How I Overcame IBS

Finding a way to manage IBS was actually the reason I started this blog. And over the last few months I've more or less got there. I know there are a lot of people our there who struggle terribly with IBS, so I thought I'd just put it out there what has worked for me, but will just say now that the main thing that worked for me was experimenting, and that what I found that worked mightn't necessarily work for you, but it might be worth trying. Only you can decide that.

The Golden Three

1. First and foremost- get your stress levels sorted. Last year, I didn't really think emotions and stress were involved in my IBS, when any doctor suggested it, I was offended, thinking he/she was suggesting I was a bit flaky, or that it was all in my mind, and I was just making a fus. But I've come to terms with the fact I'm a sensitive soul, and stress does affect my guts. So in the last few months I've made a really conscious effort to get less stressed at work, I don't succeed all the time, but it's a lot better and I'm sure it's made as big a difference as the dietary changes.

2. Don't overeat- especially things like breakfast cereals, chocolate, nut butter, trail mix, or anything beany, like hummus. These foods are often 'moreish' but aren't very nutrient dense, but fairly high in fat and/or carbs and refined at that. If you can't go easy on them, keep them out of the house. For me, the foods I could eat until the cows come home were ice-cream and breakfast cereals. I completely avoid breakfast cereals, and don't even eat sugar free muesli these days, but I do have ice-cream. I avoid overeating it by only buying it by the portion rather than by the pint (or more). Although I adore chocolate, I find it quite easy to limit myself. Instead, have plenty of fruit, vegetables and lean protein- these foods are hard to overeat, you simply get too full. Oh, and don't undereat- it'll probably make you overeat later on anyway, and you're depriving yourself of important vitamins and minerals.

3. Eat slowly. Slow waaay down and chew thoroughly. Nothing is as guaranteed to cause me major discomfort as a rushed meal. If you don't have time to eat slowly, you might need to look at squeezing other constraints on your time instead, because while a skipped meal isn't the end of the world, making time for proper meals will save you so much grief because your IBS will improve drastically. Eat slowly is not just good because your digestive system has less breaking down to do, slower eating also means your stomach has time to tell your head it's full, so you're less likely to overeat as well, which only makes it worse.

And now for the finer points, and the stuff that mightn't necessarily work for you:

Have a good look at the type of carbs you eat- I think this holds the answer to a lot of IBS issues. Personally, I found the idea of cutting out large groups of these sorts of foods too daunting, and it was only really in the last few months that I started to implement all the stuff I'd read about SCD, paleo diet and FODMAP diet, even though I'd known about them for nearly a year. It's so worth it- my symptoms are non existent when I'm strict and the little bit on inconvenience and expense is worth it to rid yourself of the bloat, discomfort, gas, constipation and/or diarrhoea. I think these diets are all fairly similar, although I now follow a paleo/primal diet, most of what I eat conforms to the SCD and low FODMAP diet too. I believe we all eat too much sugar, even natural sugar, and far too much starch from grains, and everyone, not just IBS sufferers, should go easy on starchy things. Going primal/paleo is basically the dietary solution I found that keeps me IBS free, but it's not for everyone- it's very reliant on animal protein (basically half animal protein, half plants). That said, I think if you're serious about getting your IBS under control, you need to take low FODMAP/SCD seriously. Cutting out grains, pulses and sugar and uncultured dairy worked for me, but you *will* need to experiment with these things. Even if this all sounds just a bit too much- here's a list of things you should try eliminating (one at a time) for a while to see if it helps- pulses, sugar, grains, dairy.

In a related vein, make sure you're not eating too many harsh fibres. The human gut can handle a fair bit of the stuff, but we don't have the guts of herbivores, so go easy. That doesn't mean you can't be vegetarian and IBS free. Just make sure you're not eating massive salads followed up with a couple of apples and lots of rye bread. I'd also suggest giving a low fibre diet a try for a short while (a month or two) and eating very plainly- mashed potato, cooked oats, skinned apples and pears (gently cooked would be even better), banana, yogurt if you can handle dairy, white rice and very little in the way of high fat foods, pulses, fibrous vegetables or whole grains. It's good way to give your gut a rest. I'm not saying it's a healthy diet, but it's only a temporary 'holiday' for your gut. If you get really constipated, try some ground linseeds, and if that doesn't work, then just start adding fibre back very slowly. I did this under the supervision of a dietician last autumn and it made a huge difference, although at the beginning I was really against it because it seemed so low in fibre and vitamins.

