My Changing Relationship With Food
This getting old stuff is for the birds. Well, it’s making me have to eat like a bird. I’m feeling discouraged today and wondering what my future holds for my gastronomic desires and habits because clearly things have to change. Hell, things have already changed quite a bit. For two weeks I’ve had no coffee (well, I took about five sips this morning and had a half of a short glass of iced last weekend) and no intentionally consumed wheat or gluten. Unfortunately the vegetable soup I got with my Fuji Apple Chicken Salad at Panera yesterday had tiny pasta in it (it might have been Pastene that I thought was red lentils). I didn’t really notice until I was 3/4 finished with the cup and by then, oops. Bloat. The night before, the wedding soup had meatballs in it, and the bread crumbs holding the meatballs together made my stomach blow up like a big ballOOn and turn rock hard.
Otherwise, it’s been light on the protein, heavy on the cooked vegetables and salads with a high-acid dressing, small portions of brown rice or Quinoi. Very light on dairy, small amounts of oat cereal, Greek yogurt and more water than I’m used to drinking. I’ve had no alcohol and I’m taking an enteric coated peppermint oil capsule twice a day, along with a couple of ounces of aloe juice and liver cleansing herbs and probiotics. I’m also drinking a ton of herbal tea (detox, and peppermint-fennel). The first week I felt better. Hopeful. This week, I’m back to bloating up and feeling like I have a giant rock in my stomach, super-low energy and mild depression/irritation at everyone and everything. In other words, f*ck this sh*t.
I know, it’s only been two weeks. I’m not going to turn around a lifetime of unconscious eating in two lousy weeks of eating simpler. I’m American like that. I want it now.
This morning another IBS attack (not officially diagnosed here yet, but this is my best guess) and spent 3 hours alternating between trying to get cleaning done and sitting on the least comfortable chair in the house (the cold one with the hole in the seat that makes your legs go numb after ten minutes). I’m not amused. Now I’m so drained I just want to sit and read all day, or write, or do nothing but stare out the window at the rain and embody the quiet (that doesn’t exist because duh, I have an almost 4-year old standing next to me asking me do you have to poop again, mommy?
So how long will it take for my dietary changes and supplements to relax my intestines enough that they can do their job on a daily basis, rather than saving it all up uncomfortably for 4 to 5 days and then forcing me to lose half a day or more when they try to turn me inside out and drop me on the floor like one of my son’s worn-out, holey socks?
Also, is it possible that corn chips can do this kind of damage to a body? We went out for our favorite Mexican last night and I thought I was being so good by not having the standard medium margarita rocks, with salt (I had water with lemon). I didn’t order the burrito with a flour tortilla, and instead got Enchiladas Verdes, made with shredded chicken in a light green sauce. I scraped off the cheese and only ate a few bites of the rice and beans. I did get a little carried away with the fresh corn chips and salsa, though and I had to go to bed shortly after we returned home. Every inch of my body hurt, my joints throbbed with pain and my muscles drooped in sheer exhaustion. I slept poorly and woke with a headache.
I’m really feeling confused about all of this. I’m willing to make the changes necessary to feel good, to improve my quality of life, to help me feel connected to myself again. But I seem to be missing the mark. I feel as if I take one tentative step into a dark room, feeling around for the light switch, only to be smacked in the head by something I can’t see clearly, just a dim outline of some blunt, solid object that stops me in my tracks. I’m keeping a food journal, I’m trying to eat simple, clean food (okay, I know the Mexican food was a gamble). I’m stretching, and working up to real exercise.
But I’m lost in my own kitchen. When I get home from work every night I stand in front of the open refrigerator hoping that by some miraculous order of events during my absence, the appliance has organized a healthful meal that will appeal to the picky preschooler, is hearty enough to satisfy the voracious teenager and the hard-working man, and will not make me sick. It hasn’t, of course, and I fear my family is beginning to starve because of my inability to figure this out.
