Fod this

I have reached a breaking point with my IBS. I am sick of feeling sick all of the time and I've decided it's time for a change. Someone suggested I try the fodmap diet and I am giving it a go because at this stage anything is worth a try. The other day in work a customer actually asked me how pregnant I was, firstly that was downright bitchy, I was a little bloated that's all but it made me think enough is enough.

Now for the wary among you Fodmap is not another faddy diet akin to the cabbage soup diet or that really messed up one where you get all your nutrients from a drip.
Fodmap is an acronym for – Fermentable oligo-, Di- and Mono-saccharides and Polyols.
Certain foods contain high amounts of these and people with gut disorders such as IBS will suffer if they eat those foods on a regular basis. Some of the more alluring side effects include bloating and the urge to belch (yea. it's about as sexy as it sounds.)

So the diet isn't intended as a life long plan, this is not forever or so I'll keep telling myself as I wave goodbye to some staples from my diet. The idea is that for six to eight weeks you completely eliminate all of the foods in the red column from your diet while all those in the green are good to eat. This gives your body a chance to recover and fully detox all of these foods from your system. Then once the time has passed you can slowly introduce banned foods back into your diet one at a time and that will allow you to see which foods you can eat in moderation and which foods you can never eat again. The foods you will end up giving up are trigger foods, if you suffer from a gut disorder but you are not sure what your trigger food is then think of anything that you eat that immediately after (or within an hour of consuming) you get a sensation like someone has kicked you in the gut and eh voila you have found a trigger food. I have been eating a lot of the high fodmap foods together so I don't actually know which ones will be added to my forever growing list of must not ever eat again foods but hopefully the beauty of this is that I should know in two months time.

For the most part I think I'm going to be okay, I've learned to change and to adapt and Hey I'm looking forward to my life not being ruled by this anymore but I will admit there were a few entries on the list that made me feel very sad indeed. No rye crackers means no more Ryvita which is kind of a staple of my diet but I have already bought oat crackers and prepared to make them my new favorite thing(perhaps if I keep telling myself that it will start to ring true) and no more pistachios :( especially not the salted ones.
But worst of all I can't have agave syrup which means ....gasp no Booja Booja for a whole two months.
I was somewhat devastated when I realized that.

I had breakfast yesterday with the greatest of intentions but I found my porridge looking sad and gluey without the milk and it was going to be tasteless without the agave so I had the 'genius' idea of adding cocoa to it. Take my advice and never add cocoa to porridge, it was a bad bad idea and it tasted rank. I Didn't have time to remake it so I thought fuck it I'll throw on some Agave syrup one last time, tomorrow I'll buy maple syrup and what's the worst that could happen. I managed to force feed myself most of the bowl but when I was just about to leave for work I got that sensation like I'd been kicked in the gut and I was so ill I barely made it to work on time. Lesson learned , Let's give fodmaps a try.
It's time to get creative