Avoid fried foods- I think trans fat is seriously bad, but it's also really harsh on your guts. Give it up completely- there are always better choices when eating out.

Better still, ditch processed food altogether. Clear your cupboards/larder or manufactured factory foods and keep plenty of whole foods instead. These type of foods require you to chew them more and they're very hard to overeat, they have far higher amounts of vitamin and minerals and you won't be hungry an hour later.

What my diet looks like:

I now eat mostly animal protein (meat, fish eggs), vegetables (either raw or lightly cooked), nuts, seeds, some fruit and fermented dairy. I avoid pulses, grains and most added sugar (I eat 85%+ dark chocolate and ice-cream once or twice a week and honey even less frequently). I eat yogurt, fresh goat's and hard cheese but don't drink milk. I do have a weakness for ice-cream, so treat myself once a week, but it does make me bloated. I'm working on this one- I want to get into the way of making my own frozen yogurt or coconut milk ice-cream.

Breakfast is usually eggs or leftover meat from dinner and some salad leaves, or maybe a spinach and pepper omelette. When I want something lighter I have fruit salad (mostly berries) and some plain yogurt.

I snack mostly on nuts- walnuts and almonds or the odd bit of fruit, but not everyday.

Lunch is a big salad- leaves, grated carrot, pepper, cucumber etc and some sort of protein, usually salmon, hard boiled eggs or cold roast chicken. Dressed with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Dinner almost always has cooked greens (collards, kale, broccoli or cabbage, that sort of thing) and some meat or fish or something like a prawn coconut curry with kale instead of rice. Every now and again I have something a bit starchier, like some mashed turnip or potato/sweet potato in the skin. A lot of primal/paleo/crossfit/bodyrock people have these sort of starches after a workout, and although I usually have these foods on a day I've worked out hard, I don't have them after every hard work out, and my recovery is always fine.

I used to have dessert every.single.evening but that's less frequent now. I might have some frozen berries, a little yogurt, maybe some cocoa powder on it and for a treat, a square of dark chocolate (once or twice a week).

To give you an idea of where I've come from, a typical day's food in my IBS days was more like:

porridge with berries or muesli and soya milk for breakfast, snack of cereal bar, apple or banana, hummus and salad sandwich for lunch, chickpea curry with brown rice for dinner, chocolate soya pudding or fruit crumble for dessert. All pretty 'healthy' food, but really uncomfortable for my gut.

I hope somewhere in this jungle of words there are a few things that will help. In summary I'd say: eat more mindfully, try to overcome comfort eating, sort out your stress levels, and try eliminating pulses, grains, sugar and dairy to see if that helps.

Best of luck!

My ever evolving diet and workout routine...

Health update and diet experimenting:

