Today, I'm going to teach you how to reintroduce FODMAP foods once you've completed the elimination
phase of your low FODMAP diet.
So stay tuned if you're new here, welcome.
My name is Amanda Malachesky.
I'm a Functional Nutrition Health Coach and a Digestive and Allergy Detective.
For tips and tricks on how to eat without triggering your digestive symptoms or how
to resolve your digestive symptoms for good, please consider subscribing and be sure to
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So if you've completed a low FODMAP elimination diet and you're ready to start reintroducing
foods but you're kind of confused about how to go about this, this video is for you.
I see a lot of questions about this in Facebook groups and other online forums, so I wanted
to make sure to make a video for you guys about it.
By the end of this video, you'll have a concrete strategy for how to add your desired FODMAP
foods back into your diet and you'll know how to tell if they're causing you a problem.
My client, Stephanie used this method to tell that certain FODMAP foods bothered her while
others didn't, and therefore, she didn't have to keep avoiding foods that were perfectly
healthy for her.
So I hope that you can do this too.
So let's get started.
Okay, so you've completed the low FODMAP elimination portion of the diet, maybe at the advice of
a nutritionist or your doctor to address your IBS or CBOE or some other digestive challenge.
But now you're at the place where you're ready to start reintroducing foods, but you don't
want to trigger a major problem and feel really bad and you want to know what the right process
is.
So that's what I'm going to talk about today.
But just to review really briefly, in case you don't know what FODMAPs are, FODMAPs is
an acronym that stands for fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols,
which sounds like a bunch of gibberish, but really what it means is that these are different
chemical structures of sugars that exist in natural foods, so fruits, and vegetables,
and grains, and other foods.
And some of these types of fermentable sugars may be feeding your unique community of bacteria
in your gut and causing bloating, or diarrhea, or pain, or other kinds of symptoms, so you've
done the low FODMAP elimination diet to try and reduce the amount of food for these bacterial
players that are causing your symptoms.
So the first thing we need to do to reintroduce FODMAPs is we need to help you understand
which of the FODMAPs you're actually sensitive to, and secondarily, what quantity of those
FODMAPs, so what size dose will trigger symptoms for you.
The good news is, is that you may not be sensitive to all types of FODMAPs.
And so this is really important information for you, right?
Because you don't want to keep avoiding foods that you don't need to avoid.
So the way that you want to do this is to test foods from the different FODMAP categories
separately so you can tell which one is causing your symptoms.
So you want to introduce them in this order.
Fructose, sorbitol, which is a polyol, fructans or fructo-oligosaccharides.
You may have seen it as FOS on food labels.
Mannitol, which is another polyol.
Lactose and galacto-oligosaccharides, which are often labeled as GOS on food labels and
supplement labels.
I'm going to include a link below this video to a FODMAP food list that's divided up by
these different types of FODMAPs and it's put together by Kate Scarlata, who's an RDN.
So you can go ahead and it's free and you don't even have to opt-in to grab it.
So you can click over there and get that list and that can help you with the next step in
the process.
So your next step is going to be to complete your first test, which is to test foods high
in fructose.
So for example, this might be sun-dried tomatoes, mangoes, or apples.
So you want to eat a normal-sized serving of these foods, say like a half cup in a regular
meal.
And then this is the crucial piece of the process, you want to not eat any more foods
that might trigger that symptom for as long as it normally takes you to experience symptoms.
This is the piece that's a little bit wiggly.
It could be a day for some people, it could be hours for some people, or for others it
might be a couple of days.
So just as an example, I know that broccoli is a high FODMAP food that causes constipation
for me, but the effect doesn't happen for two to three days after I eat it.
So whatever that length of time is for you, that's the amount of time that you need to
be watching your body for symptoms.
And the tool that I like to use to do this is called a food-symptom diary.
If you've seen my videos, you've heard me talk about this before.
I'll be sure and leave a link below this video for mine, so you can go ahead and grab that
if you don't have one already.
But basically you want to use that to track your symptoms over that length of time and
see how your poop changes, how do your symptoms change, and be looking for anything that might
indicate that you're reacting to that fructose food.
If you need a little more help with how to use the food diary, you can check out my earlier
video called How to Use a Food Diary for IBS.