I used to know instinctively what to cook. Sure, many nights I just didn’t feel like it. But then I’d let Chris make dinner (order Chinese, pizza or whatever takeout we felt like) and not give myself grief. I can’t eat that stuff anymore. So it’s back to me in front of the open refrigerator door saying, okay… sautéed greens without any garlic, broth with some carrots and more greens, brown rice. Every. Frickin’. Night. Are you bored yet? I sure am.
Meanwhile, I try to take a little time each day to read more about gluten and the problems it causes, to find out where it hides out and side-blinds a body who innocently consumes something thinking it doesn’t have any. I try to remain cheerful, but the food lover in me is losing her bloody mind. I look at half of the staples in my big cabinet and think, holy crap, I have to throw or give all of that away. Or cook two meals a night.
I think of what Kate has dealt with for years and wonder if this is just my karma coming back to bite me for buying cupcakes and making sourdough bread and eating them in front of her for so many years. Gawd. What a dickweed I’ve been. I refused to even look at it. Me? Give up my manna? La-la-la, I can’t hear you!
Okay. So I get it, my years of unconsciously stuffing myself full of yum is now standing at the door expecting payment. Proactive is the way, right? I have an appointment with a new (to me) doctor of osteopathy on the 18th of May. Time for some blood work. Time to get that nugget that hurts to the touch on my collarbone looked at. Time to find out if I’m on the right track here.
In the meantime, I spend much of my blog-reading time devouring the archives of Gluten-Free Girl (and am buying her book next pay period). Also on the blog reader is Gluten-Free Goddess and The Art of Gluten-Free Cooking with more to come, I’m sure, as I follow links. So far it’s just been for the story, to read about what it’s been like for other food lovers to find out that the food they love most is making them sick. Now I need to try recipes and get my passion for cooking back. The information is out there, I just need to assimilate it into my life, my monkey mind, my daily repertoire. Because my Frigidaire sure isn’t going to do it for me.
Technorati Tags: gluten, gluten-free, food sensitivity, IBS, food
"Grass is the cheapest plant to install and the most expensive to maintain."
~Pat Howell
April 28th, 2007 at 2:52 pm
I just found this
site and spent 20 minutes in my kitchen testing my food and then my vitamins.
Interesting stuff.
April 28th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Sounds like what my husband has gone thru. I have to read every label. We eat alot of organic foods because they don’t contain high fructose corn syrup, and red 40 - the 2 majors in his life. The corn chips may be it, I know after a lifetime of “normal” food consumption he and his brother have to avoid corn products. Since they put the frankenstein corn sweetener in virtually everything out there it built up a intolerance to corn in him and 2 of his brothers. And it sister is gluten intolerant. We joke at family gatherings we will serve a nice oat gruel since that is what we are down to. Good luck on your search to improve your diet, sometimes the culprits are hidden in normally healthy looking foods we least expect.
April 28th, 2007 at 4:52 pm
Hey there. I just found your site through your mention of mine, and I’m glad I did.
Hang in there. It’s hard at first. You’re realigning the way you eat and approach the world. At first, it seems bad enough to just cut out the obvious gluten, but it’s really the hidden stuff that can kill you.
Take it from me — I’m hyper-vigilant about this stuff, and I still get some cross-contamination once in awhile. It takes a solid week (and I mean that word solid literally!) for me to feel human again. All that from one-quarter teaspoon, or the equivalent, of gluten.
So, to answer some of your wonderings here? The breadcrumbs in the meatballs would have put me in bed for three days. The pasta in the soup? Might have knocked me unconscious with the pain in my stomach. Seriously.
Tortilla chips are the bane of my existence. I love them, and I have been made sick by more than one batch. You really, really have to ask. They could have been fried in the same oil as the flour tortilla bowls, and that would do it to you. They could buy them from a factory that doesn’t clean its lines in between runs.
Seriously, you have to ask about everything.
Oh, and most American oats are cross-contaminated with gluten. Don’t eat those either.