I started this blog to document my commitment to getting my health on track at the start of 2010. I had hormonal issues, IBS, dry, prone to breakout skin, poor circulation and stubborn fat around my butt and legs. I thought a vegan diet and running would be the answer, so I blogged about my commitment to this new way of life. About 8 months into this experiment, my health wasn't much better (I'd lost over 7lb though), and in fact, got worse, and I had to spend a few days in hospital because of pancreatitis. Since then, I've been experimenting. I went to see a dietician, and cut down big time of whole grain foods and pulses, and that helped the IBS for the most part, but I still had dry skin and amenorrhea. In January this year, I added yogurt, eggs and fish back and since then I've been reading a lot about paleo/primal diets and have been gradually aligning my diet along these lines. The thing is, apart from a spell of about a year when I was 19/20, I haven't eaten meat since I was 12. And meat is a big part of the primal/paleo diet...and when you give up rice, bread, wheat etc you need something to fill you up besides lots of veggies...and there's kind of only so much fish and eggs you can eat. So I'm toying with the idea of adding some organic meat in once a week, to mix things up and to up my iron intake, because despite eating brassicas every day, my intake is a little below the RDA and I had low serum ferritin diagnosed a few months back and refused to take the iron tablets. I still have amenorrhea and dry, pale skin so maybe a little iron boost might help. This is all still part of the experimenting to find something that works for me. I will say though that the most amazing transformation in my energy levels has been ditching sugar and grains. I have held on to things like brown rice and the occasional slice of bread but I haven't eaten any grain based foods for 2 weeks now and I now seem to be free of the post prandial bloat and discomfort I would get. I'm still a little constipated but I think that's because I need to ramp up my greens intake some more, but I've been doing this gradually because of my intolerance of some types of fibre. In fact, I eat more vegetables since I started eating eggs and fish than I did when I was vegan! I've also put weight back on on the scales (I'm now 125 lbs) but I'm two inches smaller around the butt than I was when I weiged 117lb!

Here are some of my recent meals:

Still eating yogurt most days: berries and quark for breakfast

Quorn pieces chilli with lots of bell peppers, topped with plain organic yogurt

Experimenting with protein powder: unflavoured whey, cocoa, peanut butter and plain yogurt, I ate some straight up, but the PB made it sickeningly rich, so I baked the rest for 20 mins and it was easier to eat:

Voila- chocolate PB protein cake. I actually find the unflavoured whey quite sweet.

After saturday's run, I breakfasted on a berry, banana and protein shake (just using water) and it was pretty good- not too sweet, thick and really voluminous! Half a banana, half a cup of berries, 30g scoop of powder and a cup of water made 3 cups of shake (that's only 2/3 of the batch in that glass)!

I had the shake because the rest of the week breakfast was usually eggs or fish: lovely but you do need to switch it up a bit.

Saturday lunch: panfried salmon, pesto and 1/2 a cabbage each(!)

So good, the salmon was a beautiful colour

For Mother' Day lunch, I made a provencale prawn stew (red onion, garlic, orange pepper, mushrooms, collards, smoked paprika, herbs de provence, tomato passata, lots of parsley and lemon juice) and fried some organic lamb steaks my Dad got half price. The prawns were a gift from one of my Dad's patients who is a fisherman. I cooked rice for my family too. I had half of one of the steaks, my

first taste of meat in four years(!)

The stew is a bit like paella without the rice.

Last night's dinner: veg omelette (an onion, 1/2 red cabbage, a huuuge courgette, 2 carrots, 6 eggs, smoked paprika and some mature goat's cheese), topped with super hot hot sauce and Quorn sausage.

Monday evening treat: glass of red wine and two squares of dark hazelnutty chocolate (plus some new paleo/primal reading).

Today's breakfast: canteloupe melon, yogurt, half a tin of salmon.

On the workout front:

I'm still a little jaded with running, but I did take MrPeskyRunner out on saturday morning for an easy prebreakfast 5k. He really struggles to have energy without a big dose of carbs so he found this tough but didn't feel too bad after it was over.

On sunday I went for a walk with my sister, and we did 10mins of on/off 30 sec hard running/walking near the end.

Other than that, I have been following Bodyrock, usually a day or two behind the schedule as I usually rest on mondays. I've been doing some weight lifting as well.

I'm off work today to go to the opticians and MrPeskyRunner is having dental work done (nothing serious). We're going to go for a nice long walk in the afternoon and then do a bodyrock workout. I did the Abs for Christmas this morning, ouch, lots of squats, but other than that, probably the 'easiest' bodyrock I've done so far (I don't know if you can really use 'easy' and 'bodyrock' in one sentence, haha). In any case, I'm up for yesterday's workout later this afternoon.

That's all for now, folks!

