Attempting pleasure on a low fodmap diet
There have been many studies and much conjecture about the gut brain relationship but it is fair to say that successful management of your mood makes managing a fodmap diet easier
CAUTION!
Work in Progress
Process
I heard about ibs and the fodmap exclusion diet by accident. It took a bit of discipline but less than I was using already to limit my diet, attempting to avoid the shocking pain on the toilet every morning.
But it worked.
I didn’t even believe in it but after a couple of years of utter misery the bloating began to ease within a few days.
I started trying to invent variations. I kept a food diary of forensic detail, noting times, sizes, brands, everything in and everything out and the pattern of severe reactions to fructans became apparent as well as much milder intolerances to the rest of them.
Working out which foods to avoid is the hard work that will make the rest of your life easier, yet, even armed with knowledge discipline can be difficult.
Part of the problem of managing pain with a strict diet is struggling with bad habits.
Grazing, munching out of packets on the go, sleep-eating, missing meals and too much coffee.
When you’re a bit hungry and tired of course not grabbing a snack while you are out will be difficult, but it's human nature to self punish for these lapses which usually results in a double loop of self harm comfort eating. If you already feel fairly rotten, it’s easy to rationalise ‘can’t-make-it-that-much-worse-just-one-more-nibble…’ enough times to feel worse for longer so having gut friendly snacks ready for the munchies makes life far more pleasant.
In much the same way we tend to inflict hang-overs on ourselves, a few more regrettable bites can easily be justified as a reward or comfort, ironically, often in compensation for the symptoms we are about to cause. The misery is compounded by the knowledge you sort of did this to yourself. The impact on your life of IBS can be depressing which makes self neglect very easy -bad enough for non IBS sufferers- but with it, treating yourself badly will have more painful consequences, probably making you even more depressed and demotivated.
My ibs was misdiagnosed as a psychological condition for years while I was given nasaids for pain and tried to eat what i thought would alleviate constipation with masses of garlic because its so nutrient rich and tasty. It only took a tiny amount of food to bloat so much I looked like a pregnant skeleton. Walking was difficult because of the cramps and spasms. The pressure on my bladder made me worry about wetting myself if I stumbled or laughed and the laxatives the gp gave me caused diarrhoea to alternate with the excruciating constipation in a slightly unpredictable way so I became reluctant to leave the house.
The psychological benefits of self care are as well known as the nutritional benefits of turmeric.
In this context, it is clear that reducing pain while still getting enough nutrients to think straight helps prevent the downward spiral of self neglect and depression. We are so adaptable, so busy surviving, that we often fail to realise how far we slid. Eliminating the worry of how a food will affect you because you know exactly whats in it is one anxiety less. It is well know that IBS is exacerbated by stress so eliminating the worries it causes is essential. It difficult to enjoy much when you are in pain or anticipating pain or very worried about how far the next public toilet is.
Like pain, pleasure can be a great motivator, but also a reward.
Pain free days of feeling supple and energetic were delightful but also triumphant, as if I had won a battle.A marvellous antithesis to the 'failure' bit of failure to manage my seemingly unmanagable body and great motivation for discipline in the early days. It gets easier as you nudge new habits in to your daily routine.
At the beginning, the actual act of noting danger foods makes the discipline easier, a note pad in the kitchen is easy to visualise instead of googling everything on the back of the packet in the shop, avoiding the the urge to not bother.
It also makes the symptoms of intolerances distinct. I know that anything containing onion and garlic powder will have me sobbing in a ball on the floor and very constipated for a couple of days but a croissant will just uncomfortably inflate me for an hour or two. if we are going to make bad choices, there is less self flagellation when they are informed and informative.Sharing food is a good idea too - a few bites of someone else's croissant is safer than a whole one.
Hopefully anyone will enjoy these recipes but I have written them for people struggling with a strict low fodmap diet, especially in the early elimination stages so I shall presume some knowledge on your behalf and that you are accustomed to adjusting ingredients according to your own tolerances
I am not a doctor or even a competent cook. I developed these recipes by experimenting with ingredients and a little reading. Monash seems to be the most respected authority on fodmaps , but all the nutritional information I've cited is available in the public domain.
Sources include
Monash medicinenet
healthline National Library of Medicine(usa)
a little bit yummy and various others.
