the power of a single bread crumb

I met with a new Dietician this past Saturday, a woman who I highly esteem both from reading her books as well as now from being a client of hers. She counsels, writes, and teaches the principles of "Intuitive Eating", which calls on tortured eaters to trust their bodies, their appetites, and their cravings. This approach to nutrition frees the mind from rigid rules which can lead both to overly-restrictive eating as well as to over-eating, bingeing, low energy, yo-yo dieting, and more serious eating disorders. I may write more on this topic later because I have so much to say about it, but here I will try to focus in on my own experience as a client, rather than a student, of dietetics:

A very difficult lesson to stomach is that my celiac disease is ALL OR NOTHING. Since diagnosis, I have not been highly concerned about cross-contamination of gluten with the foods I eat that are primarily gluten-free (examples of cross-contamination: someone grabbing wheat pretzels from one bowl and using the same hand to grab corn tortilla chips from another; frying pure potato french fries in oil that has fried breaded chicken strips; using a lipstick that contains wheat protein; a plain hamburger patty being cooked on the same griddle with toasting buns). But I have now learned that this disregard has consequences that I hate.

As I've said before, I do not have severe reactions from gluten that lead me to throw up, or develop a rash, or have alarming bowel problems, which means that I am very unaware of when I ingest it unintentionally. BUT, I have felt mildly nauseous almost every day since January, and I still don't feel that I have enough energy to work out. Dietician is an expert in this disease, and can attest that even an amount LESS THAN A SINGLE BREADCRUMB will cause my small intestinal lining to be damaged and ruin my absorption of nutrients for an extended amount of time. This miniscule amount of gluten can send people to the emergency room; so even though that does not happen to me I need to expect that it is damaging to my body. Very likely the fatigue and sick feeling after everything I eat is the result of cross-contamination, so the cure is to be highly diligent about what I put in my body.

At one point during the session, Dietician asked me "when was the last time you felt satisfied by a meal that you ate"... and I sat there in silence trying to remember a time. Both of us teared up a bit at this reality. Recently, and frequently over the past 2 years, I have been wracked with stress about eating, leading me to forgo the idea that I can get pleasure from feeding myself - not even hedonistic pleasure, just the humane gratification of having my needs met. If I don't expect to be satisfied, I do not feel the pain of disappointment and hunger. Yet this restrictiveness has taken its toll, which is evident in the half-eaten container of twelve-dollar GF cookie dough that I bought just 2 days ago. Once I find something GF that satisfies a craving, I naturally binge on this food. Like Dietician said, it's as if I've been breathing through a thin straw all this time, and removing the straw will bring the gulp of fresh air that my lungs need.

I realized this about myself recently when a classmate asked me what my favorite food was...and I couldn't answer her. My identity used to include the fact that I LOVE Chinese food... I used to visit Panda Express almost every day of the week in college. Well, I really don't eat much Chinese food lately, since I have not mastered the art of cooking Asian cuisine with my GF soy sauce :) There are foods that I enjoy...ice cream, cookie dough, and on a daily basis fruits and some veggies...but these do not make up a cuisine, they just help me get by. The loss of most of the foods that I USED to eat has left an empty space that I have not yet filled.

I do have faith that I will reach a point at which I will have a repertoire of dishes that I love to cook, and restaurants I can frequent where I can be assured to have a stress-free gluten-free meal prepared for me. It's just that I am just at the beginning of this process, which has been delayed by the difficulty of accepting this loss.

So today, at brunch with a table of fourteen girlfriends from college, I drank my beverage and watched as they enjoyed the plethora of omelettes, cinnamon buns, chocolate-chip pancakes, and egg sandwiches. I felt the pangs of restriction...but on the way home I stopped at the grocery store, stocked up on GF supplies, and cooked myself some pancakes topped with banana, strawberries, chopped hazelnuts, and powdered sugar. I am not yet free from the restricted-mentality life, but I will get there...or atleast closer to it ;)