Does Your Frame of Mind Affect How Helpful the FODMAP Diet Is?

I've followed the low FODMAP diet twice, in fact I'm still on the reintroduction phase of my second attempt, but this time I feel much more confident and less terrified about reintroducing foods. I think the fact I'm in a better headspace is the reason why.

The FODMAP diet

The first time I tried the FODMAP diet it was while I was going through a very stressful time in my life. My IBS was so bad and I was desperate. After several trips to the GP, they recommended the diet to me, but that was it. I felt there was no awareness of how much it could possibly impact my mental health. Luckily I have a friend who is a dietician and I mentioned that this diet had been recommended to me, she had a contact who was a FODMAP trained dietician and off I went.

Mental health

At this time, I had a lot of change going on in my life and I remember reading the list of foods I could and couldn't eat and it was completely overwhelming. I decided to give it a go anyway, I was really at the stage where I struggled to leave the house and have any sort of social life. When I started the elimination phase, I did notice a difference in my symptoms but not as much as I thought I would. To me, it was my last bit of hope after trying everything else and I couldn't help but get frustrated about it not completely working for me. It wasn't really explained to me that you should consider many other factors when trying to improve my IBS and at the time I never really thought my stress levels were that bad.

I started a new job where I was working a lot of shifts and I really struggled to do the reintroduction phase properly. I mean how are you supposed to reintroduce if your symptoms really aren't at bay and you have no time to yourself or to even prepare food? I also remember finding the whole thing overwhelming and I was angry at this being yet another thing that hadn't completely worked for me.

New beginnings

Fast forward a couple or years, and I've since changed jobs, read a lot of self help books, changed up my lifestyle and started to come to terms with my IBS. I've learnt that I may not have the life I planned on having but that I can make adaptations to it, so that my health fits in with it.

I changed jobs - one of the perks of my new job is that I have a super short commute taking the stress off traveling far in the morning. I took up more yoga and dance classes that I love and I try and make sure I get a really good sleep each night (not always possible!). I do things that make me happy and I gave up things that made me unhappy. I've tried a few different therapies but at the moment I feel I'm not totally ready to open up a can of worms, maybe I'll find something that helps me one day. Most of all, I accepted that the FODMAP diet wasn't my cure. My biggest realization was that even being super careful with my food, stress will always overrule, diet is not my only trigger.

Improvements in my IBS

My IBS is far from perfect, but it did start to settle and I decided to track down a dietician who could help me this time round. I totally clicked with my dietician this time round and before even working through the FODMAP diet, my dietician talked through other things that could help my IBS, like stress management and lifestyle changes. She talked me through the reintroduction phase in a positive way, so that I wasn't so scared of reintroducing so much. I'm slowly starting to feel more confident. I've had much more success with my reintroductions so far than I did the first time round. I still have a super long way to go, but I think if I hadn't made these lifestyle changes for my mental health, my diet would have been extremely limited.