This was my first week on the FODMAP Diet. Last week it was the IFM Elimination Diet, but after 1 week and a chat with my functional fitness doc about my bloodwork and the strong reaction I had to cabbage (boo!), we decided to switch over to this diet to see if we can get things to calm down in my GI system.

The good news: Yay! Coffee! I can have a vodka soda!

The less good news: Garlic and/or onions are in literally everything I make and in most of my favorite foods. Italian and Mexican are going to be tricky. Also: it’s the start of mango season and mangos are high FODMAP. Guess I won’t be subsisting on mostly mango and chicken salad lunches like last year. Boo!

Proposed Meal Plan

Breakfasts

• Overnight oats with peanut butter, blueberries & pepitas

Lunches/Dinners

• Baked sweet potato with ground chicken marinara, olives and baby spinach
• Ground chicken marinara with olives, baby spinach and zoodles
• Salmon burgers with a carrot/cucumber/sesame salad
• Salmon fillets with green beans, rice/quinoa mix and chive sauce
• 1 weekday breakfast out, 2 weekend lunches out, 1 skipped weekend breakfast

Snacks

• Rice cakes with tuna salad

Actual Meal Plan

Breakfasts

• Overnight oats – remembered everything but pepitas
• Overnight oats and I remembered the pepitas

Lunches/Dinners

• Ended up eating out pretty much every day – or eating rice cakes with tuna salad, which turned out well. I ended up grabbing Marmite-flavored rice cakes because it sounded weird, and was pleasantly surprised. They make a great base for tuna salad. Not so much for peanut butter, but maybe that’s good – I don’t need to eat so much peanut butter anyways.
• I only ate 1 of 2 salmon dinners – chucked the other (boo).
• Only ate 1 serving of the chicken & sweet potato, and that was on Saturday.
• Ended up eating out more than anticipated, which shouldn’t have been as big a surprise as it was. I know my life.
• Also ate popcorn with nutritional yeast for dinner one night, because hubby was out and yolo single life.

Snacks

• Single servings of the rice cakes, some leftover grapes, and an errant blueberry or two.

What did I learn this week?

So. I thought I learned last week to not schedule every meal and to not make 99999 recipes requiring tons of ingredients.

My meals this week *were* simple, but I completely forgot about the standing lunch date I had planned for Thursday and the birthday party brunch I said I’d go to Friday. Oops.

So, I didn’t end up making everything and I still have some ingredients left over for next week, so it isn’t all a bust. A macros bust (somewhat), but not a FODMAP meals bust (quite).

I also learned that limiting myself to 1 vodka soda is hard with my wine group (I ended up having 3 spaced over 6 hours), but was easy in a big group setting where I could buddy up with the other non-drinker (I had 1). Overall, I’m pleased with that.

For next week, I’m not planning anything special – since we are heading off for vacation the next week, I’ll be making food from the pantry and eating up the rest of my batch-cooked food (that hasn’t spoiled). I will buy some more berries for breakfasts, and I’m kind of craving a Dole Whip for dessert – I bet I can make a compliant version. If it works, I’ll actually have a recipe to share next week. Fingers crossed.

Also in the realm of things I need to keep better in mind: storage. I only have a limited amount of Tupperware containers, and don’t want to buy more – planning a bunch of things to batch cook doesn’t work out super well, unless it’s enough for mains + sides, and I can chuck them in the 4 divided meal boxes I have.

I kinda want 4 small icy treat containers, though, that can double as individual overnight oats holders on weeks I don’t make anything.