Joys of (almost) Spring

Hello from a decidedly perkier Eimear! My winter blues seem to be lifting somewhat, and with that has come a renewed appetite for running/working out. I ran and aquajogged a few times last week and continued with that this week, throwing in session of Fitnessista's circuit training. I am so inept at any sort of strength training that I felt that half hour workout for two days! I ran and aquajogged through it, and two days later, even though I was still a little sore, I did some hamstring curls, stability ball press ups, planks and dumbell squats while watching a film and felt great. I was surprised at being able to do the stability ball press ups. I usually can't even do one! I managed 10 and could have done more but I didn't want to push it. I have been bitten by the strength training bug and I hope to incorporate two workouts a week into my schedule, at least to start with. I don't think I can fit in more than that for now. I decided to find out what on earth all the fuss over bodyrock is and I was very impressed with what I saw. I subscribed to the RSS feed and hope to try out a few of Zuzanna's workouts. I also really like the look of the Fitnessista's workouts and scribbled down her HTP Intro to Iron Pumping. At the moment I am running x3/pw and aquajogging x2/pw and if I'm strength training both the other days especially if one of those is core or upper body and therefore not tiring my legs I don't mind having no 'rest day'. At the moment I prefer to do something every day and think I've got a sufficiently good mix to avoid injury.

I haven't really done much forward planning with breakfasts this week as I went to work a bit earlier. I had a smoothie on monday (first in aaages) because I found frozen strawberries in the supermarket (mixed with blueberries). I froze a banana overnight and blended with the fruit, a handful of oats, a few tablespoons of yogurt and water to get the right consistency and carried it into work.

The rest of the week was mostly Ready Brek (kind of fortified creamed oat cereal made of oat flour and very fine oat flakes) made with hot soya milk and berries; although there was the occasional frozen berry/yogurt/sprinkle of crunch mess (this time with Quaker Oats Oat Granola, a bit less sugary-10g per serving and I usually have a half serving- than other granolas out there, although it's different from the US version, as there's no almonds in the UK one).

I have been snacking mostly on plain yogurt, bananas, plain oatcakes and peanut butter this week. I was eating very little bananas towards the end of last year but now I am eating one almost every day.

I had salads mostly for lunch this week with lots of veggies and leftover rice or pasta and cottage cheese or crab for a bit of satiety.

One evening I still had lunch salad left over so I had it in a wrap with a breaded Quorn fillet after an intense aquajogging session (I was soo hungry). I had another of the wraps for lunch one day with the egg salad I posted about last week.

Apart from a crab salad I hadn't had any fish this week, so fried off some trout in oatmeal and ate it with brown rice and loads of lemon juice.

After last night's aquajogging, and just because it was friday, we got pizza and beer (one bottle of Rekordelig cider for me). We eat takeout pizza so rarely (few time a year at most) that it's such a treat. We really enjoyed our lazy friday evening (especially because there were no pots and pans to wash up!).

After our pizza feast, we knew we'd be ready for a longer run today, so after a fruit yogurt breakfast mess and walk into town to do messages, we headed for the towpath. Last night was really wet and stormy, but it was lovely and sunny when we were out. We ran over 6.5 miles and had some veggies, Quorn and pasta for lunch and a generous scoop each of ice-cream a bit later on, then got all the cleaning done.

We are chilling out now before the Tudors and a wee beer/cider.

My tummy got a bit urgh mid-week, I think it might have been just a bit too much protein and not enough fibre, hence the brown rice on thursday evening and friday lunchtime and then carbs galore in pizza and pasta form. While I usually find eggs and fish etc make me less bloated, too little fibre can be a bit grim. I'm fine now though, and will just keep a better eye on my fibre intake. Unfortunately I can't get too much fibre from lots of veggies or beans as it makes me really bloated so it has to be brown rice or whole oats, or even wholemeal pasta. While I have been watching my carb intake I should really just make sure I eat little sugar and not worry too much about a plateful of brown rice once or twice a week.

Happy rest-of weekend!

Dinner by the fire

It's got quite cold again here, not as cold as it was in December, but below 0 C anyway, so we lit the fire tonight.

