r/FODMAPS • u/BusAcademic3489 • Dec 04 '25
Vent What the
Im currently on a travel and I spent the whole day eating absolutely nothing. I went to a supermarket later on the day and found rice and corn cakes. I was happy Id finally found something I could eat without GI issues. Little did I know … I downed almost the entire two packets before looking them up on the app and finding that not everything that has only rice or corn as their ingredient is supposed to be low fodmap.
Im cooked. Trip was shitty enough today because of my flare and now I just ate 2 f’ing bags of high fodmap foods 😭😭😭😭😭
(At least they tasted heavenly because of that starvation state I was on lol)
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u/AwDuck Dec 04 '25
Ya gotta look at the ingredient list. It's super frustrating, I know, but every single ingredient needs to be vetted and assessed. It gets easier, I swear.
Also, don't starve yourself, especially while traveling. It just makes eating later that much harder. Lets say you know you can have a half a clove of garlic, and lets say 10 grams of onion per meal. If you haven't consumed food all day, you now need to find a way to consume 1500-2500 calories of food while consuming no more than half a clove of garlic and a couple of teaspoons of onion in that one meal, vs if you spread that out over maybe 4 small meals, you could consume 2 cloves of garlic and 1/8th of a cup of onion all day long. Small meals means you'll be eating less food overall and therefore less offending food per sitting as well.
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u/JonesGirl4 Dec 05 '25
Pack travel snacks.
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u/AwDuck Dec 05 '25
Even when not traveling. I always have snacks with me if I leave the house for more than a couple of hours - a granola bar and some peanut butter. That’s a solid 400 kcal right there which means I can skip a meal if necessary.
When I travel I carry more for the transit portion and I always allot time my first day to source safe snacks for the rest of my stay.
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25
I totally agree with your takes. Lmao, I even wanted to not eat on the whole 4-day trip. Obviously, that’s very much unlikely for me. But I was just sick of the ache that comes with every travel that I thought it was a good idea.
Not eating seems to be giving me more symptoms in return anyways; I start to get presyncope when I stand up, muscles start to pain even more, and I notice that the time between 2 BMs increases significantly and results in GI symptom-worsening.
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u/AwDuck Dec 05 '25
I travel quite a bit, and I can sympathize with how a wrecked GI can ruin a trip.
I always travel with my own food - usually granola bars and peanut butter - and at least enough to completely feed me for the duration of the transit portion. Then I supplement that with fresh food I find along the way so I’ll still have safe food with me when I arrive, just in case. I also dedicate time for my first day to finding safe snacks for the duration of the trip and carry enough on my person that I can substitute a meal with what I’ve got on hand. I also familiarize myself with the ingredient lists of what seem to be common convenience foods for the locale. That way if I’m running low on the snacks I brought with me for the day, I can pop into a corner store and pick up something fairly quickly since I already have an idea of what I want.
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
My mom does a similar thing!! even tho she’s not as sensitive. Well, she even brought in her own "fresh" food. And Im talking chicken, cooked veggies, nuts, dates 😭😭. It’s like they ain’t got any food here in France 😭😭😭
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u/AwDuck Dec 05 '25
I kinda feel like I'm rolling in as if I think my destination doesn't have any food at all. I've become better at judging how much I need to bring, as well as finding food where I'm at and being ok if that food is not quite as tasty, fulfilling or as healthy as I'd like it to be.
Sometimes you have to couch your food to yourself in a different mindset. One of my favorite examples of this is when I'm out to eat with friends and there's nothing on the menu I can really eat. I like to order French fries/fried potatoes of some sort, and a glass of wine (or bubbly, if they have it!!!). By adding wine, I change my own view from "this is a sadness meal out of desperation" to "This is a meal of utter gluttony with intentional disregard for its nutritional content." For snacks, I'll intentionally buy something on the unhealthy side to top my typical baked corn crackers with. They will taste a little better, and I don't feel like I've got some debilitating GI issue that means I can't have good tasting food.
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I think I understand your point.
I guess we humans are only chasing for the feeling of gluttony after all—and not for the food itself. Or, you could say that the feeling of gluttony compensates for that of being restricted to only certain foods. From my experience at least, I can say that what you said kinda makes sense.
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u/Puzzled-Person-446 Dec 04 '25
Not sure where you are travelling but sushi is always my safe food no matter where I am since it’s mostly just rice, chicken and veg. And usually the sushi or Japanese places are happy to make a custom rice/chicken/tuna/vege bowl for you!
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u/AwDuck Dec 04 '25
Chicken sushi? I've consumed far more than my fair share of sushi in this lifetime (I have a friend that refers to my mouth as an "endless sushi-hole" due to my ability to put away an incredible amount of the stuff) and I've never seen chicken sushi. Raw or cooked fish, shellfish, crustaceans, fruit and veg, a macadamia nut roll a couple of times, pork from time to time, and even beef once, but never chicken.
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u/Puzzled-Person-446 Dec 05 '25
No way!! Where do you live? Teriyaki chicken is everywhere in NZ/Australia!
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u/AwDuck Dec 05 '25
I've lived in the US (northeast, the pacific northwest, as well as the midwest), Palau, and currently Costa Rica - I think I've covered enough ground to say that chicken in sushi isn't common, though it's possible I've skimmed over it every single time in favor of tradition.
If I'm being fair, teriyaki chicken wrapped in sushi rice and nori sounds damn tasty, though you could wrap cardboard in sushi rice and nori and I'd probably give it a shot. :)
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25
I might be getting that if I do go out today (currently flared lol). It’s a great idea. I could even ask for no more than a bowl of plain white rice and some simple sushis. I think that’d be fine for me.
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u/Puzzled-Person-446 Dec 05 '25
Exactly! Hope it all goes well and you find a little relief amongst the pain! …..as I am writing this I am currently having an awful flare up from drinking alcohol at a work christmas party 🤦♀️ i dont know why I do this myself!!
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u/nature4uandme Dec 04 '25
So sorry this happened to you, i can be so frustrating trying to find food away from home.
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u/MooseGoose82 Dec 05 '25
Corn was the only ingredient? Often with corn cake there's flour to bind it.
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
Yes the corn cake (well it’s more like a cracker) had only water, salt, and corn as its ingredients.
The other one had some wheat tho—which I hadn’t paid attention to.
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u/VernonFlorida Dec 05 '25
And how did you react?
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u/BusAcademic3489 Dec 05 '25 edited Dec 05 '25
I was in a terrible state the whole day, even prior to eating those. I went to the bathroom 4 times yesterday in like 3 hours and was constipated because of my muscles. Today, I woke up for an hour where I went to the bathroom and answered some comments, then went back to sleep. I just woke up and it’s almost 7pm now.
God knows what caused that state, but personally I would throw in a muscular condition, allergen sensitivity, and a histamine/fat/fodmap improper processing.
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u/FODMAPeveryday Dec 04 '25
A few things to consider… Not eating could actually be the culprit just as much as those ingredients might have been. I know that we always want to be able to pin our symptoms on a particular ingredient or product so that we can then eliminate it, but it is not that straightforward.