As you may know by now I have been working on improving my digestive system for a while, you can read my My current season and Advocating for yourself to learn a little more of my journey.
And I find myself having to follow a LOWFOD map diet not going into too much detail about the diet it basically means I can’t have a lot of fruis and veggies that will ferment easily, and THAT can be challenging, especially when it include things you normally would eat, garlic and onions for example. But my struggles are not about this particular diet, but for all types of nutritious regimen you are following, whether is to deal with a medical diagnosis, loose or gain weight, etc.
The first couple weeks following a new diet are great since you are exited for this diet and the benefits it would bring and possible seeing some results too, but what happens after the “honeymoon” phase is over? You get tired of eating like that and you want to go back to what your brain knows as “safe” and you break that diet even knowing it would not be beneficial, every time! So how do you stick with a regimen if you are fighting your brain?
And that is when you “fall off the wagon”, “cheat” or whatever negative way you want to call the fact that you do not want to do it anymore; and you feel bad (if you are doing something because you want to modify the way your body looks) or in my case, you are physically hurting; and even though you do not want to hurt, you are also used to it by now, and to be honest you had a break from the pain so you don’t think is going to be such a big deal.
Well I refuse to give up on me, and resign to a life of pain and have been doing a little trick lately that has blown my mind with the results I am getting: I am recreating my childhood menu with the ingredients I’m allowed to eat! SO simple!
Most people know that food = loves, thats the reason why some of us emotional eat, because in your childhood you felt loved when your caregiver (mother, father, grandma, aunt, uncle, etc) cooked you that Mac and cheese, or that pasta dish, or a pastel de papas, or flan… and now in your adulthood you seek those same dishes when you are feeling blue or stress or whatever other emotion you are dealing with. Your brain associated food with love and security.
But there is nothing in the books that say we are not able to turn flaws into advantages. I know I am an emotional eater, I am aware of this and constantly working on being mindful on what I eat when I need a little extra support; and thanks to that awareness I can use the same “flaw” to help me stay healthy and in my current path when I’m struggling with changes and the excitement for this new diet fades away.
I made pastel the papas without the ingredients that hurt my digestive system and replace them with ones that I could have, yes it wasn’t exactly the same, but it was close enough for me to remember the taste and have that feeling of “confort” that childhood food brings.
Knowing that there is more than just taste when it comes to food, there are memories with that specific dish, there are emotions associated with them when you ate ice cream after you fell and scrape your knee, there are neural pathways formed when you first made that connection that tells your brain ‘do not worry, we’ll get some cake and everything will be ok’; will allow you to use those tools into your advantage.
And so far …. I am loving looking for recipes that allow me to feel secure even thought there are a plethora of ingredients I love and can’t have.
If you need help modifying the foods you love, or you are looking to start your health journey, let me know! I would be more than happy to help!
Love,
Sole