Diet Tips for New Ileostomy Patients

I am new to the ileostomy. I am getting tired of the soft GI diet.

What type of diet do you follow?

Depending on how long you got your "new friend"... Start off slowly adding new things to see how your body reacts. Some can eat almost whatever. Others can't, e.g., popcorn, corn, nuts, dairy, etc. It took me a while to venture out of my comfort zone, but I'm lucky other than chocolate, dairy, lunch meat, salad, and pickles (I can eat them, but I'll be glued to the bathroom most of the day). I eat popcorn and nuts and lettuce with no problems. Now I will let you know if you haven't experienced it yet, anything having artificial food color in it like red Gatorade will come out red, sometimes cherries too. (Can look like blood at first.) Just be sure you've given your friend enough time to wake up to get used to new foods... you don't want to have a blockage right away. Haven't had one, but maybe someone else could chime in on this... corn, nuts, popcorn, and lettuce were the big ones I was told could. If you like fruits that have skin on them, peel it off first... like apples and peaches. Strawberries are okay for me, but blackberries or raspberries have too many seeds that pass. But no two people will be the same... it's all trial and error to figure out what your body can handle. Hope this helps a little. Take care ❤️

Hi and welcome. Education is key on this new journey of yours. I suggest you check out UOAA, United Ostomy Association of America. It's our national organization. Also, Ostomy101.com. You will learn about foods, blockages, skin care, clothing, ostomy products, travel, activities, and a whole host of other tricks of the trade. You might also want to check out a local support group near you. Just remember you are not alone on this new journey of yours. Wearing a pouch does not define who you are. There are solutions. We're here for you. Best of luck.

This is another area where the problem is that we are all different. I think, for that reason, there is darned little information about what an ileostomate can or cannot eat after the first few weeks. Experimentation with small quantities is key. I also have an ileostomy and eat pretty much what I want, with some exceptions. Some things, I stay away from entirely. Like corn, for instance. I also go light on insoluble fiber. If it shows up in my bag undigested, I avoid it. Or at least eat very small quantities. Never is the old adage "all things in moderation" more appropriate. The key with most things is chew, chew, chew. I have had my ostomy for just shy of a year now. I am yet to experience any blockage. I think the fact that I walk 3-4 miles a day helps with digesting things. Certainly, keeping active is going to be beneficial. That and careful experimentation to see what you can tolerate. Just avoid going whole hog from the beginning.

And if you want to avoid some of those gawd-awful aromas when you open your bag, stay far away from onions! :-)

Daniel

I've had my colostomy for 6 weeks. I am just now starting to add new foods to my diet. I followed the low fiber, soft foods diet as well, and I know how boring and how unsatisfying it is.

As others have said, we are all different. And I'm overly cautious so I'm adding new foods slowly. My doctor told me at 4 weeks I could go to a regular diet, but I waited. Made soup and a tuna salad for lunch with mayo and pickle relish. It was a yummy sandwich.

For dinner I am having grilled chicken, canned sweet potatoes, and a parfait fruit cup.

I eat smaller portions, and always have a few snacks throughout the day like peanut butter crackers, applesauce, cheese and recently added pretzels. The salt was so good!

The most important thing is protein, and chew, chew, chew.

Good luck, and take it slow.

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I'm on the seafood diet. I see it, I like it, I eat it lol. Try everything you used to eat before you had your ileostomy, just in small portions at first. Then, if it was to cause a problem, it would be short-lived.

I follow the “What Do You Want to Eat Today Diet.” Let's start with breakfast: just good healthy choices. Take your time to chew, chew, chew… same for lunch and dinner. The end result should be healthy output and no pain in the process. And in between the meals, keep moving. At bedtime, get plenty of rest. The next day, repeat. Also, it turns out money isn't the root of all evil - it's sugar and artificial sweeteners. Monitor the input of those evils.
Ostomy life is almost the same as life before an ostomy, only you become more aware of what your own body can tolerate. It just takes baby steps, time, patience, and awareness to figure it out. This website will help you find what works for you. Best wishes finding the answers you are looking for. JB

It takes time. Take your pick, try anything out, and see what works best.

I've had mine for a little over 2 years now. I think I'm lucky. Never had a blockage and can eat nearly anything that I could before. You're spot on about the food coloring, especially red. Know what it is but still looks creepy later. Blueberries turn things a shade of blue and the lettuce in salad looks like confetti. Slow introduction of old favorites was the best approach for me as well.

Eating with an ileostomy is individualized. Some people can eat anything. Some people cannot. It is careful trial and error. It is important to make sure you cut and chew food well and consume a lot of fluids. Large amounts of fibrous food (vegetables, popcorn) can obstruct. Personally, I can eat anything I ate before my ileostomy. I am very careful with salads. I make sure I chew them well since once I did not, I was partially obstructed before the salad passed.

