The low Fodmap diet is magical and will help sort your irritable bowel symptoms if done accurately. But it doesn’t end there. There are many other factors to take into account if you want to be truly symptom-free. One of these is the spacing of your meals. I talk to people on the diet who eat all day and those who are too afraid to eat, but both approaches are hurting them. You can’t nibble throughout the day or starve yourself for hours on end because both are bad for you. So what is the ideal eating routine. I give you an exact answer in the video.
The Transcript
Today I’m going to talk about an IBS-friendly eating routine. With IBS we are sensitive to any sensations that arrive in our digestive system and the best thing we can do to help that, apart from the Low FODMAP diet, is to create a very clear routine that our body comes to recognise.
Our bodies actually love routines around the essentials of life like eating, going to the toilet, sleep, et cetera, so create an eating routine that you seldom vary from and your body will love you for it. We should be eating five small meals, three to four hours apart. We keep it that distance apart because we want to let the motility cleansing wave go through our bodies, which happens after about two hours. So we leave three hours to make sure that has happened, but we don’t want to go any longer than about four hours, five at an absolute stretch, otherwise our bodies go into starvation mode and, as I said, our digestive systems react to everything in a hyper-sensitive way. So let’s not let it think that we are starving it. So three to four hours apart. The best way to do this is a routine like breakfast at seven o’clock in the morning, morning snack at ten, lunch at one, afternoon snack at four, and dinner at seven. And always make sure that you have your dinner at least three hours before you go to bed, so digestion has finished and it doesn’t happen while you’re asleep and so disturb your sleep.
There you go – a new routine for you. Stick to that every day. If you oversleep a little bit on the weekend, perhaps you can skip your morning snack, because you will have had your breakfast later – but the foods that you would have eaten in your morning snack, just distribute them among your other meals, so that you are not actually eating less that day. Good luck with that, and good bye.
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