So if you do have any symptoms, say increased bloating, or gas, or pain, or diarrhea, or
headaches, or whatever is your kind of sign that you're experiencing triggers, then that
tells you that you are reacting to that type of FODMAP.
Or it might tell you that that serving size of FODMAPs is too much for you, so you could
trial it again with a smaller serving and see if you can find your threshold dose so
that you know that, oh, I can eat a quarter cup of mango, but a half cup is too much.
That would be really great information, right?
Once you've completed one of these trials, then the next step is to repeat the trial
with the next type of FODMAP.
So the next FODMAP on the list is sorbitol.
So to test sorbitol, you can choose either a quarter of an avocado, a quarter of a green
pepper, or a third cup of peach.
So you're going to repeat the process as I mentioned above.
And you're, again, going to use the food symptom diary to track your symptoms and see how your
body responds.
And, you're going to repeat this process with each of the types of FODMAPs I mentioned earlier
in the video.
You might want to go back and listen again to the order that I listed.
So for fructans, you want to test with a half of a leak, a half of a zucchini, or one clove
of garlic.
For Manitoba, you can test with a third of a celery stalk, two-thirds of a cup of sweet
potato, or three-quarters of a cup of cauliflower.
For lactose, you can try three tablespoons plain yogurt, a quarter-cup of whole milk,
or a quarter-cup of cream.
And for galacto-oligosaccharides, you can try one-quarter cup black beans, 15 almonds,
or an eighth of a cup of green peas.
So a key tip for you here, this is really, really important, I want to make sure you
really understand this is that if you experience symptoms with any of these tests, you want
to make sure to wait until those symptoms subside before you move on to testing the
next category.
So the next step is for you to make some conclusions.
If you actually experienced some symptoms with some of the categories of FODMAPs, you
could either confirm this by testing that category again just to make sure.
You could test it again with a smaller amount of the test food to see if the quantity is
the issue.
But in any event, you basically repeat this process as many times as necessary to get
the answers that you need so that you can feel comfortable knowing what you can consume
without causing symptoms.
So for example, I tolerate apples just fine, but I definitely have a lot of gas problems
when I eat either beans, or almonds, or green peas.
So I know that I react to the galacto-oligosaccharides category.
And so what I can do with that information is then look at that list and understand that
if I want to eat these foods, I might only be able to eat just a few tablespoons at a
meal, and that's plenty.
If I eat more than that, I'm probably going to have some negative symptoms that I want
to avoid.
So I hope you can see how this is crucial information for managing your life and understanding
how to eat to avoid having symptoms.
So I'm curious to hear which FODMAP foods react to.
Go ahead and leave me a comment down below to let me know.
I hope this video helps you get clearer on which FODMAP foods you're reacting to so that
you can have a lot more control over your symptoms.
I know that getting clear on your food triggers is a really important step to resolving your
digestive challenges, but it's actually really only one piece of a really complex puzzle.
In fact, FODMAP sensitivity is often a sign of underlying infections or other underlying
root causes that need to be dealt with.
I put together a Roadmap to Gut Recovery to share what I've seen work for people who are
trying to recover their digestive function.
It's an action guide that gives you a holistic strategy for repairing your digestion and
healing from the inside out.
You can download your free copy by visiting confluencenutrition.com/roadmap.
And I'll be sure to leave a link for that below this video as well.
So if you've already tried a lot of these solutions or you've even used this process
and you still have a lot more questions and you feel like you're ready for some one-on-one
customized support, I'm an expert at helping people investigate their root causes and create
a doable plan to feel better.
If that sounds like help that you're ready for, I invite you to schedule a free 30-minute
Assessment Session with me where we can chat about where your situation is at.
I can highlight maybe any healing opportunities you may have missed and we can talk about
what it might be like to work together.
You can schedule that free assessment session by visiting confluencenutrition.com/contact.
So I'll look forward to see me on my schedule.
That's all I've got for you this week.
Thank you so much for watching.
I really appreciate all the comments and questions I've been getting.
I've been enjoying getting to know some of you here on YouTube and also over on my social
media channels.
So keep reaching out, keep asking questions.
I love answering them and please consider liking or sharing this video if it helped
you or you think it might help someone you love.
And, I look forward to seeing you next time.