As much as I wish that simply eating enough over a long and consistent basis and resting your body will fix all of the physical havoc that restriction does to your body, sometimes it won't. Sometimes there are demons that linger.
But don't misunderstand, eating enough is crucial and nothing will get better unless you eat enough food in the first place; frankly 90% of the physical damage can be reversed through a proper influx of calories. However, even though eating disorders and restriction are never a person's decision per say, he will still have to face the consequence that come along with it without a "get out of jail free" card.
So here's the situation: I've noticed that my digestive system is still not faring too well, even after over a year of proper eating. I get terrible cramps and bloating (similar to ones I got when I first started recovery) about once a week. There are times when I eat enough food to satisfy my hunger and 10 minutes later feel like I just ate a small country's intake when calorically and volume-wise I know that I've eaten a proper, normal amount.
The one thing that scared me the most was that about a week ago, I ate breakfast around 7 AM and an hour later developed a terrible migraine so I decided to nap a bit. I woke up a few hours later, feeling nauseous and still had a headache, but decided to do some housework and laundry. Because I felt so nauseous and didn't know if I could hold down food or not, I decided to wait a bit and have something more calorie dense later. At around 2 PM, I ended up throwing up the entire contents of the breakfast I ate 7 hours before. And it terrified me. Normal digestion should take about an hour (out of the stomach at least), but the fact that my breakfast stayed in my stomach relatively undigested for seven. whole. hours. boggles my mind. Something was not right and I couldn't kid myself anymore.
So it's almost like I'm going back to the drawing board and working to rehab my digestive system. That means:
- Less fiber + fiber rich foods. Whole breads, brown rice are definitely going bye-bye for a bit
- Less veggies. Less fiber + less volume = win-win
- More easily digested, hypoallergenic things like white rice
- More fat
- Taking a probiotic + putting yogurt back into my diet*
*For a while I cut out yogurt as a way to save money; Greek yogurt is expensive and I go through it like it's going out of fashion.
No questions today, just some thoughts.
