A low FODMAP schedule with actual dates on it
What each phase is for
Elimination is not the treatment. It exists to produce a quiet enough baseline that a single challenge produces a readable signal. That is the whole justification for restricting. It is also why a long elimination is worse than a short one rather than better.
Each challenge escalates dose across three days, because tolerance is nearly always a question of how much rather than whether. Finding that half a slice of bread is fine while three slices are not is a far more useful result than putting wheat on a banned list.
Washout returns you to low FODMAP and to baseline. Without it, a reaction on day one of a challenge could belong to the previous food, leaving you a week spent to learn nothing.
Why the order separates wheat from onion
Both are fructans, so most plans test them together and report one verdict. In practice they behave differently, the doses involved are very different and people who avoid both often only needed to avoid one. Testing them as separate challenges costs an extra week and is the most common way this exercise pays for itself. Bread and pasta differ for a related reason.
Minthe is a wellness and self-tracking tool, not a medical device. It does not diagnose or treat any condition and isn't a substitute for professional medical advice. If you have red-flag symptoms such as blood in your stool, unintentional weight loss, difficulty swallowing, persistent vomiting or a fever alongside gut symptoms, see a clinician rather than tracking them.
Frequently asked
How long should the elimination phase last?
Two to six weeks, with shorter usually better than longer. Monash guidance puts it at two to six weeks and the reason for the ceiling is that a restricted diet is not meant to be lived in. If symptoms have not improved at all by week four, the diet is unlikely to be your answer and continuing to restrict is a cost with no return. The point of elimination is to create a quiet baseline for testing, not to be a treatment in itself.
How long is each reintroduction challenge?
Three days of escalating dose, then a washout before the next one. The escalation matters because dose tolerance is the actual finding: many people handle a small serving of something that a large serving would floor them with. A pass or fail verdict on a single portion throws that information away.
Why do I need washout days between challenges?
To stop one challenge contaminating the next. Symptoms can lag a day or more behind the food that caused them, so a challenge starting the morning after the last one ends cannot tell you which of the two produced the reaction. Washout days are low FODMAP again and long enough for symptoms to settle back to baseline.
What order should I reintroduce FODMAP groups in?
There is no evidence-backed universal order, so this planner defaults to easiest to source and dose first. What does matter is one group at a time, plus separating wheat fructans from onion and garlic fructans, because those two are the pair most often confused for each other and they behave differently in practice.
What if I react during a challenge?
Stop that challenge, return to low FODMAP and let symptoms settle before starting the next one. Note the dose you reached, because that is the finding. Pushing on through a reaction gets you nothing you did not already know and it costs you the clean baseline the next challenge needs.
Should I do this without a dietitian?
It is done unsupervised all the time and it can be done carefully. The honest risks of going alone are nutritional gaps during a long elimination, a restriction that quietly becomes permanent because reintroduction never happens, plus misreading a result. If you have a history of disordered eating, this is not a diet to run on your own.