Insights from Last 3 Meals of 2008

Amazingly, I didn't eat all my bowl of cooked cereal at BREAKFAST. However, I altered my usual cereal. Instead of adding rice bran to Bob's Red Mill gluten free Might Tasty Cereal with cardamon, hazelnut milk and chopped pears, I tried ground flax meal. I had heard other celiacs, who suffer from chronic irregularity, say flax meal keeps them 'regular'. So I wanted to try their suggestion to add flax meal to cereal. Unfortunately, the flax meal turned my usual 'whole body pleaser' cereal into a gelatinous, goo-ball which only vaguely reminded me of hot cereal. Nevertheless I was hungry (even 14 hours after dinner when I overeat), enough to suffer through cereal. After eating most of that nauseating gooey stuff, I fought the urge to throw up, which would cause even more regularity problems than flax meal might resolve. Nevertheless, I noticed how easily I could stop eating that bowl of goo, when I no longer felt hungry. My motive for eating that cereal was not to enjoy a pleasurable meal, but just to stop the hunger and keep myself unhungry while I ran errands this morning.

I don't want to return to eating unappetizing foods, just to control how much I eat. That's a sure path to occasionally bingeing on all the yummy foods, while I just at unappetizing stuff at most meals. BTDTWGB (Been there, done that. Won't go back.) However, I can remind myself when I eat really tasty food that my main motive for eating is to satisfy hunger, make myself feel better and stay unhungry for hours afterwards. Eating so much that I feel miserably full definitely does NOT make me feel better. I know I can eat just enough of 'whole body pleasers' and not get hungry again for 4-6 hours. Maybe carefully choosing WHAT I eat, as well as focussing on how I feel while I eat, is key to stopping at 'just enough'. I also realize that even enormous amounts of tasty food consumed at every meal from now until I die will never take away the sense of deprivation I developed when I only ate foods I loved during binge/purge episodes for about 40 years. Although I would like to spend 40 more years eating normal, responsible, nurturing (vs. abusive) meals, I can only commit to eat what I like, when I'm physically hungry, and stop when I'm comfortably satisfied and/or full (when I occasionally eat unsatisfying foods) one meal at a time.

LUNCH was another surprise. I wanted vegies, but couldn't decide between leftover turkey rice casserole with cooked brocolli or a cooked vegie salad. I feared I would overeat the salad, because I usually rationalize that I have to eat the entire salad, because I can't reheat it the next day. However, I really wanted a salmon salad with cooked brocolli and carrots, tangerine chunks and sesame seeds. I added more olive oil and agave to the leftover Italian dressing to improve the taste. I LOVED that salad, which felt very good in my stomach. Nevertheless, I started to feel full before I had eaten even half. So I considered how and when I could eat the rest in a future meal and imagined serving the reheated salad on brown rice for lunch tomorrow. Then I stopped after another bite, when I was just satisfied but not full. So I still had room for 1/2 of a small ginger cooky. I left the table feeling very comfortable and delighted that I ate just enough really tasty food! Maybe my previous posts have helped me think differently about eating only to the point of satisfaction and/or comfortably full.

DINNER didn't feel so good. I was definitely hungry, ate slowly and enjoyed what I ate (2 small apple/walnut pancakes with lots of maple syrup and coconut butter, 1-1/2 strips of turkey bacon and 2 teaspoonfuls of applesauce). I felt myself getting comfortably full. Then I noticed I had FORGOTTEN to take my vitamins, probiotic and HCl capsules which enable my stomach to digest proteins, absorb certain nutrients and empty at a normal rate, rather than so slowly that I feel horrible after any sized meal. I quickly grabbed those and took them with water. However I'm supposed to take the acid BEFORE and/or during the meal, rather than at the end of a meal, to prevent painful reflux as the acid sits on top of the stomach churning food. Unfortunately I forget to take those capsules before the meal and did need those to digest the bacon and other foods.

I did have horrible reflux within 5 minutes, but I kept swallowing cool water to wash the acid back down. The reflux stopped, but the digestive pain started, right below my stomach, maybe where the stomach empties into the small intestine with partially digested food ... After another hour I stopped feeling that pain and felt more like my meal began to digest normally ... WHEW!! I'm glad I took the HCl caps even if I did take them late. I used to have uncomfortable pain for 3-5 hours after every meal, before I started taking HCl.

I guess dinner was another reminder that indigestion and discomfort are only a few mouthfuls or a forgetful moment away. I will probably need to take HCl the rest of my life, but that's a small price to pay for comfortable digestion and avoiding the urge to throw up to relieve digestive discomfort. I also suspect I ate too fast to really sense when I felt satisfied, but I didn't feel bad until a few minutes after I ate and after I took the supplements, which don't cause discomfort when I take them before my first bite of food.

I don't think I will want sweet foods for breakfast after tonight's sweet dinner and painful indigestion, before the HCl kicked in. Unpleasant memories from meals always taint my memories of even the tastiest, most satisfying foods. I dislike digestive pain. I suffered for too many years before my CD and food allergies were diagnosed, which is all the more reason to eat slowly and consciously in order to recognize and STOP eating at satisfaction or a comfortably full point.