Toots & Trots / Our story
Why we built Toots & Trots
This started as one person's way to get through the hardest weeks after pouch surgery. Here's the honest version.
About eighteen months ago, my gut fell apart. It began oddly — firm stools, but passing with water — and then the water turned pink. That was blood, and it got us on the phone to the doctor fast.
A colonoscopy a couple of weeks later found severe inflammation in the lower part of my bowel. I went on steroids and enemas and got passed between specialists, but I kept getting worse — losing weight, barely able to keep food down, still bleeding. By around March I was admitted to hospital.
They spent about ten days trying to settle it with intravenous steroids and immunosuppressants. Nothing worked, and my bowel was close to perforating — so it became emergency surgery. Six and a half hours later, my whole large bowel was gone. (They also spotted a small extra organ I'd apparently had since birth — a second little pancreas — but that's a story for another day.) The tissue confirmed it: ulcerative colitis.
Earlier this year I had two more operations — one to build a J-pouch from what was left, and one to connect it all back up. Which brings me to now: a couple of months in, learning to live with the pouch.
The early days are humbling. Some days I'm on the toilet ten, twelve, fifteen times. Sleep comes in broken stretches. There's wind you can't fully trust and nights I've woken up to a mess. Nobody hands you a manual for any of it, and the diet advice — “eat low residue, avoid your triggers” — is hard to act on when you don't yet know what your triggers are.
So I started building this: a way to score my own food and quietly strip out the things fuelling the gas and the looseness, to calm everything down. It's early days, but following my own scores, I've genuinely noticed a difference — fewer trips, longer stretches of sleep, calmer nights. That's my own experience, not a promise, and definitely not medical advice. Everyone's gut is different. But it helped me enough that I wanted to put it in other people's hands too.
— Robin, who lives with a J-pouch
Why “Toots & Trots”?
We tried the sensible names first. But most of the tidy, medical pouch-and-gut ones were already taken — so we went with the honest one.
Because when you strip it right back, life with a J-pouch comes down to managing two things: the toots (the wind) and the trots(the loose, runny, urgent output). That's the daily puzzle — calm the gas, firm things up, and stay hydrated.
The name's a bit cheeky, but it's exactly the problem we're here to help with. If you're living this, you'll get it.
What we're here to do
Toots & Trots helps people living with a J-pouch, ostomy, IBD or IBS work out what to eat — gentle enough for your gut, nourishing enough to keep you well, and tasty enough to actually enjoy. The aim is to manage your output and stay hydrated, and still live a full life: real flavour, real variety, and one meal the whole family can share.
Three ways we score every food
Gentle on your gut. Good for you. Still a joy to eat. The gentlest foods aren't always the most nourishing, so we score all three and let you balance them — eating “green” alone isn't the whole diet.
Gentle
the GASP scoreHow easy a food is likely to be on your gut — gas, irritation, looseness and roughage. Lower is gentler.
Nourishing
the Health scoreHow nutrient-dense it is, in stars. Because gentle isn't the same as healthy — white rice is gentle, but it won't keep you well on its own. You still need balance.
Tasty
the Flavour scoreHow much flavour it brings, from bland to bam. Because the goal was never a beige, restricted life — it's eating well, with flavour and variety, at the same table as your family.