The Best of Both Diets – a New Year’s Post

It is New Year’s Eve, 2018. If the idiots people down the road would stop setting off fireworks 48 minutes before midnight, I would be asleep right now. Hey, it’s been a new year in several other countries for well over 24 hours, already, so I don’t need any judgment. *Thanks.*

I’m ringing in 2019 with mysterious, full-body hives, allergies that decided to hulk up and overpower the prescription-strength meds I have to take twice a day – year-round – for them, muscle cramps in my arms, back, and legs that feel like someone hooked the electrodes of a contraction simulator to me when I wasn’t looking (then turned it up full blast) and bone pain. There isn’t much more to say about bone pain. Anyone who has felt it knows there is nothing like it – in a bad way – and anyone who hasn’t would think I was exaggerating.

All of this is, sadly, normal for me. I don’t mean all of my symptoms are constant and unchanging. No; that would be too easy. The symptoms are rarely ever the same from day to day unless I’ve let things get so bad that I’m in a full-on flare up, and the only thing that can stop that is Jesus and a hefty dose of steroids. (Please don’t message me and tell me about how your cousin’s sister-in-law’s brother’s girlfriend’s dad’s best friend’s godson cured his GI disease with a mixture of probiotics and platypus extract enhanced with the DNA of 17 different dinosaur species and that the first month of the subscription to the product is half off the original price – or any other variation of that. Just don’t.)

It is normal for my system to get so out of whack after the holidays. Basically, it becomes toxic.

I don’t mean like when a person goes septic, although if I pretended I didn’t notice any changes in my body and went on about life I could get to that point pretty easily.

I mean toxic. My red and white blood cells are living in a smoggy atmosphere that rivals India’s most polluted cities or the sludge of the Ganges River. My guts have never been the kind I could trust. And one of our dogs keeps sniffing my right eye, then licking it and growling, then backing away. That’s probably not good.

When I get to this point, I do what any trendy American would do – I detox via herbal teas and a new, raw/organic, cost-inefficient diet. There are those who ask, “If you can change your diet to get better, why don’t you just eat that way all the time so you don’t feel bad to begin with?”

That is a great question.

I like to counter it with one of my own: have you ever tried feeding a healthy, mostly raw, organic diet to a high functioning child on the spectrum whose sensory indicators manifest themselves not only tactilely and visually but also gastronomically, and who loves tomatoes and peas but no other vegetables, considers dessert an emotionally non-negotiable and non-optional staple, Little Debbie cakes well-rounded breakfast food, refuses to eat protein unless it’s a $25 New York Strip or country-style ribs – and occasionally chicken but only if it is literally covered in bread/pasta or at least served with a surplus of it – while also feeding two other grown adults, three dogs with special dietary needs (because we can’t just have a normal dog who eats the Ol Roy from TSC), and occasionally an 18-year-old girl claiming to be your eldest even though she shows up only once or twice per month, all while sticking to a strict grocery budget of preferably less than $1,000 for the month even though nothing is in season because it has been one of the wettest years to date in the area so winter produce suffered, and oh I forgot to mention it but for a family of four who tends to be on-the-go 24/7, all while juggling the exhaustion that comes from working a full-time job, parenting, and battling the fatigue of auto-immune issues? No? Huh. Weird. It is super fun, especially when the groceries still have to be made into actual, edible dinners. If you love adventure, hate having money in your bank account, if the good Lord needs to sand off some of those “rough edges” your church family talks about, or if you’re simply a masochist bent on seeing how much frustration you can handle before you become obsessed with total self-annihilation, well – have I got a deal for you! And as Effie Trinket likes to say, may the odds be ever in your favor.

Here’s the other reason why I don’t eat that way all the time, and it’s even better!

I have chronic diverticulitis and I have Crohn’s disease, which means my immune system is trash and my body can’t figure out the difference between good stuff and bad stuff so it likes to wage war upon itself in a “kill ’em all” kind of way. Apparently, having the two together is fairly rare. I am either a unicorn or a chupacabra. Or a chupacorn, or a unicabra. Or it fluctuates. I haven’t decided.

The diets for those two conditions are completely different. One is high-fiber, with large quantities of whole grains, seeds, and nuts thrown into it, while the other is low- to no-fiber with zero whole grains, seeds, or nuts.

Here’s the catch: if I eat either one of those diets, it exacerbates the other condition. It is lose-lose. Basically, food is trying to kill me.

That is melodramatic. I won’t actually die because of the food.

Probably.

I did get so malnourished once that I had to have IV nutrition, all the important vitamins/minerals, when I was in college. My mom drove me several hours one way so I could get the treatments, and we went multiple times. They could only do one or two per day. I would not give it five stars or recommend to a friend. It is more boring than trying to read an encyclopedia backwards, and liquid magnesium makes you feel like you’ve peed your pants, but the nurses don’t like it when the patients walk around the family waiting room with the IV stands attached to them and ask people where the bathroom is. Who knew?

I have to do something to cleanse my system but still have the energy to function. That means a full-on water fast is out of the question for the immediate future. So today, as my final act of 2018 related to my health, I decided to pull up the approved shopping/food lists for both diets and circle the items they both had in common. I received both lists from a GI specialist and I figure, if I eliminate the foods that are unique to one of the afore-mentioned lists but not both, and buy only what’s left after I have cross-referenced them, I’ll have a list of safe foods my defective GI tract can tolerate that are also healthy and will help me rebalance my PH levels and immune system. I. Am. Genius.

So far, I’m down to the following:

• raw, organic, unsweetened peanut butter (creamy – no actual pieces of peanuts)
• an occasional serving of poultry – twice a week is plenty
• air.

Also, I hate peanuts and only tolerate the butter form, so I’m happy to live without the peanut butter.

What I’m saying is, I was able to narrow the lists down into one to make shopping manageable. (I’m working on being more positive… pray for me.)

On a good note, I am allowed to have some herbal teas and coffee is not considered blasphemous to the healthy lifestyle as long as I drink it black and have no more than one serving per day, which is not an actual serving in my world, but whatever. We have a new detox tea to give me some beverage options and I tried it this morning. My incredibly supportive and tolerant husband is even drinking it to help his body detox, too, in a sign of solidarity, and we came up with a nickname for it – a pet name, as it were.

We call it…

…wait for it…

…

…

…warm flower water.

Yes, it tastes exactly like it sounds.

So today, to wrap up 2018, I sat at my desk with my warm flower water, my healthy grocery list consisting of chicken and air, and a modem that wears a women’s US Size 7 ballet flat on the front so I don’t have to watch the blue and white lights blinking in chaotic anti-rhythm. It is leopard print, in case anyone is wondering. It’s a chic yet trendy modem. I don’t know if the sense of satisfaction I got from my decision was real or if it was the product of my hydrocortisone cream starting to kick in, but I feel new resolve about my health. I’m optimistic. I bet there are even more flavor combinations of warm flower water out there that I don’t even know about. My possibilities are endless!

And now, the fireworks have finally stopped, so I can sleep. May 2019 be the best year, yet, filled with enough flower water for everyone and copious everyday adventures!