Re-Challenging FODMAPs: Three Top Tips To Actually Do It!

So you’ve made it through the confusing and restrictive elimination phase of the low FODMAP diet and it’s time to start discovering your personal FODMAP sensitivities! Congratulations!

Now once you get your head around the re-challenging protocol, one of the most difficult parts is actually doing it! Fitting it into you life, your social plans and work commitments.

I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want to be teaching a private yoga lesson as the same time as discovering GOS gives me diarrhoea and flatulence!

As such, I have personally been a bit rubbish at making time to actually do some of the final re-challenges. However, now I’m super motivated as I’m preparing the Discover Bundle for Your Wild Gut Project; which is a practical guide to the process of re-challenging FODMAPs for vegans.

So I wanted to share my top three strategies for actually making time in your busy schedule to test FODMAPs.

You will need at least 3 days of strict low FODMAP eating followed by 3 days set aside to challenge.

1. Look at the upcoming month in your calendar - mark out the days which are absolute “hell no am I testing a FODMAP then” days.

You really need to a visual way to spot when you have 3 days open for a re-challenge and you need to know it well in advance to make sure you are extra careful eating low FODMAP before hand. Without looking far in advance you’ll miss the opportunities to do a re-challenge as you won’t have prepared.

You can also assign challenge foods which are easier to prepare, such a set amount of mango for fructose, to days when you don’t mind potential symptoms but won’t be able to cook.

2. When you are being very careful on the lead up to a challenge, just be open about it at social gatherings and let got of the food-FOMO.

For example, if you’re meeting friends for dinner, join them but stick to a very safe/side dish and eat more later. They will understand if you explain.

I’ve done this and just had a drink and salad or chips. In a few months you won’t actually remember the meal you missed out on but you will definitely remember the results from the re-challenge!

3. Eat the the FODMAP later in the day! You might find you almost have a good 3-day stretch to do a re-challenge but you have an important meeting on one of the mornings or afternoons. What to do?!

Just eat the FODMAP-challenge meal after the event, so there is no danger of getting symptoms flaring up during it.

If you do this, aim to have the challenge meal around the same time each day of the re-challenge.

Let me know if you have any more hacks for fitting re-challenges into you schedule! And if you’d like to learn more about the Discover Bundles, you can click here.