Finally, I think my body has decided to tell the sugar to get lost- my cravings have finally chilled out, and the IBS bout I've had for the past week is easing. I'm surprised my skin didn't suffer for the binge more- I've been off the pill for 3 months now and I expected I'd be more vulnerable to break outs if I didn't eat properly. But I seem to have gotten away with it. The past two days I've been craving greens and grains, kale, broccoli, brussel sprouts, brown rice and oats. I want them with nuts and miso and I can take or leave dessert, but I am loving snacking on crispy sweet apples, they seem to satisfy my sweet tooth without making it go crazy.
I've been reading a lot this weekend about overeating, it seems to be all over the media at the moment. But it does seem that the problem is our inability to self-regulate, to stay centred- it's just that it's way easier to overeat than it is to undereat because food is everywhere, although plenty of people, especially women it seems, have become obsessed with self starvation and calorie counting. I wonder is it our lifestyles, do we just take too much on and that leaves us all off balance. It's got to be part of it at least. It seems to me that the major effect of this lack of balance is our poor eating habits, which has major consequences for health. It's well acknowledged that stress is a key factor in IBS and that it appears to affect more women than men (although men may just not speak to their doctor about it). Woman gets stressed, she eats stuff that don't agree with her, she gets sick, she gets more stressed. It's becoming more and more obvious to me that there's not much point obsessing about eating certain foods or amounts of foods, you have to go right back and address the stress. Plenty of times I know I reach for something soothing to put in my mouth instead of working out why I need soothing and doing something more effective about it- cutting out the source at its root. I don't really get stressed about particular things, I just rush around without wondering if it's really that important. I guess I just need to take a few seconds to BREATHE every now and again, and it can mean the difference between a happy week or two weeks of protesting bowels.
I've done things like keeping food diaries and not buying foods I'm likely to eat too much of or that I seem to have relative trouble digesting. And that's kind of a sticking plaster. This week I'm going to try eat *consciously*. To eat when I'm hungry, to eat just what I need and to avoid stimulating things or 'mood enhancing' foods or just wanting to try a bit of everything for the sake of it. One of my bad habits is wanting to do everything at once, this includes wanting to try out every recipe and food I come across. But I know this sort of behaviour doesn't help my tummy, it's not a calm approach. So I suppose the upside of money being a little tight this month due to paying for a holiday is that I can't just buy a whole pile of speciality foods. I have to eat plain- cheap season greens, and work my way through all the brown rice and oats I've accumulated. I have sugar free whole peanut butter and plenty of tasty spices to keep things interesting but I'm going to resist the urge to buy new things or make new things, even though I'd love to try HEAB's coconut butter. However, I did get a red cabbage (fairly cheap in this country and at this time of year) to turn into raw sauerkraut...mmmm.
Last night's dinner: all the greens I had (collards, sprouts, broccoli and not technically 'greens' but green edamame) with a few leftover potatoes, lots of garlic, a few sundried tomatoes and nutritional yeast:
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