Tummy Troubles & a Tempo Tuesday

The original plan for this post was to write about the tempo run that the boyfriend nudged me through, resulting in a successfully quick 4 miles @ 9:30 pace, including a big hill and lots of snow.

Remember the Michigan snow? It was particularly deep on the trail we brilliantly followed around a lake.

However, my stomach's been so off lately that it's been taking center stage in my life, so I figured, why not get to talking about some running-related tummy troubles and proposed fixes?  After all, my blog IS called the Trotting Tortoise.  In what's probably a backwards moves, I'll save the higher level, more mass-appealing pointers re: running and tummy issues for a future post, though.

Today I want to focus on something I stumbled across on Twitter in a post by sports dietitian, Nancy Clark.  Nancy's book, "Nancy Clark's Food Guide for Marathoners" was particularly helpful and interesting during my training for the 2011 ING NYC Marathon, so when I recently joined twitter [hit me up @trottingtortois no room for the "e"!], I decided to "follow" her [I'm very knew to this and not really sure about who to follow, if I'm tweeting correctly, etc].  

  

In December, Nancy Clark tweeted a link to this article, which suggests that there are certain foods and workout related nutrition products that should specifically be avoided by runners with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS).  The website and articles reference the idea that a Low FODMAP diet is recommended for people with IBS and Nancy's tweet implied that it would be worth checking out for athletes whose workouts are disrupted by GI issues.  [Oh hey, THREE DIFFERENT GI doc's I've visited and been tested, prodded, and quizzed by in NYC, thanks for NEVER EVEN MENTIONING the low FODMAP diet to me!]

After reading Nancy's link I searched for a few more articles on the Low FODMAP diet to see if I could find some suggestions for trying to implement one or research its impacts on me.  The two sites that I found most simplistically helpful were a tear sheet with what foods to eat and what foods to avoid and a summary suggesting that a 6-8 week elimination of all of the high FODMAP foods followed by an easily outlined reintroduction of test foods from each category, which you might want to check out if you're a bit of a Trotting Tortoise [or Trotting Hare, as the case may be] yourself.

Don't get me wrong, when I say "simplistic" I'm not saying that I think following this diet for 6+ weeks will be simple.  Especially given that I'm on the road for work all week and usually at the mercy of late night room service.  But my stomach issues have gotten to be so bad as of late that their disruption to my running has been beginning to seem like just a minor side effect.  So, I'm going to give it an earnest effort and I'll update how this helps [if it does!] with my running.  

Ever heard of a Low FODMAP diet?  Interested in trying the 6+ week challenge along with me?  Here we go...