[Esofia]

I've been getting episodes of very nasty abdominal pain, and the doctor I saw today thinks it may be gallstones. He's sending me off for an ultrasound, though I imagine that'll be at least a couple of weeks as I need enough time to book a support worker to take me.

Anyway, I gather it's not the most common thing in vegans, and I'm a bit young for it, but there you go, it's a possibility. I mentioned that I'm having about 27% of my calories from fat, thinking that would be fine, and he said that was high and that I should go for 10%. Does anyone have advice about how to cut down my fat that low on a vegan diet? He also said that high protein is good for my medical condition (ME/CFIDS). Of course, my protein sources tend to be high in fat, so I'm a bit baffled as to how to approach this.

I eat a pretty wholefoods diet, not to the point of some people here who don't eat bread but I certainly don't eat processed foods. I generally have porridge with soya milk, a couple of chopped dates and a bit of protein powder for breakfast, soup and/or salad for lunch, and then supper will be typically pasta or rice with vegetables and a few nuts or similar. For the soup, I either make up a big batch of vegetable soup and freeze it (frustratingly, we've just made a batch that was richer than I wanted due to accidentally buying the wrong coconut milk), or I have miso soup with red rice, tofu and vegetables.

[Suzanne 3FC]

I'm sorry to hear that you are having this problem! I'm surprised your doctor is recommending 10% fat. I've read that going too low can cause gallstones. Also they recommend restricting saturated fats, but that wouldn't be a problem for you. Of course I'm not a doctor

It sounds like you eat an incredibly healthy diet and I can't see anywhere to cut it. I hope they are able to get you in for an ultrasound quick. Hopefully you don't have gallstones (or anything else serious!) and you won't have to worry about changes like this.

[Esofia]

I've been a bad chick and sort of ended up posting about this over a few threads. Short version: rang the doctor again after two days of truly miserable eating and it turned out they probably meant 10% saturated fat, not that they seem to have a clue about basic nutrition, and told me to go back to what I was eating already. Until I have the ultrasound (10 days away) I'm lowering the fat content of my diet a bit, down to about 19%, to be on the safe side, and in particular avoiding meals with a large amount of fat. One good thing about the timing is that at least that's now easy to do, and I can look back over my food journal and see what I was eating before the pain attacks.

And right now I am being entertained by reading articles written by blogging doctors who are merrily pulling apart scams such as gallstone flushes!

Thanks for the good wishes. Whatever it is, I hope it's easy to deal with and that they figure it out soon.