But it gets so much better. I promise. You’ll have an adjustment period. But when you do commit to cutting every bit of it out of your diet (including the wooden cutting boards and the toothpaste you might be using and anyone kissing you just after eating bread), you will feel remarkably better.
Please write to me if you want to talk more. I love to help.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:06 pm
Well, instead of IBS it could be celiacs…that also causes the runs and well, you know the wheat issue.
I am sensitive to wheat too and avoid it. If I get off it for a few weeks I can have a tiny bit without problems, but if I forget I end up looking 7 months pregnant.
I gave up coffee at the suggestion of my osteopath, almost 5 month now, as a “cure” for my fibrous breasts. I was dubious, but it was a cure a complete and total change in breast tissue. Amazing.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:49 pm
I’m glad you’re going to get a little back up from a doctor. I do not bow down to the great Western Medicine Institution, however, they are useful for quite a few things. Have you already actually been tested for a gluten allergy? Is that something that can be tested the way other allergies can? Getting as close as you can to definitively pinpointing the real culprits of your discomfort seems really important.
I know that isn’t always possible. I know I can’t eat pizza much anymore because it makes me bloat too. That seems to happen to most adults I know, pizza is one of the first things to go.
I want answers for you because you are in such an awful situation, going through all this discomfort and not really knowing how far you have to go, how careful you have to be, and of what?
I hope no one makes me give up coffee. i gave up smoking. I gave up late nights. (mostly) I gave up running. Please not coffee and bear. Bread I could live without. But gluten? Yikes.
I’m a real weak-ass. No self discipline in these matters.
However, you are making me think more about what I’m eating and that’s a positive thing. I’d like to retrain myself in my eating habits. I think making these kinds of changes really takes time.
April 28th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
oops. I meant coffee and BEER.
April 28th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
Hey! I come back and there’s this new cool design.
April 29th, 2007 at 1:55 pm
1) love the new design . . . so clean
2) my first thought as i began reading this post was: welcome to my world :), but then you mention me and i thought about how good your cooking is and how allergen or not, it was (and still is) a bright spot of nutritious love.
3) i am forming a hyposthesis about the allergen stuff - i strongly suspect that it has to do with food supple issues, pesticide and other environmental toxins (the endocrine disruptors, hormones in meat, antibiotics in meat, pharmacuetical leftovers {antibiotics, birth control pills, etc.} from sewage system that end up in our water supply, etc.) have effected our immune response
4) corn and wheat and soy are three of the most f*cked foods - i bet they barely resemble what they were even a decade ago . . .
5) you are under a tremendous amount of stress - have been for a while - which has shifted your immune response
6) you work in a corporate environment - more immune response changes
seriously . . . most of this shit is so out of our control for the most part. i know that when i am done with school i must find a way to get back to spending more time in the spaces of Being and gentle Doing. this 24/7 Souped Up Doing shit is for the birds . . . no not even for the birds
and if you ever want to talk to me about how i manage my eating, my meals, etc. i’ll happily pass on my tips figured out over the past decade . . .
April 30th, 2007 at 5:57 am
[…] hugely heartfelt thank you to all of you who left such encouraging, empathetic, kind comments on my food post. I want to take time to respond to each of you, but tonight I need to get a quickie post done and […]
April 30th, 2007 at 8:07 am
Hi there, just stumbled across your page and since I haven’t read any of your other posts on the topic you may have already covered this, but I just want to say that as I was reading I found myself hoping you have been to see an MD about this. Take care… y
April 30th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
hi K.
This might be just out in left field, but I read this thinking about the big dose of antibiotics you required recently in order to overcome a bad infection. Could this be the cause of your digestion problems? I don’t know and I’m not saying it is, but I had to wonder.
Back when I worked as a nutritional consultant we used to recommend Bio-K to replenish and boost digestive flora. Yogurt and acidophilus are often not enough.
What d’ya think?