Low FODMAP Meal Plan - 3 Tips To Make It Easier

Author's Bio: Katie Bailey, MS, RD, LD, FNC

Hi everyone. Welcome back to our channel.

A low FODMAP diet is often used to help manage symptoms for those struggling with irritable bowel syndrome or other digestive issues. And following a low FODMAP diet can be overwhelming at first, but with the right approach, it can become easier and more manageable.

So in today's video, I'll be discussing what is the low FODMAP diet?

What are FODMAPs and how do they impact our digestive health?

What are some examples of low FODMAP foods versus high FODMAP foods?

And lastly, what are three tips that can help make the low FODMAP diet easier?

Hi, I'm Katie Bailey. I'm a Gut Health Dietitian at Oswald Digestive Clinic, where we help individuals improve and resolve their bothersome gut issues.

If you're interested in learning more about gut health, I'll link a free guide Five Ways to Improve Your Gut Health here.

All right, let's get started on today's topic.

[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]

What is the Low FODMAP Meal Plan?

So the Low FODMAP Meal Plan is a dietary approach that focuses on limiting specific types of carbohydrate foods called FODMAPs. The goal of this diet is to reduce these high FODMAP foods and replace them with low FODMAP foods in order to provide symptom relief. Ideally, once your symptoms are resolved, then you would start reintroducing these foods back in.

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So the elimination phase typically lasts two to six weeks. And in this phase, you want to eliminate all high FODMAP foods and monitor your symptoms. Now, you really want to make sure you're following the FODMAP diet pretty strictly to determine whether your symptoms either improve or not. After completing the elimination phase, then you move on to the reintroduction phase where you start reintroducing specific high FODMAP foods back in one at a time and determine your tolerance level for that food.

When reintroducing foods back in, you want to start with small portions and increase gradually. It's also good to introduce one FODMAP group at a time, monitor your symptoms for a few days before start moving on to the next group. And it's important to remember that no two people are alike, and this diet may need to be tweaked to meet your individual needs.

What are FODMAPs and how do they impact our digestive health?

So FODMAP is an acronym that stands for fermentable, oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. And these are types of carbohydrates that some individuals have a hard time digesting. Now, when these carbohydrates are not absorbed properly in the small intestines, they move down to the large intestines where they're fermented by our gut bacteria. And this can lead to uncomfortable symptoms like gas, bloating, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Now, the severity of these symptoms are going to vary from person to person, and there may be individuals that are more sensitive to certain FODMAPs than others.

So what are examples of low FODMAP foods versus high FODMAP foods?

So for low FODMAP foods, any meat, poultry or seafood are going to be low FODMAP unless they're prepared with high FODMAP food, lactose-free soy, nut-based milks and yogurts, carrots, zucchini, bell peppers, strawberries, kiwis, and grapes, and then quinoa, rice, oats, and gluten-free grains. Now, some examples of high FODMAP foods include regular cow's, milk or yogurt, onions, garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, mushrooms, apples, pears, and mangoes and wheat products. Now, obviously this is not an extensive list, but I just wanted to give you an idea of which foods were low versus which ones were high.

Alright, so now let's jump into

What three tips can help make the low FODMAP diet easier?

The first one that I want to talk about is familiarizing yourself with the high and low FODMAP foods that you would typically eat. So focusing on just the ones that you eat regularly may make it a little bit less overwhelming to start. Now, there are several books and guides and apps that can be really helpful in helping you identify these foods. The one that I really like is the Monash University app, especially when you're new to the low FODMAP diet because this app allows you to search different foods and it is color coded based on the serving size of the food. So you look up a food and if it pops up and it has a green circle, that means that for that serving size, it is a low FODMAP food. If it pops up as yellow, then it's moderate, and then if it pops up as red, then that's a high FODMAP food. So this can be really helpful when starting off. Now, the next thing that I would do once you kind of figure out which of these foods you would eat, I would make an actual list.

So a list of the foods that you're currently eating that are high FODMAP that you want to avoid, and then a list of the foods that you eat that are okay, or the ones that you want to incorporate more of. Now, this can just be really helpful for organizing your mind around these foods, but also can be really helpful for our next tip. The next tip is to plan and or prep ahead of time. This is going to save you from the frustration of trying to figure something out on the fly, taking the time to carve out time each week to plan out your meals. And this is going to ensure that you have the ingredients that you need to prepare your low FODMAP recipes, and that's where those lists can be really helpful because you can pull your meals from those lists when you're planning them.

And planning ahead is also going to help you have the time to modify your favorite recipes. So take recipes that you already eat and modify them to fit the low FODMAP diet. That takes a little bit of time. So planning ahead can really help you take those meals and take out your high FODMAP foods and add in your low FODMAP foods. Another thing that can be really helpful is batch cooking meals ahead of time. So once you figure out what meals work, cooking them ahead of time or prepping them ahead of time and having them available on those days that are just crazy and you just don't have time to figure it out last minute. So the last tip is to stick to simple and versatile ingredients. So once you learn which foods are considered low fodmap, make sure you have those ingredients on hand to use when you're making your recipes.

So stock up on essentials like quinoa and rice, approved vegetables and fruits approved sauces. That way you always have an option when you're ready to figure something out to eat. You also want to keep low FODMAP snacks on hand to make it easy for yourself. Things like carrot sticks and rice cakes and hard boiled eggs. Stick to the basics when first starting out. Once you get more familiar with the diet, then you can start branching out or experimenting more with the actual recipes. But when you're first starting out, sometimes just sticking to basic things can be really helpful.

And then lastly, you can even look for pre-made low FODMAP foods. So there are a lot of companies now that are creating specific low FODMAP foods like fodmap, low FODMAP sauces, pasta sauces, condiments, things like that. And they'll actually indicate that it's low FODMAP on the label, and that can be really helpful to keep on hand when first starting out as well.

All right, so to wrap up our topic for today,

Familiarizing yourself with those high and low FODMAP foods that you typically eat. Planning and or prepping your food ahead of time and sticking to basic simple ingredients can help make the low FODMAP diet easier and less overwhelming. I did want to make sure to mention that the low FODMAP diet is not intended for long-term use. It's a short-term intervention that's used to help identify trigger foods as well as help to manage symptoms.

Now, it's important to remember that we are all unique and there are other factors that can contribute to your digestive issues like stress or lack of sleep or other medical conditions. Therefore, I would highly recommend that you work with a practitioner that can help you not only with the diet piece. If you did want to try the low FODMAP diet can help you with that, but also can help identify any other possible triggers or root causes of your symptoms.

All right. That's it for today's video. If you like this video, please hit the like button and subscribe for more nutrition videos. I hope you found this video to be helpful. And if you're interested in working with our clinic, you could click the link here schedule an appointment. We do take insurance. You can find more information about that on our website.

Thank you for watching. I'll see you next time. Bye.

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If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.