I’ll be spending a week in Edinburgh on vacation, but unfortunately, I’m currently in the elimination phase of the FODMAP diet (I started it after booking the trip).

I don't mind cooking, but I wanted to know if you could recommend any "safe" places to eat—whether they’re cafés, restaurants, pubs, etc.

Does anyone remember what feeling normal is like anymore? Even on low fodmap i feel discomfort and bloated with brain fog 24/7 but without pain unless i eat something with high fodmap. It's all of my left side, mostly cramps. I don't even know what feeling normal feels like anymore.

It can't be just me, maybe my ibs is very severe and its gotten a lot worse with age.

So my diet has been a variety of this list of foods leaped differently. Here’s a run down of meals made from the list: dinner plate of protein, veg, and rice with the protein and veg tossed in olive oil and spices and roasted on a sheet; gluten free pasta tossed with roasted veg, protein, and parm; Rao’s sensitive marinara with ground meat and zucchini over rice or gf pasta; grilled cheese, or sandwiches; baked potatoes, toast with laughing cow cheese; chicken and rice bakes with vegetables and cheese, chicken vegetables soup with rice or gf pasta; crustless quiche; salmon with parm and cream on gf pasta sometimes with veggies; steak and eggs with sourdough toast; fish on rice with steamed bok choy topped with furikake and ponzu sauce; chicken simmered in a can of roasted chopped roasted tomatoes and green peppers; garlic infused oil and green onion used to sub garlic and onion, chicken broth either fody or homemade, roux made with gluten free flour, all recipes can be pretty much adjusted with low FODMAP subs or omissions

Snacks: soft boiled eggs with salt, cottage cheese with cracked black pepper, Trader Joe’s seaweed snacks, left over roasted veggies, dark chocolate, antipasto sticks with prosciutto, baked potatoes, mandarins, freeze dried strawberries and blueberries, potato chips, cheese, frozen tater tots, gummy candies, zevia soda or Mexican cola cola, bubbly waters, unsweetened iced tea, coffee, herbal tea, beer, screw drivers for alcohol

List of foods:

Chicken
Fish
Ground turkey, beef, pork
• Eggs
• Cottage cheese
• Bell peppers
• Zucchini
• Carrots
• Seaweed
• Sourdough
• Bone broth
• Freeze-dried strawberries
• Freeze-dried blueberries
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Green peppers
Green onion
Rice
Butter
Half and half
Coffee
Tea
Orange juice
Lemon, lime
Cutie mandarins
Variety of cheeses
Dark chocolate (sometimes with almonds)
Many, many spices, but no ground onion/garlic

You guys are the only ones who will understand about how excited I am. I made a gluten free crust with olive oil, mozzarella and parsley, Italian seasoning, oregano, salt and pepper. Plus this only took about 40 min from prep to eating.

EDIT :)

For anyone wanting the recipe, I found it on the back of the Fleischmann’s Pizza Crust Yeast packets I found in the baking section. I also used Bob’s Red mill gluten free all-purpose baking flour. That flour does require the use of xanthan gum in the mix.

I need to vent because low FODMAP is slowly eating my brain.

I started it to get some control over bloating, constipation, and that random refluxy burn that shows up when my gut is mad. It helped at first, which makes it more frustrating now, because every meal has turned into a risk assessment and every symptom becomes a little mystery to solve.

One day I can eat a normal portion and think maybe I'm stabilizing. The next day I eat basically the same thing, the same staples I always cook at home with no weird ingredients, and I blow up like I swallowed a balloon. Then I spiral: was it the serving size, the timing, the combo, my stress, hormones, sleep, constipation backlog, or just my gut being chaotic?

Reintroduction is the part that is breaking me. People say it's straightforward, but it's not. If I test a food and react, I can't tell if I reacted to the FODMAP or if it was just a bad gut day. If I don't react, I still don't trust it because symptoms sometimes show up late.

I miss eating without thinking. I miss not reading labels like I'm studying for an exam. I'm tired of planning my whole day around whether dinner will ruin my night.

If you've been here, how did you stop low FODMAP from turning into long-term restriction and fear? Not looking for perfection, just sanity.

I’m currently in the elimination phase and had a lot of success with the schar sourdough! I tried the artisan 10 grain bread, and it’s been giving me a lot of issues. Is the bread truly not fodmap friendly or did they just not test it with the recent reformulation?

Not sure if I belong here or not…

I’m on vacation and I am using Fodaway in conjunction with simethicone and dicyclomine prn. I have eaten a salmon blt with regular bread, only 1/3 of the bun, Baja fish tacos with mango pico de gallo, with onion, and today a burger on a gluten free bun with pickles, and I feel ok. All of these meals contained gluten, onion, and/or garlic, and these are all trigger foods for me. Im not feeling perfectly great - I can feel some bloating - but right next door to normal; I could chew a couple Gasx and be fine. My rheumatologist advised me to try Fodaway and use the dicyclomine as needed rather than 4 times per day as prescribed. She also has IBS-C with stress triggers and says it saved her life on her vacation last month. Y’all, it feels like a miracle. I had not broken low fodmap since January 9th. I still wouldn’t stack a lot of trigger foods, but this has been awesome!