Today started off with egg and dinner leftovers (lemony garlicky Quorn and spinach) on a scone:

A whole pot of osmanthus green tea.

Some weak coffee when I got in to warm up (I walked in today) but I only drank half before it got cold.

Banana and plain yogurt at break:

Soup and walnut toast with peanut butter for lunch.

The soup left me really bloated- I often find this with soup.

I had grapes around 4pm which kept me going until dinner (and a teaspoon of PB, yum).

I walked home and then cooked a whole pile of root vegetables (a pound of potatoes, a turnip (aka swede to the English, rutabaga to the Americans) and 3/4 of a celeriac). I coated them in EVOO, wholegrain mustard, fresh thyme and organic honey and roasted them after first parboiling. I wrapped a Quorn piece in foil and topped with pear chutney and blue goat cheese and shoved it in the oven for 15 minutes.

Then I broke out the apple flapjack yogurt for dessert.

The yogurt was lovely- really appley and very tangy- all zingy on my tongue!

I used the rest of the celeriac to make remoulade (I dressed grated celeriac in mustard, lots of lemon juice, parsley and a little plain yogurt). I'll have it for breakfast or lunch tomorrow with smoked salmon, and then there's lots of roast veggies left for another meal:)

I'm off to spend the rest of my evening watching a conservation programme about Iraq and to sit by the fire!

Tea Times and Training

I spent the weekend in Dublin with my mum, we booked it a while ago as an early winter pick-me-up; the right mix of chilling and shopping before the Christmas rush. We travelled down through the rain on saturday afternoon and spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of a log fire having our tea topped up. I got a rhubarb and vanilla infusion, I'm constantly trying out unusual tea flavours. After some vegging out, we headed down to the pool. I had a great swim, as it was a small pool with only two other swimmers in there at its busiest. That's what I love about hotel pools. I was able to put my head fully under the water a few times, although I hadn't taken my contacts out, so I didn't trust my goggles to hold them in place, and I had no spares with me.

After our pool session, we got dressed for dinner. We ate in the hotel's restaurant. The menu had no vegan options, but I ordered the poached fig, rocket and walnut salad without blue cheese, which was rather bland- the figs were pretty much flavourless but the walnuts were nice and so was the balsamic dressing. For a main, I got a pea and broad bean risotto minus the dairy. As I've been keeping my diet quite low fibre recently, the amount of legume in the risotto was rather hard on my tum. Dessert saved the night, my mum got a chocolate mousse served with poached pear and chantilly cream, I ordered the pear with blackberry sorbet and melted dark chocolate on the side. When it came, they had put fresh blackberries out too, and it was a fantastic combo, blackberry, pear and chocolate. Yum! We had Pouilly Fume and I had Tokaji as a night cap. Unfortunately there are no pics as the restaurant was VERY dark (it's called The Cellar).

The food upset both of us, I got really queasy earlier in the morning and had bad tummy cramps all the next day. My poor mum came off worse, and actually threw up in the early morning. While my mum lay on to recover, I went down for another swim. Despite my tummy being a bit off, I had a GREAT swim, I remembered to leave my contacts out and swam properly, putting my head under for the whole session for the first time ever. This has totally inspired me to get back into a regular swimming habit and get fit again.

I headed back to the room and mum was feeling better. We went down for breakfast, me armed with a mini soya milk so I could have some muesli, which was delicious with lots of dried strawberries, yum! I followed up with some grilled tomato and portabello mushroom on toast.

We checked out and left the hotel for the first time since arriving. It was a beautiful morning, so we walked around the park for a while before hitting the shops.

Foodwise, I picked up some treats- this unusual tea:

And some King Soba products: the tofu and ginger miso (dried) soup, the pumpkin, ginger and rice noodles, and the brown rice and wakame noodles. I've been trying to track down those noodles forever! I'm so excited about using them. I also picked up some hazelnut dark chocolate.

Back at work today, my order from Steenbergs arrived in the post. So tonight I tried out the laksa spice mix I got in a coconut sauce with tofu and greens, served with limey rice.

