One year on – Still living Fat Free!

It’s exactly one year since I posted my first blog about my ‘tummy troubles’. My ramblings about my digestive dysfunctions have had nearly 9000 views over the last 12 months which is just astonishing to me! Hopefully I’ve provided some answers or given a new perspective to people looking for help with their own digestive problems.

I’ve found out so much more about what could be causing my symptoms (fat intolerance, eggy burps) over the last year. I’ve had a few theories, tried out a few different experiments – some worked, others not so much (My Trial with Symprove). In general life I am fitter than I’ve been in a long time – maybe ever. Exercise helps a huge amount with my symptoms. Here’s a Tara Stiles yoga video which is great for easing that over-full feeling.

I’ve discovered over the last year that coca-cola can be a medicine for helping to move stuck food through your stomach. The first instinct when you feel sick is to take antacids but if you have bile reflux the problem may be that your stomach is not acidic enough because bile is neutralising the natural stomach acid required for normal digestion. A small drink of cola may be all you need to feel fine – antacids could be making things worse! I still occasionally get acid reflux as well and take an antacid but only the burn in my throat is particularly uncomfortable.

In the last year I’ve also learned more about the ‘second brain’ we have hiding away in our digestive system. Our Enteric Nervous System controls all the different aspects of digestion and is almost entirely independent of our ‘first’ brain. This is why it is so very difficult to diagnose stomach disorders. Any number of things can be wrong yet because our stomach and our brain do not talk to each very well our only indicators of a problem are nausea or pain. There’s a lot of research about how our food intolerances can effect our mood. It is so common for people to blame digestive disorders on depression or stress but what if it is the digestive disorder that is causing the feelings of depression or stress? I’m reading up even more and planning to post about our second brain soon.

My diet is still very low in fat and that continues to keep the particularly bad episodes at bay. My last one was in February the day after stealing a pizza crust from my husbands dinner plate. The pizza crust was delicious but definitely not worth the result. Times like that renew my resolve to fight to be healthy and live a good, happy life not chained to the bathroom! I still get waves of nausea, bloating, sensation of fullness and ‘traditional’ IBS-D symptoms on a daily basis but they are eased by keeping portion sizes small and avoiding those foods which I know trigger my symptoms. Everyday I discover something new and everyday I get closer to finding that perfect balance to keep my digestive system calm and functional permanently. Thank you for reading!

Recipe for Fat-Free Risotto

Half a leek, chopped

White wine

Half a lean chicken breast chopped

A handful of chopped mushrooms,

Half a carrot, grated

75g rice (I prefer basmati or arborio risotto rice)

Half a pint of stock

Warm a saucepan then add the chopped leek and a splash of the wine. Cook over a medium heat until the leek softens then add the chicken and continue to stir until the chicken is white through (add a splash more wine if necessary). Then stir in the mushrooms, carrot and rice. Stir for a couple of minutes then pour over enough stock to cover the contents of the pan. Do not cover and leave simmering until the rice is cooked (about 20mins). Serve and enjoy!

 

Seasoning: Add a little salt and pepper to taste. I like to add a little celery salt. Sometimes using this basic recipe I make a biriyani by adding some of my favourite curry spices.

Alternatives: You can buy packets of low fat cooked chicken in most supermarkets or use some of the breast meat from a roast chicken (recipe to follow soon) for an even quicker cook. I also like this recipe with some chopped wafer thin lean ham or quorn. The vegetables are entirely up to you, add whatever’s your favourite or what you tolerate best. Vary the quantity of rice according to your appetite. If you don’t have fresh stock available to cook with I use powdered organic vegetable bouillon as it’s best to avoid monosodium glutamate which is found in most stock cubes.

Recipe for Fat-Free and Dairy-Free Spiced Fruity Tea Cake

The food I miss the most is cake so I thought I’d let you in on my secret fat and dairy free cake recipe (not so secret now):

Spiced Fruity Tea Cake

250ml Freshly made tea

1tsp Mixed Spice

1tsp Cinnamon

½ tsp Nutmeg

215g Grated apple and sultanas

250g Plain flour

200g Caster sugar

1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda

1. Preheat oven to 160°C. Line a loaf tin with greaseproof paper.

2. Mix the spices and fruit into the tea and leave to stand for at least 15mins.

3. Sift the flour, sugar and bicarbonate of soda into a large mixing bowl.

4. Add the tea and fruit mixture to the bowl and mix well.

5. Pour the mixture into the loaf tin and bake in the oven for 1 hour until brown on top and a skewer comes out clean.

 

If you are sensitive to gluten but less sensitive to fat then try nut flour or ground almonds instead of plain flour. The added fruit is entirely up to you but be careful, I’ve found adding too much bulky fruit makes the cake soggy. Please feel free to experiment with this recipe and let me know what combinations are your favourite 🙂

Controlling IBS with diet changes

When you type IBS into a search engine there are thousands of sites listed and most, if not all, say “here are the facts about IBS” and go on to list a whole load of foods you ‘should’ eat and ‘shouldn’t’ eat. To my knowledge there has been no study which has found an exclusionary diet that benefits a statistically significant proportion of people with symptoms of IBS. Every person is different. IBS is a label used to group together people with bowel complaints of no known cause, if there was one simple cure it wouldn’t be such big business! So here I’m going to write about some of the changes I’ve made to my diet that I’ve found to help my symptoms and hopefully you’ll get some ideas of things you can try for yourself. I’m not making up some kind of IBS diet book – there are thousands out there already to choose from – there are no rules (at the moment) just whatever works for you.

I’ve found caffeine, citrus fruits, dried fruits and very cold food or drink all make me nauseous and wholemeal foods trigger diarrhoea so I avoid them completely. Alcohol and dairy can trigger both nausea and diarrhoea so I avoid them almost completely – a splash of milk (skimmed or non-fat) in my tea (decaf) or a glug of wine in cooking is fine. Fat is the trigger of my worst symptoms of severe night time stomach pain, vomiting and diarrhoea, however cutting fat from your diet is a very difficult thing to achieve. In the beginning, it took a long time of trial and error to discover exactly what foods had too much fat for me to tolerate. As a rule of thumb now I will eat a food only if it contains less than 1g of fat per serving. If I stick to this rule then I get to eat a reasonable amount of food in a day. Importantly this way I don’t have to stress over food diaries to monitor how much fat I’ve eaten so far in a day, though it does lead to a lot of label checking in the supermarket. In many ways I eat very much like I always have except without the junk food that I should have done without anyway!

Cooking without oil isn’t as hard as you might think. I use a splash of wine in the pan with the onions or leeks (I often use leeks as a substitute where you would usually use onions as I can be sensitive to them but not enough to cut them out completely). They may not crisp up as they would with oil but a lot of recipes call for softened onions and they taste delicious. This can then be a base for soups, bolognaise, risotto even curry. I don’t miss cooking with oil at all! I do miss the obvious things like chocolate, but my favourite cheat there is CocoPops! They are admittedly quite high in sugar so I try not to eat a huge amount but are very low in fat so they are my breakfast of choice, without milk – but I prefer the crunch anyway.

The food I miss the most is cake so to finish this post I thought I’d let you in on my secret fat and dairy free cake recipe (not so secret now): Spiced Fruity Tea Cake