Those of us with IBS need to be eating 5 small meals a day and one of the most asked about meals is the morning or afternoon snack. Maybe you are at a loss as to what to eat and how to balance a snack so you have the energy to bridge the 3-hour gap until your lunch. In this video, I show you exactly how I assemble a low Fodmap snack.
Transcription of “How I prepare a Low Fodmap Snack”
Welcome and today, I want to show you how I put together a low FODMAP snack. This is not going to take any time at all because I’m not preparing anything. I’m just using things that are really, really simple.
We need to eat of course a balanced meal, even for our snacks. So we need to a protein, we need a vegetable, we need the more starchy component and twice a day we should have a fruit so I will have another fruit. I had one for breakfast and I will have one in this snack and then I’ll show you what I drink as well.
The first thing I do is I get my bread and butter plate. I don’t want to put any more food than fits on that for my snack. Otherwise, we are likely to go high FODMAP even if all the foods we’re eating are low FODMAP. For my more starchy component, I’m going to have some rice crackers which I’ve got in this sealed container here. So, you can get a little handful of those. And then I’ve got some spinach in my fridge which I got from own garden just this morning. I’m going to put that as my vegetable together with some baby carrots that I buy at the supermarket because I’m not sure how to grow baby carrots.
Here’s my spinach and that’s probably about the right amount. As you see, I don’t want to actually overfill this plate. And then I’m going to get my baby carrots which I keep in a little Tupperware container like this. It just makes life easier and I’ll put about four of those onto my plate.
So, I’ve got the more starchy component and the vegetable and now I need some protein and of course, that can be any sort of protein from leftover chicken the night before or meat even, but also some canned fish. But you can take the more vegetable based route or plant-based route and have some peanut butter, some tahini paste. There’s lots of different options even with the plant-based foods, but I’m going to have some cheese today because it’s important to make sure that you get your calcium. And I’ve got that in my fridge and I’m going to just cut off a little piece.
When you first start on a FODMAP diet, you probably have to be measuring everything to make sure you’re getting the permitted amounts. I’ve been doing this for a few years now and so I kind of know what works for me. And it doesn’t mean that I go to the maximum permitted amount because I know what calories my body needs so I’m often below the maximum limit. I’m just going to cut a piece about that big that suits me, but for many of you, you might have to eat more than that and you can always supplement that with one of the other proteins. You could put together with that maybe some peanut butter or some almond butter and put it onto your little rice crackers.
So, we’ve got protein, the starchy component, and we’ve got the vegetable. As I mentioned, I want to have a fruit and I’ve got some pre-washed strawberries here. I’ve got four in here, but I’m not going to eat that many. One of my main triggers is fructose so I stay a little bit under the permitted amount, but I’ll put a couple of those big ones on there. We can have ten medium sized so that comes to probably about half the permitted amount and that keeps me safe from symptoms but that might be different for you.
So, that there is my snack, but I am going to have a drink and at least once a day, I want to get a glass of milk into me for my calcium needs. Which milk can vary. If you’ve got no lactose problem, of course, you are just going to have normal dairy milk. And if you do have a lactose problem, you can have lactose free dairy milk, but if you’ve also got an casein problem, which is the protein part of the milk, then you can’t have dairy at all. Then, you would be going to one of the plant-based milks like hemp milk, rice milk or almond milk, but do check the ingredients. Many of them have a lot of additives which are going to hurt you since additives are gut irritants. And no sugar as well – you don’t want to be overloading your levels, especially if you’ve got a fruit in the meal like I have. Do read those ingredients really carefully and try to get one that’s as plain with as few ingredients as possible.
There we go. That’s my snack. Strawberries, cheese, carrots, spinach, rice crackers and a glass of milk. Completely balanced and that will easily keep me going until my lunch in about three hours’ time. Thank you for watching and goodbye.
Hi Suzanne, thank you for the great video on how to prepare a low FODMAP snack, sometimes it is hard to decide what to eat, but you make it look so simple.
Sometimes the deciding what to eat is the hard part. Once you have a list of a few options for easy raw vegetables and proteins, then it becomes simple.
Hi! I just watched your video on preparing a snack. I was curious if you snack everyday? I’ve learned to eat where I don’t need to snack anymore. It seems to benefit me by giving my digestive system the time it needs in between meals to do a clean sweep.
You’ve shared in the past to eat small frequent meals, I used to follow this principle, which makes sense for those who were overindulging with meals and creating digestive distress.
I wondered your thoughts on allowing the spacing between meals, not sure if you give this advice out too.
Julie, absolutely we need 5 small meals a day. They have to be small so we don’t overload a hypersensitive gut but that means we are not getting enough nutrients a day to stay healthy in other ways. And we certainly can’t get the required 5-6 vegetables day with only 3 meals since we can only eat a small portion of vegetables per meal. The cleansing wave goes through the body at 2.5 to 3 hours after eating so you have now worries with that with 5 small meals. My clients overwhelmingly feel much better eating this way. It is the one major factor that helps them overcome their symptoms. If you do nothing else, I advise you to eat this way if you have IBS.
I just watched this video, and I am currently waiting to start your 6week program, and I’m trying to put the pieces together in the meantime (desperate for 24 consecutive hours of relief!).
Looks like I need to have a starch + protein + vegetable 5 times/day + we only need fruit 2x/day?
That sounds simple enough. I’ve been low fodmap for months with no relief -so I’m up to any challenge in the hopes that it will help me!
Yes, that’s right. You will see all that in your meal plans when you receive them.