Super Safe potato bread
to fill a 11" x 15" ish baking tray (quite big)
Two medium potatoes, grated
salt & pepper
drop of oil
1 tablespoon of water
Roll nice and thin, about 3mm and bake for about 12 minutes each side.
Put everything into a bowl and microwave for 5 minutes.
Dollop into a baking tray between two lightly greased sheets of baking paper.
Roll thin between the paper, right into the corners of the tray, occasionally peeling it back to check it isn't sticking.
Peel the top paper off, score into portions and put in the oven.
Check the top is starting to go a little golden and remove from oven. Lift out of tin by the paper and flip it over onto the second sheet. Peel the first sheet off the top, slide it back into the tin and cook the other side.
When it looks cooked, flip it over again to take the paper off then leave it to firm up as it cools...
...or bung it under the grill with a cheesy topping.
Safest Variations
Add thinly sliced courgette, spinach or olives when you turn it over, a little extra olive oil and grill for the last 5 minutes- this is really tasty! Smashed walnuts make a good topping too.
Replace some of the potato with parsnip for a slightly sweeter taste, cook in exactly the same way. ..yummy!
Method
The main problem I found trying to make thin and crispy flat breads was making it thin enough for it to be pleasingly crispy while getting the mix to stay stuck together until it was cooked.
I eventually discovered that it worked best between two pieces of baking paper.
Pre heat oven to 200ºc
Nutty Crunchy Version
1 cup gluten free porridge oats
1 1/2 cups water
1 medium potato, grated
2 tablespoons millet flour
1 table spoon rice flour
Seasoning to taste
This makes a chunkier crunch, more like an actual cracker and a nuttier richer taste. I initially microwaved the porridge then added the rest but since someone showed me that roasties come out crispier after a headstart in a microwave, I've put everything in the microwave for 3 ish minutes before rolling out and baking.
this should be rolled a little thicker than plain potato bread, about 5mm And bake for a little longer, 17 ish minutes on each side.
Fine and Crispy Version
1 small/ medium potato, grated
4 table spoons rice flour
1 table spoons millet flour
The rice flour makes this one a smooth, fine crispy version. It works ok with water and oil but I use butter and grate in a chunk of mature cheddar with masses of black pepper and a tiny sprinkling of chilli flakes. Thin slices of tomato* grilled on top with more cheese are in safe limits with a taste of the forbidden! yummmmm
A few months in, I wanted a variation on boiled, baked or roast. I was missing crunchy crackers and cheese sandwiches but wasn't ready to deviate far from potato, potato and potato. I started with just grated potato then began experimenting. This is an ideal dish for working out your tolerance to other ingredients, adding things bit by bit to your safe, neutral potato base. For example, I found I can digest millet and corn flour most easily, and now I know that more than half a ripe tomato a day will cause trouble. The more troublesome fodmaps you eliminate, the more freedom you will have in other food situations, less of the vague, unidentifiable bloating stiffness, less risk of stacking and less anxiety.
I usually fill the oven up with trays of flat breads while my spuds for dinner are baking. This solves another problem! If its sliced and grilled on top of tomorrows snacks, the temptation to graze on that juicy tomato, oozing appealingly on a saucer,just-one-more-bite-wont-hurt, is hidden in a tupperware box!
Whole grain foods that Monash has tested and found to be low FODMAP at either a full or half serve:
-
Amaranth (puffed)
-
Bourghul
-
Buckwheat (kernals, flour
-
Corn (cob, polenta, tortilla, popcorn)
-
Millet (grain, flour)
-
Oats (whole, quick, oatmeal)
-
Quinoa (grain, flakes, flour, pasta)
-
Rice (brown)
-
Sorgham (flour)
-
Wheat (wholemeal bread)
Many people begin their elimination diet with potato as it's about as close to fodmap free as you can get.
Luckily, potato is brilliantly versatile, cheap and mineral rich, its water retaining bulk easing bowel transit.
Flat Bread Variations
If, like me, you can tolerate lactose, the cheesy possibilities are endless. Mixing some in as well as grilling some on top with some tomato* and red pepper* makes a really yummy pizza style snack and adding some butter is rather good too.
