Hello Bev,
A great website is
www.helpforibs.com It really explains soluble versus insoluble fiber. The author of this website has a great cookbook for IBS called Eating for IBS by Heather Van Vorous. She has suffered for 20 years from IBS which started when she was a child. It has been the most informative thing I have found. But recipes are for IBS not losing weight. Most are naturally low fat because fat is an IBS trigger but sugar, real sugar is not, so calories are high at times. My daughter was on Miralax for 6 months, also Elavil (which didn't help at all) and several different perscription acid reducers. Now she is off it all and uses Benefiber to help with the constipation. She takes 2-3 tablespoons per day but could take up to 5. The gastro dr. suggested it because I was concerned that all this soluble fiber was so high in calories. They had me switch to white bread and white rice and everything refined. I was going nuts because I knew that was going to just pack on the pounds. But I did it to just get her pain free and with the miralax we got it under control. I followed advice from the dr., website and cookbook I mentioned above and have really gotten the IBS under control, gone from daily attacks to one in the last 2 months (which was due to a little bit of chocolate from Valentine's day). I eliminated all known trigger foods and then we slowly introduce something from the list to see if she can tolerate it. I've now gotten her back on some whole wheat items. The foods we stay away from are: all dairy, all artificial sweetners particularly malitol and sorbitol (splenda okay) egg yolks (whites okay - it is the protein in yolk that hurts IBSers), high fat foods, caffeine, carbonation, chocolate, high insoluble fiber foods, citrus, raw vegetables. If she has insoluble fiber (which the doctor wants her to be reintroduced to) we have to pair it with soluble food. So she will have applesauce or sliced peeled apples with a trigger food, it helps to basically coat the trigger food in the intestines. That is where the Benefiber comes in, it is a way to get soluble fiber into your diet without the calories. It is able 20 calories per tablespoon. We introduced soy to replace the dairy, but you must do this slowly since it is beans. We have found great substitutes that she is willing to use but as I said previously they tend to be high in calories and fat. We have found a perfect breakfast that runs about 5-6 points on ww that has no trigger foods. She has 2/3 cup egg beaters with 2 tablespoons Benefiber dissolved in it, doesn't affect the eggs or the taste, two slices of Louis Rich turkey bacon, 2 slices of WW toast with apple butter and a few slices of peeled apples, glass of water. I send her off to school with a good size breakfast. Snack time she has these soy chips that we found (2 points) for the entire bag and has no trigger food. Lunch is tougher because she's in middle school so she doesn't want to take a lunch pail or draw attention to herself with anything weird. Usually baked chips, turkey sandwich (half white bread, half whole wheat) apple sauce, 100 Calorie oreo graham cracker snacks, water. After school snack is tough because she is so hungry it seems. SHe often has a bowl of WW Vanilla puffed wheat cereal (1 point) with soy milk. Dinners are challenging because I feel like I'm making everyone their own dinner since rest of us don't have IBS. She's such a trooper though and is so glad to be pain free. She has worked now for a long time very hard with no real results on the weight. I suppose if we hadn't been working this hard it would be much more out of control. It's very frustrating as I'm sure you know. I try to take a WW recipe and convert it to eliminate triggers and then all the substitutions make it no longer a good WW food. We don't really do the low carb stuff because most of the foods have malitol in it. Dr. told us to stay away from anything that ended in tol. Those malitol, sorbitol, etc. tear up her stomach like you wouldn't believe. The valentine episode was due to five M&Ms. She loves chocolate but knows it hurts too much. I use cocoa alot for some substitutes and she likes chocolate soy which uses cocoa not chocolate. I also take yoga classes and my instructor taught me poses for her to get into when she has an attack. There is information on this on the website I gave you. Hope the website gives you some good information. It is well worth checking out. If you solve this IBS diet dilemma let me know. THat goes for anyone else out there struggling with the same issues. Thanks.