Digestive discomfort can take over your life, limiting what you eat, how you feel, and even what you’re willing to plan for the day ahead. The good news, Relief is possible, and it starts with understanding what your gut truly needs.
The Low FODMAP approach is a proven, practical way to calm symptoms, identify your triggers, and rebuild your confidence around food.
If you are at this stage, you'll have already completed Stage 1: Elimination. Now you are ready for Reintroduction, where you will test and track foods to uncover which ones work for you, and which don’t.
We’ve designed this guide to be clear, encouraging, and easy to follow. Whether you’re brand new to digestive health changes or have tried other approaches before. You’ll not only soothe your gut, but also regain the freedom to enjoy food without fear.
How does Reintroduction work?
If you have been strict and eliminated all FODMAPs, and have felt an improvement, with less diarrhoea, constipation, or bloating, then it’s time to work out which of the FODMAPs are the irritants.
No Bloat founder Heather Mills, is intolerant to Fructans, the worst culprits being garlic and onion.
Some people are fine with garlic but not onion. Heather also can’t eat mannitols, such as button mushrooms. As an alternative, Heather enjoys oyster mushrooms, which are yummy and low FODMAP.
As you go through, there will always be a replacement food once you work out which ones to eliminate.
We are trying to keep this information as simple as possible, as Heather has suffered personally and understands what you’re going through. Even after studying the science for 15 years, it is still very complicated.
Our Advice
Let’s cut out all the noise and confusion and hopefully explain this in an easy to digest way (pardon the pun!) so you can find out as quickly as possible and not suffer, as Heather did, with no real information at hand.
Find out what your gut irritant(s) are, eliminate them, and start to get back to expanding your range of foods outside of low FODMAP, which is really important for nutritional variety.
- It is important you avoid eating out during your challenge days and make sure you are near the toilet.
- It’s best to start with the single challenge FODMAPS to start getting some quick results.
- If the first one you start with doesn’t have a negative reaction, you can move on to the next one the next day. If you do have a bad reaction, wait until the gut inflammation has gone down completely (which can take 48 to 72 hours) before you move on to the next challenge FODMAP.
- Keep a diary of your specific reactions and a careful note of which FODMAP irritated you. At the end of testing the 6 below you will find out which FODMAPS irritate you.
This process, depending on your reaction, can take 2 to 6 weeks as the gut must always be calm before testing the next challenge FODMAP.
In the reintroduction phase, we test different amounts of a specific FODMAP containing food, starting with a moderate serve and increasing to a high serve, to determine the amount someone may be able to tolerate without triggering symptoms.
A food is reintroduced for 3 days, and a 2 to 3 day break is taken between challenges, or until symptoms settle, before moving on to a different food.
Once you find out which one, or if you are unlucky multiple FODMAPS, you are intolerant to, you will need to avoid any products that have more than one, even if just one of them is your intolerance.
For example: watermelon is a fructan, mannitol and fructose FODMAP. Sweetcorn is a sorbitol and a GOS. Mangetout is a fructan, mannitol and GOS.
Next Steps
Once you have completed Stage 2, you can move onto Stage 3: Maintenance.
