Food:

Eating, Nutrition, and Digestion

Food can be an incredibly challenging, frustrating, and even frightening topic when you’re living with chronic conditions. From birth until now, I’ve been on quite a food journey. As a baby, my very uncoordinated tongue struggled to figure out how to eat. As a child and through my late teens, I thought I could eat anything - largely because I didn’t realize that it wasn’t “normal” to feel so sick all the time or to feel what I now understand to be satiated after only a bite or two. At 20, my Gastroparesis diet led me into a super low-fat/low-fiber diet. During my early-mid 20s/law school years, I lost one food after another, as I learned to navigate my long-overdue Mast Cell Activation Syndrome diagnosis and experienced anaphylactic episodes after nearly everything I consumed. I went into my final law school exams and studied for (and passed) two Bar Exams on a diet of peppermint tea and honey. I started my relationship with my now-husband only able to safely consume three foods: maple syrup/cream, duck egg yolks, and pureed butternut squash, even bringing a jar of maple cream and a spoon along in my purse on our second date. And now, while there’s still much progress to be made with my digestion and my diet, I have a long list of yummy and nourishing foods that I can eat without negative consequences, and I no longer feel restricted.

The progress I’ve been able to make in my food life has taken lots of time, research, and experimentation. Everyone has a different body and, consequently, different needs - and our needs are not static. What works for us today may not work for us tomorrow, or next week. I’ve learned it’s important to allow my diet and my habits to evolve, rather than to stick to a rigid and unrealistic plan or set of rules. Please take these tips and tricks as guidelines, not as dogma, and experiment until you find what works best for you, today.

PSA

  • “You’re too skinny - you need to eat more!”

  • “OMG I’d rather die than not be able to have alcohol or X food!”

  • “Congratulations! Oh…you’re not pregnant?”

  • “Wow, I don’t envy you. I love food!

Please remember that if someone is super skinny, that may be the result of a health condition.

Please remember that if someone has a pregnant-looking belly, that doesn’t mean they’re pregnant. They may be experiencing incredibly uncomfortable and painful bloating, sometimes a direct cause of these conditions, sometimes caused by medications used to manage these conditions.

Please remember that we are all people with feelings. No one wants to be unable to participate in the main way that people gather socially. No one wants to feel “other.” No one wants to hear that someone would rather die than be in our shoes.

Living with conditions that affect your ability to eat and digest food can be incredibly isolating and it can impact how you’re able to live your life. For some people, that may mean being unable to travel because of the inability to access safe foods or always having to bring your own food everywhere you go. For others, that may mean always needing to be close to a bathroom. For some people, that may mean having a closet of clothes with multiple sizes to accommodate for the not-so-bloated days, the kinda-bloated-days, the very-bloated-days, the super-bloated days, and the OMG-I’m-gonna-cry-I’m-so-bloated-days.

Please be kind.

Tips and Tricks

Meal Atmosphere

  • An ideal meal environment is calm and relaxing and without distractions (no TV, phone, computer, etc.) so that your parasympathetic nervous system (responsible for digestion) can function optimally.

  • Doing slow, focused breathing before starting to eat can help prime the parasympathetic nervous system. For example, inhale and exhale through your nose, with your exhales longer than your inhales. You can also do some bag breathing before/after eating.

  • Eat slowly and with mindfulness. Close your eyes. Allow your senses to take in the food smells. Open your eyes and look at your food, noticing and taking in the colors and textures. Allow your salivary glands to begin producing saliva from your mindfulness practice before you even put the first bite of food into your mouth. Eat slowly, chew well, and continue to be mindful of the food you’re eating, and how your body feels as you eat it. Allow this mindfulness to tell you when you’re done eating – ideally before you’re stuffed and feeling gross. Listen to your body and learn to become an intuitive eater, eating when your body tells you to instead of holding to cultural eating “norms” or expectations or eating mindlessly.

Meal Timing

  • Stop eating at least 3 hours before bedtime to allow the digestive system to do its work before your body turns it’s focus to sleep.

  • Consume foods that are harder to digest and require more energy to digest earlier in the day (e.g., meat).

  • Take walks after eating to help with digestion and to lower blood glucose levels.

  • Aim to eat most of your calories during the earlier part of your day.

Meal Content

  • Allow mealtime to be focused on eating food, rather than drinking. Don’t chug liquids right before, during, or right after eating to optimize digestive function and (hopefully) avoid extra bloating and discomfort. A few small sips of water is fine.

  • Consume a rainbow of foods that are nutrient-dense, hydrating, anti-inflammatory, and rich in prebiotics, probiotics, polyphenols, complex carbohydrates, omega-3s, phosphatidylcholine, digestive enzymes, prokinetics, and carminatives. Download this explanatory food guide!

  • If you have Gastroparesis, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO), Small Intestinal Fungal Overgrowth (SIFO), Crohn’s Disease, or other gastrointestinal challenges, you may benefit from eating easier-to-digest foods (e.g., cooked vegetables, smoothies, white rice, ground meets), rather than harder-to-digest foods (e.g., raw vegetables, steak, brown and wild rice, nuts, legumes) and being mindful to eat harder-to-digest foods earlier in the day.

  • Pay attention to how certain foods make you feel, and make meal/snack decisions accordingly. Heavier carbs, for example, might make you feel sleepy and might not be the best to eat before a workout or a big meeting, and might be better-suited for your last meal of the day.

  • Learn to eat in a manner that keeps glucose levels fairly stable and avoids glucose spikes. A simple rule of thumb is to eat your foods in the following order: veggies —> fats and protein —> starches and sugars. The Glucose Goddess is an excellent resource for understanding why it’s important to keep your glucose levels stable - and how to do it!

  • Make diet changes slowly and carefully so that your body has time to adjust. For example, if your diet currently contains negligible amounts of fiber, don’t immediately jump into having fiber-heavy meals - your gut probably won’t tolerate it. Your best bet is to slowly titrate up your fiber intake gradually over time.

Food Choices

We’re in a culture obsessed with fried food, take-out, refined oils and carbs, added sugar, highly processed foods - basically, junk that makes us sick. And a lot of it is created in science labs and designed to make us addicted. Eating foods that destroy our insides, impair our cognitive function, cause lethargy, lead to skin breakouts and rashes (yes, skin conditions such as eczema can stem from the gut), cause hyperactivity, and slowly kill us is unhealthy.

Every time we take a bite of Standard American Diet food, we are choosing to feel like crap, to fail to reach our potential, and to cut our lives short. But most people aren’t aware of the connection between how they feel and what they eat. And it’s hard for most people to change their eating habits, to learn how to create healthy meals at home, and to find ways to make healthier restaurant choices - especially if they struggle to make the connection between their food choices and how well they feel. It’s easiest to make these changes when there is a clear link between the food and the unpleasant - and sometimes life-threatening - symptoms, as is the case for people like me.

When I started shifting to a cleaner, healthier diet out of necessity when I was diagnosed first with Gastroparesis, and then Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, I felt deprived being unable to pig out like my peers were. People even mocked me for being such a “healthy eater.” But over time, I learned how important our food choices are to our short-term and long-term health, our productivity, our sleep, our attention span and focus, our energy, our skin. As I experienced how much better I felt when I treated myself with compassion by feeding my body with nourishing food, I became grateful that my diagnoses “forced” me into this new way of eating. Now, I eat to fuel myself for my day, so that I can feel as energized, clearheaded, and good in my body as possible. It takes time to adjust, but I promise it’s worth it.