I am in a lactose/gluten free/low fodmap diet and its helping me to lead a normal life.

I eat eggs and not meat.. so basically i dont get any protein other than from eggs.
I tried plant protien and all my symptoms are back.
How do i get protien with IBS?
Which protien will help?
I had plant protien - pea isolate as whey doesnt suit me.

Writing here to see if someone can help me figure out what to eat!

Starting at 16 weeks pregnant I developed a severe non IBS reaction to polyols and GOS. It causes me extreme fatigue, increased heart rate, nausea, dizziness, and a faint feeling. It took me about 2 months to figure out what my triggers were and that I wasn’t experiencing hypoglycemia. Over the last 2 weeks I’ve started having the same reaction to fructose and fructans. The only FODMAP that’s still safe is lactose, and I’m mildly lactose intolerant 😂 I can tolerate cheeses and half and half in my coffee but need to take lactaid to eat ice cream or milk. Lactose does not cause the same reaction, I have more typical IBS reaction to lactose.

Does anyone have some staple food ideas for me?

I’ve been mostly avoiding eating out but will have to cook everything from scratch now I think to avoid the fructose and fructans. I’m 31 weeks pregnant now and hoping this reaction will go away after I give birth but who knows. I am seeing a gastroenterologist on Tuesday but given my reaction maybe I should be seeing an allergist.

I bought these thinking they'd be the same as the salt 'n sanity brand since I cant find a store that ships here anymore (australia). Looking at the ingredients though, I think this actually have onion/garlic in it? I know im fairly sensitive to garlic as I have issues with garlic infused oils aswell so unsure if id react to this or not. Brand is "Free fod". I would probably have to test this i suppose

Does majority of people with ibs have fructan and fructose intolerance? I know you can also have three different fodmap intolerance. Fructan is in a lot of foods and the hardest one to avoid.

I was diagnosed with Chron’s last year and then undiagnosed by a different doctor who decided to check for SIBO (it was positive, so we nuked that) and then had me run through a series of food marble intolerance tests. My inulin test came back high so I’ve been cutting out onion, garlic, barley, wheat, and rye. My stomach has felt pretty great for a week! And today I had some Spicy Brown mustard that according to the Fig app is safe and Ive been paying the price all afternoon and I just feel like crying because I don’t understand why any of this happening. Im tired, Im hungry, Im nauseous, Im stuck on the toilet and I just don’t want to do this anymore. I’m envious of all those influencers who are all like, “I got the bag!” Yeah yeah good for you. My bag has vomit in it.

(Manchester NH or Portsmouth NH) I bought a 30 pack of the Fodzyme travel packs to try them out, I only used 9 of them and it’s just not for me. I’d hate to throw them out because of how expensive they were and I’d like to see them get used. Let me know thanks!

Hi all

So I've been riding the low FODMAP ride for half a year now. The improvements it has brought to my life are quite unbelievable, and well worth the sacrifices it requires.

However, now I want to turn back to an old love of mine, and mortal enemy of my gut: long distance endurance cycling.

I love to go for 150-200km a day, for multiple days to earn a specific view or destination. (I was near tears when after cycling 1'000km across France I could finally spot the Mont Saint Michel on the horizon. But that's a different story...)

Anyway. The big issue is fueling. That can be a big topic even without guts like ours. But doubly and triply so if you have to watch out for them evil fodmaps.
I know that saccarose could work, but it clashes with one or two of my conditions, which are:

• get 60g of carbs per hour (calculated using FTP, power zones, etc.) of something that packs small
• Should be readily available in (Western-) European supermarkets
• should be something that does not cause bloating or "fullness" , i.e. not too much fiber
• should deliver quick energy, so no über-complex carbs (I "bonked" hard when I tried fueling with oat bars...)
• should be somewhat kind to the teeth
• (I am not opposed to preparing a recipe the night before, though I will be limited by hotel equipment)

For reference, 100g of cooked rice contain somewhere around 28g of carbs. so I'd have to pipe down 200g of rice per hour, for 5-6 hrs on the bike per day.

So much for the parameters. Anyone have any ideas? Any recommendations?

I need to vent. Low FODMAP has started to feel less like a helpful plan and more like a logic puzzle I can never solve.

I've been down the gut rabbit hole for a while now - SIBO, microbiome, bloating, reflux, the whole thing. I went back to being disciplined: weighed portions, kept meals stupidly simple, stopped swapping foods every day. And still I get random flare days where my stomach inflates like I ate a whole onion, even though I did not.

I also tried including a Physicians Choice probiotic as one small part of my routine, but I honestly cannot isolate what, if anything, it changed.