Oops, sorry about the shakey shot

A very good weekend for all things liquidy; tea and swimming. And with a whole new set of spices in the kitchen (including a beautiful Herbes de Provence mix and some smoked paprika), I should hopefully be churning out some more solid consumables. I am still keeping my diet pretty low fibre at the moment, it seems to help a lot with bloating, gas and cramps, and I definitely noticed how much worse it got with all the legumes, salad and muesli over the weekend.

First proper Mofo post

My examination was today and it went fine, although my tummy is still suffering the effects of strong laxatives and barium. Yucky! I'm also supposed to be following a low residue diet. I read potatoes were a good starch to help ease diarrhea, and peeling and mashing them makes the starch even more gluey, which is supposed to help.
Voila, first food since Monday afternoon's porridge:

I'm quite a fan of that tinned spaghetti. It's one of my favourite comfort foods although I don't eat it very often at all as I try to prepare the vast majority of my food from scratch. It's Sainbury's Organic brand, and it's the only tinned spag I like. I find the Heinz and other stuff much too sweet. The sauce in this one is much more tomatoey than normal tinned spaghetti. I figured if I have to eat low res and diarrhea proof, I may as well do my best to enjoy it!

Other favourite comfort foods of mine:
Mashed potato (nice with stewed apple)
Chocolate rice cereal with rice milk (left to soak so it's nice and soft)
Soya custard and apple sauce/stewed apple
Veganised rice pudding

Anyone else got any favourite comfort foods for when you're feeling a bit delicate? When I was a child, I would always get flat cola and Jacob's cream crackers once I started recovering from a tummy upset. The cola was such a rarity in our house, the other kids would be jealous of the sick one because they'd be allowed coke! I can't say the charm stayed with me though. I detest fizzy sugary drinks these days, especially cola.

Anyway. That's enough sick talk. My plan with Vegan Mofo is to post more recipes, as it's not something I regularly do on the blog. That's usually because I'm not a big recipe person. I throw stuff together that I like, and I don't really do amounts. But cake is one of those things you have to be a bit more precise about! Here's my favourite cake-

Chocolate chip banana bread
200g golden caster sugar
200g vegan butter/spread/margarine- I used Sainsbury's Free From spread, you could use Pure or Earth Balance
4 small overripe bananas, mashed
250g wholemeal self-raising flour- I used Dove's Farm. It's really lovely stuff. You could use gluten free flour, but I've not tried it gluten free before
15g (3 teaspoons) egg replacer
100g dairy free chocolate chips or chopped up dark chocolate. I used Divine's Orange and Ginger chocolate and it was gorgeous!
A splash of non dairy milk if the mix is a little dry

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius. Line and grease a loaf tin.
Beat together the sugar and margarine. Stir in the mashed bananas, flour, egg replacer powder, flour and a little fake milk if the mix is very dry. Get everything thoroughly combined but don't go at it too long. Pour into the lined tin and bake for an hour.
And that's it!

It's not something I make very often, as there's a whole cup of sugar involved. But it's a great way to use up neglected bananas. You can freeze overripe bananas, thaw and mash to make this if you don't want to make it when your bananas are past it.

A Hungry Start to Vegan Mofo

It can only get better from here on! Although today is World Vegan Day, I haven't been sampling many vegan delights. I had a slice of banana bread, some soya yogurt and a few raspberries. I then ate nothing until I had a kinda second breakfast, some very soft porridge. Tomorrow I'll be liquids only, then wednesday will be nothing until the examination is over. Once everything's over, THEN I'll be getting into the swing of Vegan Mofo. I'm excited because this will be my first:)

Indulgent Sunday

After such a nutritious evening meal, I woke up to coffee (after a big glass of water had made its way down). Oh well, it's sunday. I added a little naughty to this, a teaspoon of drinking chocolate mix (basically sugar and cocoa powder). I sipped on it and while bashing up some pre-soaked brown rice for porridge.


I stirred in a sliced banana and cinnamon sugar, and topped it with plain soya yogurt. I thought apples and raisins would have been healthier, but I was craving the creamy sweetness of banana and some cinnamon set it off wonderfully.




