Listening To My Soul - A Good Day To Fast

Ulcerative Colitis if s tricky thing because it isn't consistent for everyone and it isn't consistent in the types of food one eats. At least not in my case. The reports tell you that caffeine, chocolate and spicy foods will set it off. Chocolate nor coffee have ever set mine off. Occassionally spicy foods has. The main spicy food that has always set me off, and I stay away from it for good reason, is Cumin. I don't know why it does but it gives me diarrhea all the time. Apple Juice will do that too, but not apples. A hint: Apple has pectin in them and will act as an acid inhibitor on their own. It has to be the whole apple though and not applesauce.

My whole digestive system has ulcers throughout from the bottom of my esophagus to my rectum there are ulcers. I think the last count they gave me several years ago was 7. So they put me on Prevacid, like I mentioned in my last blogs. I was happy about that because since then, many years ago I have not had an attack and thought this was a wonderful thing. It was up until now.

 I have two very good friends that are helping me through all this lifestyle changes. One is someone that I met through MSN Groups were up and running, well both are, but she is a wonderful person. We didn't get along at first, but now it is comepletely different. She has lost alot of weight and I look up to her and congradualte her for it. She is a great person. So she gave me a diet and some tips and I am following it for the most part. She doesnt have Ulcerative Colitis and I had to work on my diet a little more than she did because of it.

The other friend is a nurse and he has helped me with the medical standpoint of things as well as some spiritual ones too. He might not realize just how much his life affects mine. I also look up to him because he has CF (Cyctic Fibrosis). He has lived past the stage where they previously thought was the end of life for those who have the condition. I hope that he lives many decades longer. He's a vegetarian and she is a meat eater. So I had to take some of their views with a gran of salt and to devise a diet in which my body likes. This is why I called my blogs "Listening To My Soul".

Listening To What Your Body Wants Is Kind Of Difficult.  What the doctor's and dietitians tell you what to eat in the groups of foods that are to be put in your body is not always what my body needs nor wants. Recent studies have also shown that certain things like grains is a new addition to our diets, but it is a big one on the basic food group chart needs that nutritionist have included since I have grown up. One thing that I have found that was mentioned to me by my first friend and concurred by my second friend who is the nurse is that some of my symptoms point to a food allergy and that is mainly wheat and grains. I didn't really believe it because I never put two and two together until I went off the acid inhibitors. It made sense the other night that I couldn't go to sleep and wanted to eat just a small bowl of cereal to lull me off. I ate about 10 of those sugar-coated mini-wheat's and I was up all night with heartburn and had to take a Prilosec and that still didn't work for hours. So I really didn't get any sleep for the heartburn. Lesson learned--Listen to My Soul and Body! So I now will not eat bread or cereals or grains. My body cannot handle it.

I tried the Macrobiotic diet at first but man I had constipation like no ones business. My stools were so hard that I nearly fainted passing them--or trying to pass them. I did drink lots of water and that didn't help at all. So I laid off the huge amounts of vegetables I was replacing other foods with in my diet. I was starting over yet again. All this learning is something else. The thing is with ail this..... I am the only one who can tell me what is right for my body. No one else can, no doctor, nutritionist, friend, family member or anyone....only me. More people should understand that. I bet our healthcare wouldn't be so costly if only they would teach this in the schools and in the families.

Today is a good day to Fast and start anew. I had to put my cat down yesterday and I wrote a something about her and you can read PINKIE'S STORY. I am not hungry today so it is the best time to do this. The last few weeks have not been much good for my diet as I have had many sweets and less vegetables. So this will give me a good jump start.

My last food was an Apple at about 1:00 a.m. this morning. I had heartburn and contribute that to a few things. One the stress of what was going on all day yesterday and possibly frying my chicken pieces in oil last night. I might have had too much of a good thing too in that.

A new thing arose when I got myself (not totally yet) off of the Acid Inhibitor. I found that I can't eat anything with any type of oil, grease, butter or fat at all. I will get heartburn so bad that I HAVE to take a Prilosec to turn it off. On top of that, since it take a few hours to get into my system, I have to take some tums and possibly even eat another apple. So in light of this I have had to find other ways of cooking my meats. Which brings up something else. Again..listening to my body. I can't eat red meats. My body will tighten up in the throat area from the very first bite. No read meats for me anymore! I used to love mashed potatoes, but they also tighten up my throat as well as rice.

Let me tell you how hard it was for me to accept that I could not eat anything with butter on it.......VERY difficult. Why you ask? It is because I was raised with butter cooked in just about everything. I love the taste of butter. Every time I ate anything with butter in it I would get the awful heartburn that went from the top of my throat down to my stomach. It took a few bouts with this that I learned that I can't eat butter or I will pay the price. That price was too high for me to pay. I couldn't even eat it on my vegetables anymore. That was sad, but hey once you get that heartburn that is so bad that it sends you to the toilet to pay it homage and cannot talk afterward, it kind of fixes that food choice. Butter is history in this house! Now I am used to eating a bowl of corn or peas or green beans without butter and just some salt for flavoring. Hard lessons learned for the better though. Sometimes, HA!, many times, the road is not a straight or smooth one. It is even more difficult when you are un-learning things you have always taken for granted or have been ingrained in you since birth. I have a recipe that I have since modified that I tried when choosing other vegetables to add to my diet that I would like to share here. It is Spaghetti Squash and it isn't with the Tomato based sauce. It is Delicious and I can eat a half of one in one sitting. Here is my Delicious Spaghetti Squash Side Dish.