Gained 9 pounds in one week on unlimited vegetables and shirataki noodles.

KittenTamer91

On a side note, I lost 7 pounds in one week on unlimited candy, chocolate, and ice cream.

These were two experiments I did by the way. I know for a fact that I was consuming well under my TDEE (actually, more like under 1,000 calories) on unlimited non-starchy veggies and shirataki, because of how uncomfortably full I got. I wanted to eat more but I was too full.

While on my candy/chocolate/ice cream experiment, I consumed at LEAST 2,500 calories per day. I'm talking an entire tub of ice cream per day in addition to the candy/chocolate. I'm confused (and shocked) in terms of my results. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

snowflake954

Open up your food diary. As an "experiment" you need more than a week, and food intake has to be precise, if not, there's not much value to the experience.

amusedmonkey

These kinds of experiments need to be longer than that due to how the body handles non-fat weight fluctuations and need more than a single weekly weight datapoint. Neither losing 7 pounds in one week nor gaining 9 pounds in one week is possible without some extreme behavior. I'm talking like eating absolutely nothing plus extra activity or eating something like 7000 calories or so daily.

To me, it looks like your scale is broken or needs batteries.

ruqayyahsmum

On your noodle and veg diet were you doing a poo every day?

Was the ice cream diet the week straight after?

KittenTamer91

ruqayyahsmum wrote: »

On your noodle and veg diet were you doing a poo every day?

Was the ice cream diet the week straight after?

No to the first question. I have ibs-c and chronic constipation. Part of my first experiment was actually for that reason. I generally eat a balanced diet. In other words a variety of different foods but have been experiencing a lot of bloating and gas on my usual diet so I'm trying to pin point the culprit by doing mini extended diets on specific food groups/types.

Yes to the second question. The ice cream/candy experiment was directly after.
My next experiment might be a meat only week.

TavistockToad

1 week isn't long enough to say that one diet 'works' and another doesn't.

mini diets and 'experiments' like you're doing wont help, why not do an actual elimination diet if you're wanting to improve your health instead of just messing around?

Lillymoo01

KittenTamer91 wrote: »

ruqayyahsmum wrote: »

On your noodle and veg diet were you doing a poo every day?

Was the ice cream diet the week straight after?

No to the first question. I have ibs-c and chronic constipation. Part of my first experiment was actually for that reason. I generally eat a balanced diet. In other words a variety of different foods but have been experiencing a lot of bloating and gas on my usual diet so I'm trying to pin point the culprit by doing mini extended diets on specific food groups/types.

Yes to the second question. The ice cream/candy experiment was directly after.
My next experiment might be a meat only week.

So in the first week, you ate high volumes of food and didn't poop much. Adding a lot of extra fibre in one hit will do that, even without IBS-C. This leads to a reasonable weight gain as a result of a build-up of waste. My guess is that once you went to a week of sugar and icecream your bowel movements increased and you got rid of much of that extra weight, hence the weight loss. None of this would have any bearing on the amount of fat you lost or gained.

Fuzzipeg

IBS is a very complicated thing. I hope you are getting support from your medical team. Thinking constipation I expect you are keeping hydrated, dehydration adds to the issue. High fibre can be counter productive too. The causes can be so different for each and every sufferer. Have you heard of salicylate Intolerance? Much of the work into this was done at an Australian Hospital, Royal Prince Alberts (or at least those initials). Some have difficulty in digesting salicylate, its a substance which plants use to protect themselves from moulds and mildews, there are several on-line sites which provide information. The Finegold diet did not go far enough for myself in sals elimination. There is also Histamine intolerance, histamine is produced on different foods as they age some of us react at earlier stages than the majority. One can be intolerant of other things like oxalates/sulphates and more. Some find the FODMAPS diet helpful. It groups foods by the sugars they break into or the ways they are digested how they effect the body as they are absorbed after digestion.

Many people will scoff but using digestive microbes can help improve one's digestive biome. If we lack the quantity and diversity of microbes our foods will not be digested efficiently. Medications particularly antibiotics though others have this as a side effect , excess sugar in the diet and inheritance can all effect our personal biome. I would suggest looking for something which does not increase histamine, a few digestive microbes do increase histamine levels and our reactions.

Many with IBS have allergies or intolerances, where as allergies have virtually instant reactions intolerances can take longer to show up, they can be really insidious. the common ones are gluten, which is in most grains some grains are free of it. I think we can exclude casein and lactose but dairy is often a trigger, those who say they are lactose intolerant are probably more reactive to casein which is the dominant problem. Having allergy and intolerance testing can help avoid eliminating things for them to do little or nothing to improve your condition.

For those with intolerances they may find digestive enzymes useful, they come in single or multiple products to help digest fats, proteins, starches etc. Some are made to work to digest salicylate. There can be many different reasons for enzyme problems, they can be nutritional or microbial. For instance where the body lacks adequate vit c and vit B 5 or 6, the body is less able to deal with histamine.

I've probably given you far too much to think about. Please do your own reading and follow your own symptoms to achieve relief for yourself this way rather than throwing yourself into eating only one food for a week which can make the whole problem much worse.

As a side thought, constipation can be caused by endocrine disruption but this is a difficult problem to get addressed properly. All the very best. I hope you achieve comfort.

ruqayyahsmum

Lillymoo01 wrote: »

KittenTamer91 wrote: »

ruqayyahsmum wrote: »

On your noodle and veg diet were you doing a poo every day?

Was the ice cream diet the week straight after?

