How You Eat Matters for IBS

Most often what we are focused on when it comes to nutrition and health is what we are eating.

We focus on what we should and shouldn’t eat to be at maximum health. Especially for those with IBS, there are so many rules we hear about around what foods are triggering for IBS.

You hear about what to cut out of your diet, or how potentially your IBS was caused by certain foods that you do or don’t eat.

Of course there is some truth to this belief. But there is also another truth that is much less often cited or talked about.

When you have IBS, looking at how you eat could also be just as impactful as looking at what.

Today we’ll discuss a few solutions that you can adapt that connect to how you are eating and talk about why it matters.

Find the full transcript for this episode and other resources at healingheribs.com/21.

Stress Eating and IBS

You know that there is a mental component to your IBS and that stress is potentially involved in your diagnosis.

Managing your stress, reducing your stress and trying to connect the dots between your stress and your experience of IBS is very important to uncovering the solution to your pain.

It’s not a simple or easy process to uncover the root causes of your stress, the things in your life that are causing you pain, resentment and fear. They are often deep rooted and require a deeper level of self-discovery, and maybe even professional help.

When I work with women in my Healing Her IBS program, this is so often circling around the root of their IBS. I know it was for me.

One thing though in your life that can be more simple and extremely impactful is reducing the stress around your food and eating times. If you have IBS, this can make a big difference in your recovery.

Have you ever asked yourself how you are eating?

I wasn’t fully aware of how I was eating until it was brought to my attention, and I had to really slow down and bring attention there. I was eating very quickly because I was often very hungry when I sat down to eat.

There was an aura of stress and hurry around my mealtimes that I didn’t even know was there. If I was eating at work, I was in a rush to eat in the time that I was given to eat and if I was eating at home, I was often flustered and help sort of desperate to eat and quelch this very uncomfortable hunger feeling that I had and just wanted to go away!

Are you rushing your meals? Do you ever have an overwhelming sense of hunger before you eat?

Breathing, Eating and IBS

One trick that I learned to help me change this lifelong pattern was the habit of sitting down to eat and taking between ten and twenty long and conscious inhales and exhales before I started my meal.

Just making this intention brought a level of attention that affected how I ate. This breathing exercise that I started doing before I started eating automatically slowed down the racing thoughts and the overwhelming desperation and hunger I often felt before eating.

If you have never tried taking a few minutes to breath before you eat, I highly recommend you start this practice and notice if it affects the way you experience your meals and if it affects any of the IBS symptoms you have during or after eating.

Studies show that the gut -brain axis is a very real part of the IBS diagnosis and implementing strategies that calm this axis and that potentially rewire those signals can be a highly effective strategy.

Studies have shown that patients that suffer with IBS-C have improved their IBS symptoms by simply following a deep breathing practice for six weeks.

One of the issues here I think is the belief that deep breathing couldn’t truly have this kind of monumental effect on something as complicated as IBS.

I absolutely thought that what would heal my IBS was going to be a medication, a supplement or a fecal transplant. I was more resistant to look at the simple daily things in my life that could make a difference.

Also, I just didn’t even know that deep and conscious breathing could have any kind of positive effect on my IBS symptoms.

Deep Breathing Habit for Gut Relief

The question is how to make this a habit. How can you make this breathing practice something that you do every day before eating consistently?

I hear from so many people that they know what they should be trying, but they forget or life gets busy and they don’t really feel they have the time to implement conscious breathing.

Depending on your personality, a few different strategies can work. I have a few different to do lists in my life. I have a bullet journal; I have a google doc and I have a to do list on my phone that’s an app called Any.Do.

I recommend you put this deep breathing on your to do list and to set an alarm around the times when you will be eating your meals. This way, you are incorporating the strategies that work for you in your everyday life, using what keeps you organized and productive, to help you with your health goals.

Check in with yourself every day or once a week. How well were able to keep this new habit, this new practice?

Without being hard on yourself, judging yourself or anything in that negative manner— commit and re-commit to breathing before you eat. When you can keep the habit consistently for a month or two, check in with your symptoms and see if they have improved.

In this way you can establish a new habit, giving it enough time to really make a difference, and giving it the consistency that’s needed.  

Know going into it that it has worked for others and that means it could work for you. Even though it’s simple and even though it’s free.

Thanks for listening today and please share with women you know who are sick of being sick.