Well, the new school year has hit at work, with all of the hair-pulling that implies, and it has also hit my personal life--folks I know are adjusting to new schedules, certain areas of town are a little more populated than they were a couple of weeks ago, and a slew of activities that took a break over the summer have started up again, too, such as Chancel Choir at church. As part of this, I've started taking a nutrition course and had already read the first two chapter before the class officially started. I mean, I've only learned about the scientific method a dozen times by this point in my life, what's one more? ~sarcasm flag
But as we've started into the more specialized material, I have been stewing over the weird relationship I have with food. I have a WEIRD relationship with food. And I have every reason to.
I was diagnosed with Crohn's when I was twelve. In a Crohn's flare-up, I have no appetite, and what food I do eat tends to hurt the entire way through and otherwise little nutrition is absorbed from it. This means that I've had some specific coaching from my GI doc at different times about what food I should and should not eat. Losing thirty pounds in a month due to malnutrition because your body won't cooperate, that's not an experience I would wish on anyone. At these times, I was encouraged to eat fast food if that's what it took to get calories in me. If ANYTHING sounded appealing, my family would find a way to supply it if at all possible, but there were times when I had to force myself to eat anyway. Forcing oneself to eat when you're not hungry and you know it's just going to hurt like hell, well, suffice to say I have a hard time making myself eat when I'm not hungry still, even though that particular pain is gone--I remember the fear, fear coupled with despair.
When the flare-up is a little less severe, there were still some rules, like instead of eating the wheat bread that had fibrous chunks therein (the branded "healthier" choice), I was told to go toward the white bread because A) I needed the extra vitamins since I was not absorbing them well at the moment and B) I was going to have more difficulty digesting fibrous things. Let's add to that the colostomy, where some resources say I should never eat cruciferous things again, that I should stay on the ostomy diet in perpetuity. I have recieved unsolicited and/or uninformed advice from people working at various health stores, running the concession stand, or suggesitons over the internet insisting that everything that ails me can be cured by **insert miracle product of the week here**. This has ranged from folks saying that I should stop taking ALL of my Crohn's medication and substitute it with essential oils to the seemingly innocent suggestion of "are you sure you don't want X option? It's healthier."
"Healthier" is relative, folks. "Healthier" is meaningless to me in some ways. I use it as a metric for myself, that I am healthier now than I was three years ago, for example, but I don't apply it to things. When I am weighing food options, "Healthier" feels strange in my mouth, and one of the larger reasons why I won't like a food is when it has a wonky texture. Receiving advice around that word from anyone other than my doctor, then, almost feels eating someone's half-chewed food. "Healthier" also tends to bring with it a level of implied guilt, that I'm not taking care of my body correctly. I want to enjoy food, but food has so much baggage for me: why add any additional guilt to that? I am learning to have more compassion on my body, so sometimes I can frame the conversation that way, that it is a kindness to myself to choose one option over another. Throw in there that I need to have compassion on my emotional self, too, that a bit of comfort eating could be a different kind of kindness to myself. All these elements together and I have a thirty minute internal conflict on whether I'm allowed to eat lunch, eat a particular lunch, and if I'll allow myself to be any kind of happy about it. Even the have a snack vs not having a snack debate in my head is between the survival part of myself that wants to take in calories while it's seemingly safer, the part of my body that wants to just enjoy the taste of something without all the damn drama, and another survival part of me that is protecting the longevity of my body and its goals.
In short, every conversation about my eating habits is by default an emotional one. And I haven't even touched on the constant bombardment of marketing peppered with health buzzwords. The survival parts of me that are fiercely protective about my bodily automy are on immediate high alert with even an inferred implication that I'm not taking care of my body correctly. This doesn't mean that I won't talk about it or take suggestion, but that suggestion has to be framed very carefully and with some kind of a credible source. There is a huge difference between "have you heard about X?" and "you should totally try X!" The following sentence on either is also very important, having opened a difficult conversation and how they choose to continue, but the way that it is introduced will set me on edge when it's the latter, every time. I would also stress that anything over text (email, SMS, or whatever) is more likely to be categorized into the hIGh ALeRt! camp of things regardless. I am not opposed to new ideas; I am very skeptical of all things looking to alter my nutritional intake, particularly something that has no grounding in my particular concerns.
All of these things roiling around in my mind when I'm just trying to enjoy an ice cream cone, when I choose a salad instead of a taco, or when I'm trying to decide what to have for lunch when we come home from work midday or need to find something to eat now because that's when I have a break in the day and not necessarily when I'm hungry. Now that I'm currently in a better place regarding my health--where I am routinely in less pain and able to get enough calories in--some of these voices are quieter, making room for some that want me to consider my weight and activity. On the one hand, weight is just an indicator and not the end all and be all--I've had people tell me excitedly that I looked like I had lost weight, and then I painfully explained to them that this was not a good thing because it was a byproduct of malnutrition caused by my disease, which definitely puts a damper on the conversation. Actually, I have a few people that ask if they should congratulate me on weight loss or not by checking in whether it's the good kind or the bad kind, and I'm both pleased and touched that they check (it's been a while on that count, though, with summer being as stressful as it has been).
The survival parts of myself are LOUD. They will berate and roar and demand and chastise and all else to urge me into a particular safe path. It's like an internal overbearing parent, so intent on protection and fixated on the deatils that this particular part of me has forgotten the real goal of loving myself. Or as another anaology it's like allergies, where the body is so intent on protecting me from a percieved danger that it makes it hard to breathe. I appreciate the goal of that protective part of myself, but when we take a step back, the methods are counterproductive toward that goal of self-love, more harmful than it is helpful. I'm trying to redirect that energy, to condition that protective part of myself into a more constructive help, something outside of panic mode. Redirecting the inner critic means I can by sympathetic toward the goal but still acknowledge those methods are harmful, pointing that drive to areas that are going to be more helpful and redesigning those methods of expression--how I talk to myself matters. And the crux of it all is finding the real goal of that voice--keeping me safe--and teaching it how to reach toward that goal with new, compassionate tactics.
It's a process. I have gained better awareness of these parts as a starting point, but even in knowing the triggers there's a lot of work yet to do.
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