No to the first question. I have ibs-c and chronic constipation. Part of my first experiment was actually for that reason. I generally eat a balanced diet. In other words a variety of different foods but have been experiencing a lot of bloating and gas on my usual diet so I'm trying to pin point the culprit by doing mini extended diets on specific food groups/types.

Yes to the second question. The ice cream/candy experiment was directly after.
My next experiment might be a meat only week.

So in the first week, you ate high volumes of food and didn't poop much. Adding a lot of extra fibre in one hit will do that, even without IBS-C. This leads to a reasonable weight gain as a result of a build-up of waste. My guess is that once you went to a week of sugar and icecream your bowel movements increased and you got rid of much of that extra weight, hence the weight loss. None of this would have any bearing on the amount of fat you lost or gained.

Yep this is what I was wondering when I asked

A week of high fibre and low fats will usually cause a more bulky stools in the gut which of course adds weight and then a week of high fats will help push those bulky stools through the system and voilà weight goes back down

The "experiment" has no bearing on fat loss or gain

ruqayyahsmum

If you have a bowel disorder it would be best to talk to your specialist about finding the right way of eating for your needs

MelanieCN77

Even with a full diary of this eating, this is a pointless exercise for everyone here. Fluctuations of 5lbs or so when eating erratically would be expected rather than unusual.

davidylin04

One week is not a sufficient period of time for any experiment involving body weight. People experience fluctuations in their measured weight that are perfectly reasonably explained over such short period of time such as:

• electrolyte balance
• constipation
• inflammation
• your scale needs new batteries

tulips_and_tea

The "diet" stuff and why your weight probably fluctuated the way it did has already been covered, but as someone who also has IBS if you're going to try eliminating foods to see what exactly bothers you and what doesn't you'll need to give it more time and be very accurate as to what you stop eating, when, if/when you add it back into your diet and how you feel along the way.

It's tedious and takes patience but can pay off if you figure out your trigger foods.

kimny72

First, the body doesn't react immediately to everything you do, so a one week experiment isn't telling you very much. You could easily be seeing changes in your body this week that were caused by a change you made 10 days ago. When you make drastic changes every week, you are just challenging your body and probably causing all sorts of weird fluctuations in digestive transit time and water weight, not to mention confusing the heck out of your endocrine system.

Second, if you have medical digestive issues, switching from one extreme dietary change to another weekly without the previous knowledge of your doctor is a recipe for disaster.

kshama2001

If you're a woman with a menstrual cycle you need to give any weight loss experiment at least a month and compare yourself to where you were at a similar point in your cycle last month.

However, since you have IBS-C and chronic constipation, I recommend against any drastic experiments. Just focus on eating what's best for your condition. Perhaps ask your doctor for a referral to a dietitian?

Also, how well are you managing stress? My mom's IBS kicks in when she is in high stress periods. Otherwise she manages it well with acacia fiber and eating insoluble veggies after soluble.

AnnPT77

I agree with pretty much all of the above, but want to add this: I read some research that said digestive transit could take up to 50+ hours. Nutrients continue to be absorbed during a good bit of that, and it takes some time for them to be processed biochemically into useful forms. Therefore, even ignoring the effects of constipation, you're well into your experimental week before you start seeing any net fat effect from the experiment, and - when you do the experiments back to back - well into the second experiment while still experiencing effects from the first one.

Poor experimental design, so completely meaningless. Plus meaningless for the reasons everyone else said.

Suggestion: Why not consult with a registered dietician to follow a sensibly balanced diet (from a nutritional and caloric standpoint), and eliminate foods in a properly structured way to see what sensitivities you may actually have?

(I've been diagnosed with IBS-C myself in the past, but rarely experience symptoms nowadays when eating a sensible, balanced diet with enough fiber, enough fat, adequate hydration (from water and foods), and regular exercise (especially exercise that involves moving the midsection). You may be less lucky than I, but I'm pretty sure your current approach is going to be a poor way to find a solution.)

quiksylver296

KittenTamer91 wrote: »

On a side note, I lost 7 pounds in one week on unlimited candy, chocolate, and ice cream.

These were two experiments I did by the way. I know for a fact that I was consuming well under my TDEE (actually, more like under 1,000 calories) on unlimited non-starchy veggies and shirataki, because of how uncomfortably full I got. I wanted to eat more but I was too full.

While on my candy/chocolate/ice cream experiment, I consumed at LEAST 2,500 calories per day. I'm talking an entire tub of ice cream per day in addition to the candy/chocolate. I'm confused (and shocked) in terms of my results. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

Unless you used a food scale, weighed everything in grams, and logged meticulously, I would be very skeptical of your "findings."

Did you use soy sauce or something super sodium laden on your noodles?

HoneyBadger302

Agree with many others that a) a week of anything is basically useless data b) if you're looking for triggers to your IBS, you need to go on a proper (and managed) elimination diet, which takes MONTHS to do properly. After all of that, if you know your "trigger" foods, you can then begin to develop an eating plan around those things.

Weight gain or loss in a week's time is normal - I'm healthy, eat similarly most of the time, and a hot weekend at the track where I consume electrolytes (aka more sodium than normal) can have as much as a 5+ pound weight swing for me, and it can take upwards of 5 days for it to fall back off, which it is prone to doing in wooshes of a pound or more a day.

The reality is my weight probably didn't change much at all (or within my goals if it did) but the scale changing is not an indication of any real gains or losses.

DaisyHamilton

I'm interested in how you were able to eat Shirataki noodles for a whole week. Tried them once, hated them. Gave them a second shot, still hated them. That rubbery texture is REALLY hard to get around.

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