Well first off, remember it takes time to get better, it's slow progress, it took me at least a year to get to the point I'm at now. Mind you, I'm not perfect, but I am much better then when I first started! What I first did which helped was I tried to follow Heather's guidelines. I didn't do the breaking the cycle diet, I just cut my insoluble fiber down to cooked some veggies, and other safer insoluble foods. I made sure I stuck to white bread. I tried to pay attention as much as possible to what triggered me. I had to cut out: popcorn, regular tortilla/potato chips, high fat foods, raw veggies, beans, anything whole grain/whole wheat(could eat oatmeal *sometimes*, but more then one day in a row and I would get an attack), grapes, more then a little fruit, umm...that's all I can remember right now. Some of the other IBS triggers I didn't eat/drink anyway(meat, dairy, tomato sauce, ect), so that didn't bother me. Anyway, so I felt MUCH better when avoiding those things. Not all the way, but a lot less bloating and pain.
Allowing yourself to get stabilized is what will allow you to consume more foods in the future, cause if you're unstable, just about anything is going to set your tummy off. You can then slowely add in things, let your tummy get used to it. Another thing that helped me immensly was finding a soluble fiber supplement that worked(several did not work for me, only one does). Also at first I could only go to the bathroom on my own once a week. So I started taking Colace, and the mix of the fiber and colace helped get me to go everyday or every other day, which is important since being constipated in itself will cause attacks. Being C I do need insoluble fiber, the SFS actually allowed me to add back in a LOT more foods which was great, but also I try to make sure I use a soluble fiber base(like cooked veggies on white rice, sandwich using white bread, ect.).
-------------------- IBS-C
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