*TOMATO! danger! CAPSICUM! danger!- A small amount of these is safe, even beneficial, but its easy to over do it. Tomato seems one of the most troublesome if you accidentally 'stack' your fodmaps. as do seeds which are especially yummy mixed into the oat version below with spinach and blue cheese, so proceed with caution!
Spicy Carrot Chips
Yellow mackerel curry
Fruit Bread
Banana Gooey
Carrot Cake
Self Portrait in Pink Silk
Self Portrait as a bunny rabbit in found materials
Self Portrait at home smoking and thinking
Self Portrait with a pigeon and a pineapple
Feast of the Annunciation.
Self-portrait with puppets.
Illustrations for Truman Capote's short story, 'A Christmas Memory'.
Digitally altered original sketches.
Coat for a Routemaster bus comissioned by Psychological Art Circus for their show, Illusions of Reference
the Play Time Dolls.
Folie aux sept
Polished Turds
Made alongside assorted essays on the narratives of value.
I dabble in doggerel
As the cat feigns ennui
Smoking in bed,
Misquoting Satre
and tutting at me
The night is no longer forever
The sky is never still.
I may have never loved anyone
And I always will
The plump volcano rests between finger and thumb,
Fickle as a fish
I think with it.
Fanfare for the Cannon Fodder
Here in my ivory tower block,
My ashtray runneth over.
My anxious mind replaces
punctuation with profanity,
Screaming into your minutes silence
as the street kneels before the altar of Captain Tom
(at peace, he hears nothing).
A suitable shrine to our proud hypocrisy
and the Emperor, in his flesh coloured onesie blows his own trumpet-
A fanfare for cannon fodder.
That marvellous minotaur
That marvellous minotaur in my mind
Never made it out alive
My maybe massive misapprehension
Might not have been rejection
Our oblique dialogue left too much space
Between meaningless words and there,
Confusion and fantasy grew in knots
Of maybe maybe not.
Crystallised, not buried by time
This became a bright, shiny bauble
Rubbed smooth from so much handling-
But no fairy-tale future foretold within
When reality failed to thrill.
I consumed and discarded subsequent not-yous
With less harm or significance than an apple or cigarette.
As they persisted in being not you
I flung the splinters of myself ever more wildly
A hail of impotent arrows.
Commitment
Drawing has much in common with a salto- if you don’t commit to it, you will probably land on your head.
The space you are aiming for doesn’t exist as a separate place until you arrive, until you delineate it. It is indistinguishable from other bits of space except for your intention and action. You draw the exterior space by controlling your interior- muscles, mind, momentum, memory- movement.
You have to aim for something you cant see, something you can only understand by occupying it with your body. You have to trust something you haven’t yet invented. This is why all artists can see the future
If you don’t hurl yourself with enough force, your trajectory is too short, too shaky, you won’t make it all the way round to land on your feet- this is where accidents happen, when you start off holding too tight from fear. Trying to use eyes and hands to grab at drifting shreds of comprehension doesn’t help. Accept your destination as the unknown. Once you arrive it is yours to describe, name, plant a flag on- there, you did it, a line!
When you find it, it feels like magic. You achieve something impossible. Locating the neglected muscle is hard in the first place then asking it to turn you upside-down- you can feel your body protesting that it doesn’t understand the question.
While it happens it is still incomprehensible but you gradually learn how to ask your body to do it,
then you learn to control it-
When you are trying to balance, finding that sweet spot requires using the all the different bits of yourself together, there, thats where they tesselate and pivot, collaborate.
Y
ou seize your direction with your eyes- in doing this I become aware that this bit of my seeing apparatus is not my eyes but much further back. I can feel it surging down to connect directly , (the right angle of its trajectory is tangible) to my obliques and pelvic floor, to the myriad tiny peripheral muscles that keep me upright, to the bottom of my sea inside me, to the lakes in my ear drums.
The knack is to stop looking at things and see what you are looking for instead. We are so reliant on our eyes, too much of our reasoning is attuned to their exclusive language. To be aware of the space we occupy needs more than a comprehension of shapes and forms of things around us.
Adjusting the angles of our body to balance does not require sight but rather a spatial reasoning, an understanding of relationships between proportions of components. The inside of our body knows where it is, we just don't often hear it over our shouting eyes. Each line has inherent jeopardy. You can only do your best in that moment. The necessary velocity may be hard to control but a timid movement is guaranteed failure.