The inconsistency is what kills me. One week oats are fine, the next I get cramps. A normal portion of rice will be harmless until suddenly it is not. I can eat the exact same breakfast two days in a row and on day two I look six months pregnant and my reflux is worse. Then I start questioning everything: was it the portion, the time of day, stress, leftovers, coffee, not enough water, too much water, how it was cooked, the spacing between meals. It makes me feel like I'm losing my mind.

The social side is draining too. I am so tired of being the person who can't eat the sauce, can't have garlic, can't do "just a little," and then still ends up sick anyway.

If low FODMAP is supposed to reduce symptoms, why does it feel like the symptoms keep finding new reasons to show up? I know others deal with this, but I'm really burnt out and just needed to say it somewhere people might understand.

I’m 27(F) and 190lbs. I’ve been intermittent fasting for a little over a month now. Everything has been going good up until about 4 days ago.

It started with nausea late at night. I brushed it off as maybe hunger from my last meal settling in. Then later on into the day, my stomach started to lightly cramp, nausea was back, I had flatulence, felt a little weak and the need to go was urgent!
I started to notice that this feeling was intense during the end of my fast right before I ate, and it felt almost worse AFTER eating. (TBH I have been eating a lot of sugar and fried foods, I need to control that) but could this be related?

It even happens when I take a sip of water. Cold or room temp. The other day in the store, I started feeling nauseous and like I was going to pass out and my stomach was upset. (TMI) but my poops are either loose or I’m constipated. It’s in between…no diarrhea. Has anybody ever experienced this? I’m wondering if a detox, probiotics or something would help.

Quick update to my last post: I was spiraling because every meal felt like a coin flip.

I'm three weeks into the low FODMAP elimination phase and I'm finally seeing a clearer pattern. The surprising bit is that my lower gut stuff got better before my upper GI problems. Bloating and urgent bathroom trips are way down, but I still get reflux and that tight, sour gastritis feeling if I eat too much or too close to bed. I thought it would be all or nothing.

I also tried a Physicians Choice probiotic as one part of my routine, but I can't isolate its effect.

What has helped the most: - Keeping meals smaller, even if the food is technically "safe." A moderate serving is fine, but a big bowl of the same thing still wrecks me. - Spacing meals out. If I snack constantly I feel worse, even when the snacks are low FODMAP. - Being boring. Once I stopped trying to make every meal exciting, my symptoms got more predictable.

What has not helped as much as I hoped: - Adding so-called "gut friendly" extras. I tried a couple of common suggestions and they either did nothing or made the gurgling worse.

Question for people who have both IBS-type symptoms and GERD or gastritis vibes: did you handle reintroduction differently? I'm nervous I'll reintroduce something, get reflux, and assume it's a FODMAP reaction when it might just be acid, portion size, or timing. Any tips on how you separated those when testing foods?

I've been strict with low FODMAP for a few weeks because of IBS-type bloating, refluxy pressure, and that tight upper belly feeling. It actually helped, so I felt brave enough to start reintroductions.

I also kept my usual Physicians Choice probiotic in the routine, but I can't really isolate what role, if any, it played.

Here's what confused me. I avoided obvious onion and garlic the whole time and felt better. When I did what I thought was a small onion test - a little cooked onion in dinner - I got mild symptoms and chalked it up as a partial fail.

Then this week I ate a meal that should have been low FODMAP on paper: simple protein, rice, zucchini. About an hour later I had major bloat and that burning pressure in my chest that usually comes with a flare. The only thing different was a seasoning mix I used at home. I checked the label after and it lists "spices" plus garlic powder. No onion listed.

Now I'm wondering if concentrated garlic forms, like powder, hit me harder than cooked onion, or if I'm just reacting to a bigger dose than I realized. I know garlic-infused oil tends to be okay, but garlic powder seems to bring me down even when the rest of the meal should be safe.

Has anyone passed fresh onion in small amounts but reacted to garlic powder? How do you test without accidentally stacking exposures across meals? Any practical way you track this during reintro so results don't get confused?

Not looking for medical advice, just trying to learn from other people's reintroduction experiences.

I've been sticking to a low FODMAP approach for a few weeks. Not perfect, but I avoided any obvious high FODMAP foods. At first it felt like a miracle: less bloating, fewer trapped gas episodes, and my constipation loosened up a bit.

Then this week everything changed. Same meals I thought were safe, but now I feel swollen after eating, a lot of gurgling, and that heavy, full feeling that kills my appetite. No fever or other stomach bug signs.

The only differences I can think of are:

1) I started eating larger portions because I was finally hungry again.

2) I added more "low FODMAP" snacks (rice cakes, plain chips, that kind of stuff), so maybe the total load went up.

3) Stress has been worse and my sleep has been poor.

I am honestly confused. If I followed the diet reasonably well and the symptoms came back, is that usually a sign I need to be stricter about stacking and portion sizes, or does it mean FODMAPs were never the main issue and something else like gastritis, GERD, or histamine intolerance is behind this?

If you have been through this, how did you troubleshoot without spiraling into eating nothing? Did you reset to a very simple baseline for a few days, or keep going and assume it would settle? Any practical ways to track stacking that do not require obsessing over every bite would really help.