Fats causing stomach reflux, need to increase fat intake.

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Thisiswhatido
Thisiswhatido Posts: 16
in Food and Nutrition
Hello Everyone,

TL;DR: Having trouble eating enough fats (<30g/50g now) without getting heart burn. Eating chicken cooked with seasoning on skin and then skin is removed. Can't eat olive oil, nuts and avocados for now.

Background:
Recently I've self-diagnosed with FODMAPs sensitivity (my doctor wasn't much help, a dietitian concurred it may be FODMAPs.) However, I noticed a few items on the FODMAPs that I knew didn't work too well with my body as well, so I decided to follow a Paleo/FODMAPs diet, currently testing items from the eat real food pdf online. I'm finally making a full move to a FODMAPs friendly diet, but I've had to overcome many obstacles. Eating enough calories, eating enough carbs, eating enough fats. Since I'm not sure on whether nuts and avocados trigger my symptoms, I'm sidelining them for now.
I was eating popcorn to increase my carb and calorie intake along with homemade basmati rice milk. (2 cups dry, semi cooked into a gallon total.) However, I was still noticing symptoms, so I've decided to remove the popcorn and fill it in with MOAR rice. I was also over eating spinach and then found out that wasn't a good idea for a daily diet, so I reduced it form 5oz to 1.5oz + 1.5oz of a kale/chard/spinach mix. Then added 100g of celery, 2 tiny cuties or 1 halo, 1 kiwi or plum. The veggies and fruits were very filling and lead to the low cal intake. Sometimes less than 1000 kcal. I Then decided I should juice them, which is what I've been doing now. For breakfast, I would have 2 large eggs scrambled with some homemade ghee and a cup of rice milk mixed with a truenutrition gemma pea/rice protein (70/30) which I removed for a while because I realized the sweetener in it wasn't good for me, this also lead to a drop in calorie intake. I eventually decided to deal with the extra sweetener for now and have the extra calories and it seems the sweetener doesn't have much of an effect (next time I'll order the protein powder without flavoring.) This is putting me past my protein intake macro, however.

Issue:
I've been cooking chicken, at first I was eating thighs fried on a skillet with a bit of ghee, but then moved to baking the chicken. I apply salt and pepper on skin and then remove the skin after cooking... (eat the skin after cooking, no reflux occurs from eating the skin.) The stomach burn occurs usually after eating 100g (3.5oz) of the meat only, I remove as much fat as I can. I sometimes even notice it with 50g, even with drumstick meat. I've switched to a mix of chicken breast and I'm hoping this will reduce the reflux. Normally when I have my morning eggs, I do not get the reflux, however, today it happened. I'm not looking forward to lunch now as I have to eat more chicken. I will be buying beef next time to test if there's any difference. With this said, I'm barely even scraping 30g of fats, and I need to hit at least 50g.

EDIT: Thank you to anyone who reads this and takes time to give some feedback.

Replies

  • norcalskater
    norcalskater Posts: 194 Member
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    My feedback is that this is way too long lol. BUT that being said... I've never heard of acid reflux being cause by fats. Try peanut butter, mixed nuts, or avocado. Those are high in the good fats and if your system doesn't have a problem with them they can bump your fat up a little bit.

    EDIT: Opps I missed the part where you said you can't have any of those things.
  • AlabasterVerve
    AlabasterVerve Posts: 3,171 Member
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    Is this the food plan your dietician came up with for you? I don't know the protocol for diagnosing food sensitivities but I'd think you'd be better off eliminating ONE thing from your diet at a time and then adding it back in again taking note of how you feel with and without that one food. But the heartburn I'd bet is caused by all of the rice you're eating since that's more commonly associated with eating carbs than fat or protein. Eating rice 5 or 6 times a day is probably too much.
  • Thisiswhatido
    Thisiswhatido Posts: 16
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    Sactownfilmer, lol thanks anyways.

    Alabaster, I didn't mention this in my OP because it was already too long as is. I first experience the stomach burn when I changed my diet to eggs/protein shake (been doing this for over a year now for breakfast about 95% of the year) then for lunch I would have steel cut oats because I read those were "healthy" then I would just boil them in water and add a serving of olive oil to get my healthy fats intake. The heart burn was mild at first. I then decided to try making seitan, with another serving of olive oil in that. I would also have a serving or two of smoked salmon. After about a week of this, I cut out the seitan, just in case it was the gluten. Then I cut out the oats. The smoked salmon was still triggering the stomach burn. I had enough and decided to go back to a base I knew would get rid of the heart burn after reading an article that listed excess fats as a source of stomach burn. I ate nothing but my usual breakfast and about 100g of popcorn and 3 cups of rice milk a day. Within two days the stomach burn was non-existent, and I continued on my journey to do a FODMAPs friendly diet. My current diet was not what my dietitian recommended, it's been what I've slowly put together as I go.

    The point of an elimination diet is to achieve a neutral diet (no symptoms) and then add items back slowly after a period on the neutral diet. I'm still trying to find this neutral diet holy grail. It seems I'm stuck between choosing bloating or stomach burn.

    I've been pretty symptom free today. So tomorrow I may add in avocado or nuts to see if it triggers the bloating. I'm hoping they're good to go so I can get some of the fats from there instead of meat.
  • cwsreddy
    cwsreddy Posts: 998 Member
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    Why Stomach Acid is Good for You - by Dr. Jonathan Wright.

    Read it and change your life by supplementing with HCl, digestive enzymes and probiotics. Completely cured my GERD/LPR where no ENT/GI doctor could.
  • Thisiswhatido
    Thisiswhatido Posts: 16
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    Solution: Figured out that I was not intaking enough sodium since I was prepping all my food and being "clean." I was getting at most 1g of sodium and I was drinking a lot of water at the same time. Turns out the chloride used for creation of stomach acid is found in salt along with sodium. I made sure to add enough salt to my daily meals (3.5g worth of sodium for now and slowly tapering it back to 2.5-3g depending on my level of activity.) Feeling much better, I get hungry really quickly now, I'm able to eat bigger meals and higher amounts of chicken (therefore more fats) and no stomach burn whatsoever. :)

    I hope this helps others with similar problems. Please note that if you believe you need more salt in your diet, consult with your doctor, OR really track all the sodium in the foods that you're eating. Also, there's a difference between salt and sodium. Sodium is just one part of salt. If you grab a box of salt and look at the nutritional information you'll see that a serving size is something like 1.5g but if you look at the sodium, it'll show something like 590mg. The 2500mg daily allotment is for sodium not for salt. If you did only 2.5g of salt you would only get 983mg of sodium, less than half the daily allotment.

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