The Woodpecker
I have a spectacular back garden. I share it with you lot, tourists, joggers and the frieze art fair, but mostly it is mine. Best just as it stops raining. Disguised as another jogger I can slip invisible through you but I always relish being the only one there, I often dance wildly right in the middle of the big space until I land in the wet grass. One day, rain so fine it hung in the air, almost mist. The park is a vivid green blur, I am drenched and leaping up and down and roaring along to Beethoven( You don’t think that’s good music for running? Try it!) when a ball of emerald light comes out of the ground. It hovers at head height, pulsating to the music. It's very dramatic, then I see the red and realise it’s a woodpecker. The woodpecker tells me very sternly to stop stamping about. I am not supposed to be in this part of the park, only birds may come here. I apologise and jog away.
grunting my way around the park on a constitutional lollop, I encounter a posse* of crows as I round the corner before the playing field.
'hi!'
The tallest crow, the one in the middle cocks her head 'awwriiightcwwarrrkcwarr', she replies, 'nice music!ckwwaaarr'
'but its on MY head phones, how can you hear it?' Im confused now. I take the little plugs out of my ears and hold them away from myself so that I cant hear them.'how...?'
'oh, we ckwaaan listen to all sorts of frequencies. Radio waves, wifi-' she does what looks like a crow equivalent of rolling her eyes,'wifi is soooo noisy. Sometimes we hear your thoughts too, when you think too loudly. Kcwaac. You lot pollute everything.'
Her confrontational attitude is slightly at odds with her sleek, magnificent appearance, knee high, shimmering oily smooth purple black, not a feather out of place, but she sounds like she grew up on a London council estate, which I suppose she did.
I cant hear the music but suddenly the other four are nudging each other with their wing tips, bobbing and swaying.'Calm down girls!'
'..yeah, but!...'
'ok, that is an excellent tune!' she concedes. I put the music back in my ears and we dance together to queen and saen saint. The crows are excellent dancers, left claw in, right claw out, tail feathers swaying, wings vouging in eerie syncopation. The boss girl crow is off the ground, wings flexing to match my own steps. Im getting out of breath when it comes to a shambolic end- someone has stepped on someone elses claw and dancing is forgotten in the resultant giggling and shoving.
'Not bad for a clumsy human!' they laugh as they flap away into the sky and I realise I never even asked her name.
*Really, a posse, if you met them you’d understand. I know the collective noun is murder but these were more like shoplifting in woolworths
Maps and Crows. (from Story of the Sky)
The repetition of a certain route can create a hiccup in time
Walking down the same road many times without creating as many new memories stretches time to a different shape. The memory of the most recent journey is so similar to the other memories that they subsume it, swallow it whole, render it indistinguishable. It is the quickest way to travel, to forget each journey, instantly. This allows older memories of the familiar space to float back up, fuzzy edged, overlapping, as present as the present.
Chorus-
I had a brilliant thought then I forgot it
Yet another brilliant thought that I forgot.
Once formed thoughts last forever even if you can't remember how to think them again but if they haven't been thunk thoroughly enough they remain insubstantial. Mnemosyne has too much on her mind anyway and squinting at vague shapes in shadowy corners gives her a headache so there they remain, unexamined. Facile and profound gathering dust together.
I had a brilliant thought....
The crows squat jagged on that awful shelf at the back of my mind. They appear to be sleeping but they are rather large so I'll give them a wide berth. One shuffle from those wings could send piles of thoughts tumbling.
A Flash in the Pan
I m watching that film again
-a different me, a different you-
The pleasure of the recollections
is equal
To the visual delight of a trillion bugle beads,
The sexy princess tortured
At her father's command.
The absurd hero,
Worthy of praise
Less than any of those pretty girls,
Still gets to drive the rocket bike
Leaving only the language of the simper to choose from.
It doesn't seem fair.
A love without mutual respect ,
Can not be called love,
Unless it is simply a love of the joy of a moment.
I mistook vast for something substantial.
Because kinky old ladies
-in my experience-
Were never afraid of telling me what my place was.
In relations fraught with history
Honesty is less easy.
Trapped behind impersonations of better selves,
Sent ahead to deliver the deathly lines, hurtling
towards a climatic end, a squib so sodden
it is a slip hazard to the confused characters in a plot
Forever unresolved.