It's most likely the fibre. Fibre has always made my symptoms worse, and since having a stoma I can't eat much of it without a blockage. A lot of healthy stuff is high in fibre - whole grains, nuts, seeds, many fruits and vegetables. Refined food is far easier on the digestive system.
Gluten is only in wheat and a few other grains, it's not in fruits or vegetables, so if they give you these problems, gluten is not the issue.
There are some fruit and veg that don't have much fibre - bananas, avocados, most tinned fruit (tinned pineapple is one of the few tinned fruits that you might need to avoid; most others - tinned pears, peaches, apricots, etc. are ok), fruit juice, smooth vegetable soups. You may be ok with some vegetables if you cook them very very well (carrots and swede are easiest to tolerate usually, I'm fine with tinned carrots and tinned green beans also), and you may be ok with some fruits if you avoid any skins, pips and seeds. Potatoes without skin should be ok. Avoid dried fruit, nuts and seeds, but you can eat smooth nut butters.
With breakfast cereals, avoid muesli, bran and any other high fibre cereals (look at the nutrition info on the packet - anything over 4 or 5 grams of fibre per 100 grams is getting high). Low fibre cereals include Cornflakes and Rice Krispies. Shreddies are very high fibre!
With other grains, stick to white bread not brown. Same for rice, etc.
Protein foods you should be fine with if fibre is the issue, so healthy foods like yoghurt and other dairy products, meat, fish, eggs, etc.. should all be ok.
And as you already know, sugary and fatty foods tend to be low fibre, so you should be able eat those without pain too, when you fancy a break from being healthy.
Or olive oil for a healthy fat.
The only reason I'd question whether fibre is the problem in your case is that you're taking fibre stool softeners.
I find it hard passing formed stool so i take 1-2 fibre based stool softners a day to make things run a bit smoother.
Do you mean that the stool softeners give you loose stools/diarrhoea? Without them are you constipated (the stool is very hard or you have to strain a lot to pass it)? Sorry for the personal questions, feel free not to answer if it's more than you'd like to share
You don't get this pain from taking the stool softeners, only from foods with fibre?
What's in the stool softeners? There is a slight difference between fibre and residue, so I'm wondering if that comes into it. Otherwise, perhaps the stool softeners on their own give you a level of fibre you can tolerate, but add in fibre in your diet as well and it's too much for your digestive system. If that's the case, it may be you can eat some healthy, high fibre foods without the pain by having them instead of the stool softeners.
You might need to do a bit of trial and error here. Checking with your doctor about the strictures and scar tissue may be a good idea too. How certain are you of the correlation between the foods you mention and the pain? Sometimes it's possible to see a pattern where there's only coincidences, especially if there are other factors that could be influencing symptoms - e.g. medication. But fibre is a very common problem, so this is less likely in your case.
