

Teas
Day 1- roasted a chicken, new pots, carrots, green beans, gravy thickened with cornflour. Made a stock with the carcass and am going to make the chicken & vegetable soup from the Monash app today or tomorrow.
Day 2 - cobbled together a 'taco seasoning' of cumin,paprika,chilli flakes,cayenne,oregano and coated
chopped chicken thighs. Fried in garlic-infused oil added a tin of tomatoes and sweetcorn and cooked it down a bit, threw in some fresh coriander and stirred in some sour cream - ate with rice and salad.

Snacks - strawberries,blueberries,popcorn,dark chocolate. Bottle of wine.