Today, I'm going to talk about the best way to do FODMAP reintroduction. Stay tuned.
Hi. If you're new here, welcome. My name's Amanda Malachesky. I'm a certified functional
nutrition health coach and a digestive and allergy detective. For expert help resolving
your digestive challenges, please be sure to subscribe and be sure to hit the bell to be
notified when I post a new video every week. Now that you finished your FODMAP elimination
period, how do you go about re-introducing FODMAP foods to test for reactions?
By the end of today's video, you'll know what order to do the reintroductions, and you'll also
know what kinds of reactions to look for. I see lots of clients get hung up on this step before
they come to see me. Let's help you get set up to get the most out of your low FODMAP diet.
Okay, quick review. FODMAP is an acronym that stands for fermentable oligosaccharides,
disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols, which are basically just starches and sugars
that naturally occur in fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds plant foods. In my last video,
I talked about how the low FODMAP is one of the most scientifically validated diets to use for
digestive problems like IBS, IBD, celiac disease, SIBO, and so on.
In the first phase of the diet, you eliminate high FODMAP foods for several weeks and evaluate how
you do. Now that you've completed the elimination phase, the next step is the reintroduction phase.
This is the part where you test your body for reactions to foods that you eliminated
so that you can move forward, only avoiding the foods that you absolutely need to avoid.
You can reinclude the foods that you're missing and that aren't necessarily bad.
There's a generally recognized process for re-introducing FODMAP foods, which I'll get to in
a second. But I really like to recommend starting first with the foods that you miss the most
because let's face it. Those are the foods that you would rather get back into your diet quickly.
How do you reintroduce foods? Basically you consume a small serving of that food
and then watch for reactions. For some of you, this might take up to a few days,
which means that this is a great opportunity for you to practice using your food symptom
diary. If you need a little bit of support learning how to do that,
please watch my earlier video, how to use a food symptom diary for IBS.
If you don't notice any symptoms, try a larger serving of that food again,
and watch again for reactions. If you still don't see a reaction from that, then chances are,
you probably don't have any reaction to that food, and you can safely re-include it in your diet.
If you do have a reaction to one of those foods, then it's a sign that you should probably continue
avoiding that food. It can also be a clue about what other foods you might be reactive to.
Reactions might look like increased digestive symptoms like constipation or diarrhea or reflux
or bloating or abdominal pain. Or they could be things beyond the digestive tract, things like
joint pain or headaches or fatigue or things like that. Keep your eye out for those things.
If you do have a reaction, wait until that reaction has completely cleared
up and subsided before you test another food. Now that you've tested the foods that you miss
most, it's time to start working through the more traditional reintroduction process.
Monash University, which is a FODMAP expert organization has a really wonderful and
comprehensive FODMAP app that you can download at the app store for $7 or $8.
They recommend reintroducing FODMAP foods with these particular FODMAP sugars in this order.
I'm going to read this list for you. I have to look down. Fructose, sorbitol, which is a polyol,
fructans, mannitol, which is also a polyol, lactose and galacto-oligosaccharides.
The great thing about the app is that it has a library of FODMAP foods. You can look at that
food, and it will tell you which FODMAP sugars that food is high in. You can select foods from
their list that are high in these different foods in that order and give them a test.
You want to test one food from each category and watch for your reactions. If you have a reaction
to a food in that category, you could test another food in that category. That's going
to give you some really good information about how to direct your FODMAP eliminations and
reintroductions. It's actually going to help you understand which foods you really need to continue
avoiding. Remember that the true purpose of any elimination diet, no matter what kind it is
is to help you get clear on your food symptom triggers, and to only avoid those foods that are
really truly a problem for you. We don't want to have you avoid a long, long list of foods in
the long-term. This is really not healthy, and it leads to malnutrition and other kinds of problems.
You may not react to all high FODMAP foods. You might only react to one or two categories,
and that significantly narrows the list of foods that you need to avoid. That's really
great because then you can enjoy a much wider range of foods and a delicious diet.
Once you've tested the categories, you should have some really good information about which
foods you need to continue to avoid and which foods you can safely add back into your diet.
Now you can move into what's called the maintenance phase of the FODMAP diet,
where you just continue to do what's working and avoid the things that aren't working while you
work on resolving the underlying causes of your IBS or other digestive challenges. The next step
in this process is to focus in on supporting your digestion, maybe with things like stomach acid or
digestive enzymes, and also probiotics, which can really help balance the microbiome in your gut.
I do have videos about these topics for you. I'll be sure to leave links for those
in the comments down below. Which FODMAP foods are you aware of that set off your gut symptoms?
Tell me about it in the comments. That's the process for testing for FODMAP food reactions
in the reintroduction phase. Start with the foods that bother you most, and then move on to testing
the different categories of FODMAPs one at a time, so that you can narrow down the list of foods that
you have to avoid, and you can reintroduce the foods that aren't bothering you. I can understand
though, that keeping track of all of this is kind of confusing. It's a really complicated system to
some degree, and sometimes I even have a little bit of trouble keeping track of it. If you need
a little additional support sorting out what to do with your FODMAP diet or any other diet,
there are two main ways that I can help you. First, I invite you to download my gut guide
called roadmap to gut recovery. I alluded to it there for a minute where I talked about the next
steps in the process. The roadmap to gut recovery lays out the process that I use with all of my
clients. You can get a sneak preview at how that works by going to confluencenutrition.com/roadmap
to download your free copy. I'll be sure to leave a link for that below this video.
Or if you've already tried a lot of these steps and you're left still feeling really confused,
I would love to meet with you for a free 30 minute assessment session to help you understand
what your next best steps in the process might be and to help you understand where you might
be getting hung up. We can also have a chance to talk about what it would be like to work together.
You can schedule that free 30 minute assessment session by
visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact. I'll look forward to seeing you on my schedule.
I hope that this video helped you understand how to best go about FODMAP reintroductions
by starting first with the foods that you miss the most, and then working in a step by step
process to test categories of foods. I know this can sound a little bit overwhelming, and it can be
time consuming, but I promise you that if you work through this process, it's really worth it. You
will come out the other side with less symptoms. If you liked this video, please like and share
and be sure to subscribe if you haven't already to make sure you don't miss my future videos. Next
week I'll be talking about troubleshooting the FODMAP diet. Be sure and tune in then.
Leave me a question in the comments if there's something you'd like me to answer. Take care.