After a nice walk this afternoon, I called into the offlicense (liquor store) at the top of my street, The Vineyard. A colleague in work gets me to pick up Sierra Navada. Unfortunately, they were out, it's very popular because they're the only stockists in Northern Ireland. While there, I couldn't help picking up these:



I'm keeping the spiced cider for my birthday, but I had the banana bread beer tonight. It wasn't bananey at all, but it was nice beer anyway. It was a barley based beer.

After such low fat and relatively low protein meals (miso soup and rice), I was in the mood for some fat. I made some tofu scramble with a big scoop of homemade pesto to fatten it up. I added in some mixed spice seasoning, turmeric and 1/4 cup nutritional yeast to a block of silken tofu, mashed it up in a bowl, and added to the pan.







Mmm. I was naughty and had more bread. This is quite nice bread, it's choc full of flax seeds. I think gluten twice a week shouldn't do me much harm, but I can take it or leave it. It's nice to have the freedom though.

While my super hot dinner was cooling, a did a little cheaty gluten free baking. I'm still a bit unsure about gluten free flours, as vegan baking is a minefield big enough, so I tried out this Hale & Hearty brownie mix. There are instructions on the back for a vegan version, but I veganised the ordinary recipe with Orgran No Egg, sunflower margarine and soya milk. I added frozen black cherries in to the mix.


These turned out so good! Very light, no funkiness from the gluten free flours. There were little flakes of chocolate in the mix that melted completely. I topped it off with vanilla Swedish Glace and some chocolate sauce (syrup and cocoa powder and a little soya milk heated up)


I really enjoyed my food this weekend, for the first time in ages! My tummy is a bit bubbly after all that food and beer this evening, compared to after the soup last night that sat with me perfectly. But I think the pleasure of the richer food is worth the little bit of bloat it causes, as long as it's an occasional treat. Sensory/mental stimulation isn't the main point of food (that's the problem with emotional eating) but getting enjoyment out of food is deeply human, it affirms we're beings with more than just a physical experience.
All in all, it's been a very relaxing, enjoyable weekend, leaving me ready to face the week ahead!

Back in blogland

On the top of the 8th highest mountain in Ireland, Mount Brandon. Covered in mist for all but about 50 days of the year.

I got back from Dingle yesterday evening. After unpacking, I read through all the posts from the blogs I follow (well most, I think I had 148 unread). I found lots of great gluten free things to try (especially HEAB's cornbread and gluten free experiments).

I did some walking, but not huge distances, and despite bringing my swim suit and trainers, I neither ran nor swam, I wasn't well enough. I ate lots of bread and wheat-based cereals. The most prominent symptom was a lot of sharp upper abdominal pain but in the centre rather than to the left as with the pancreatitis. It got worse and worse as the day went on and most nights I couldn't sleep, but it eased off by morning and then started up after eating. The good news is I am getting a heap of blood tests on monday, I was supposed to have an MRCP scan when I was away but will get in rescheduled soon, and my dad has asked a gastroenterologist friend to see me. So while the pain is really depressing, I am trying to stay positive because hopefully I will get some relief soon.

I am so sick and tired of eating wheat, and I ate very little fresh vegetables when away, that I am craving big heaps of greenery and berries. After monday morning, I am going gluten free for a week to give myself a rest, and plan on trying out lots of the new recipes I've bookmarked. I'll also drink plenty of water, take probiotic tablets, eat no refined sugar or sugary fruits (just apples and berries) and plenty of beans, seeds and vegetables. I am going up to my allotment soon to have a look at my kabocha and buttercup squash, I think it'll be ready for picking, and maybe the fennel and carrots will be ready too. I have lots homegrown cooking apples to get through, so I imagine I'll be making plenty of comforting apple and squash recipes over the next while. I think I might cut down my coffee drinking a bit as the gut pain could be inflammation, and coffee could be irritating it. I'll just stick to redbush and peppermint.

Some more pictures from the holiday