That being said, there are guidelines:

https://www.coloplast.us/ostomy/people-with-an-ostomy/living-with-a-stoma/food-and-beverage/

https://www.ostomy.org/diet-and-digestion-with-an-ostomy/#:~:text=If%20you've%20had%20ileostomy,Input%20always%20makes%20output.

https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/patient-education/diet-guidelines-people-ileostomy

I follow the seafood diet, works quite well. 😁

You can eat anything you want, just don't swallow it.

I had emergency surgery in January 2019 (ileostomy), then 2 weeks later, more emergency surgery (something burst in the duodenum). A long time in the hospital and a long recovery time.
Initially, I just focused on my output being a good consistency. If it's too liquid, your small intestine doesn't get a chance to absorb nutrients. I found that a banana a day or some mashed potato worked for me to get the right consistency.
I chopped everything up small (cherry tomatoes were fine like this), chewed everything much more than in the past, and peeled hard-to-chew fruit and veg skins. I love the crispy skin on a baked potato but ended up with pain from these, so I just nibble a tiny bit. Or find an alternative - like I started to enjoy really good mashed potato with plenty of butter and cheese. I was scared off whole nuts, so I went for raw nut butters - almond, hazelnut, cashew - also raw seed butters. Very satisfying flavor. Later, I tried cashew nuts, which are soft and respond well to crunching and chewing down small.
This summer, I risked corn on the cob in my organic veg box. I started with a 1/2 cob, boiled longer than usual, small bites, chew, chew, chew. Mmmm. Funnily, the sweetcorn seemed to do some good to my gut - it felt like it cleaned it through and calmed it. Once the season was over, I tried supermarket corn on the cob, and it wasn't as good for my gut. I asked on here for advice on sweetcorn and was encouraged that some people were fine with it. Some, though, had ended up with blockages.
I still only have really crisp lettuce, like Romaine, which I can chop up small.
As has been said, we are all different. Look on the ostomy support sites for advice on transitioning to a more normal diet. Try one thing at a time and see how you go with a small portion. If there's a food or texture that you really miss, use your imagination to see if there's a safer alternative. It took me around 3 years before my insides felt robust and healed - but I'd gone a rocky route.

Beetroot also turns your output reddish - so don't panic.

I only had a blockage once when I got fed up with the texture of white rice and cooked some brown rice with mushrooms. I was fed up with having to be conscious of what food I was having. I ripped the mushroom and ended up undercooking the rice. It might have been that the mushroom was in too big pieces, but I think, from something my stoma nurse said, that the problem was that the rice gets to the gut and then absorbs more water and swells up. In the UK, I should have gone to the hospital to be monitored, but I have PTSD from my time in the hospital and stayed at home. So food that will continue to absorb liquid and swell is also a consideration.
My focus has changed to looking at what food is going to get the best quality and amount of nutrients into my body. And at the same time, my focus is on having food I really (REALLY) enjoy.

Can't beat that down-under humor!

I can eat just about anything. I do peel fruit, apples, peaches. Be careful, baked potatoes I can't eat the skin, had a problem.

Popcorn is okay. Corn also, but it comes out as it goes in.

I've had a permanent ileostomy for 15+ years as a result of Crohn's disease, with multiple stoma revisions and other surgeries along the way. It's true that what foods you can tolerate varies by person, but it can also vary over time, depending on the state of your health. Before finding a biologic medication that helped me, I was severely lactose intolerant and reacted badly to a wide range of foods, probably because I was so ill. I'm much healthier these days, but I still limit insoluble fiber (I eat no apple skins, for example) and I've learned to drink "homemade Gatorade," i.e., rehydration formula, in large quantities every day. I find I can eat a wider range of foods without problems if I wash it through with lots of liquid.

I've had the misfortune to have many partial and complete bowel obstructions over the years, and learned that they are not always caused by what you've been eating. For instance, 20+ years ago, I had about 6 complete bowel obstructions over a several-month period, when I was quizzed endlessly by medical staff about what I'd been eating that was assumed to have caused the obstruction. I was puzzled, too, since I had been eating so carefully. Ultimately, I had emergency surgery when the final obstruction didn't clear on its own. It turned out adhesions/scar tissue had developed after major abdominal surgery a few months earlier, and they were causing the obstructions. Adhesions didn't show up on X-rays, so we didn't know they were there until they opened me up.

When I was in rehab recovering after the ileostomy, I had read that you should eat lemon Jell-O or something, but I didn't understand why. So my friend was like, "They only have dark cherry that's already made at the market," and I was like, "OK, bring that." Twenty minutes later, I'm screaming at the top of my lungs, "I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding!" I'm in the bed; I can't get up because I can't sit up because my muscles are still weak. My roommate goes running out. The nurse goes running in. And she's just looking at me, and I'm like, "Why are you looking at me? I'm bleeding." She's like, "That's not blood," and she walks away. I was like, "Well, what is it?" And as she's leaving out the door, she says, "It's something you ate." And I'm like, "I didn't eat anything," and then I see out of the corner of my eye, an empty Jell-O cup. LOL