(no subject)
Apr. 8th, 2008 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_rckI'm not really looking for solutions here. Not right now. In fact, writing about this has made me anxious enough that my immediate response to any advice will likely be a desire to deliver a scathingly reply explaining why the person offering advice is stupid and doesn't understand or why the solution is impossible. That wouldn't actually be because the person is stupid, the advice is bad or the solution impossible. It would be because, when I'm this anxious, I freeze and treat any effort to make me move as a *serious* threat/attack.
Sympathy and discussion of other topics entirely are potentially helpful to help decrease my anxiety. In a few days, I may link back to this and ask for advice. I just don't want it today when I'm too likely to savage people over it. Articulating this stuff is terrifying but necessary, and this is something that I don't have good solutions to yet. I've got some ideas (crockpots and freezers figure prominently. We currently have the latter but not the former).
I need to remember that there's a reason I eat in the patterns I do. It's not necessarily a healthy pattern, but it's sometimes what I can manage and is better than the other manageable patterns which largely involve not eating. For me, preparing food and eating it take spoons. Sometimes, preparing food takes enough spoons that I can't bear to eat what I produce or that I can't do it and get Delia fed and dressed. That means that I take care of Delia first and then see what I've got left for me.
I'm prone to eating large meals when there's food available, particularly if somebody else prepared the food. This is because I don't know when I'm going to have access again or when I'll have energy enough to both get access and eat again. The fact that I'm sometimes too tired to eat means that my body hoards calories. It also makes sugary treats very attractive, even mediocre sugary treats. I can run for three or four hours on just a cup of coffee if it has enough honey in it.
That's not the way I prefer to do it. My preference is a large breakfast. I may or may not eat again until dinner time (I prefer an early dinner on those days). If I do eat lunch, it'll be smaller than breakfast but larger than dinner. I have to be careful about lunch because I sometimes end up eating multiple snacks instead (assuming there's stuff available) and not really being aware of what I've eaten. Dinner's pretty much always my smallest meal unless we go out or are having a celebration of some sort.
I think I'm basically caught between conflicting needs-- fatigue and nutrition; ease and allergies, reflux, IBS and migraines; fatigue and money; Delia and me. I can spend $10 at the Japanese restaurant near Delia's pre-school at lunch time and get a meal that's very near to my ideal breakfast* (a chicken teriyaki bento with miso and a salad. Lose the green pepper mixed with the veggies and the tomato from the salad, and it would be perfect). I can eat pre-packaged food that contains things that make me sick but that's easy to prepare. I can eat pre-packaged food that's not very good for me but that's easy to prepare.
The best time for me to cook or bake-- at least in terms of spoons-- is after Delia's in bed, at exactly the time when I can't eat. It's unfortunately a very tiny window that doesn't allow much scope. Starting something that needs to bake for two hours at 8:30 and needing to get it in the fridge by 11:00 is cutting things very fine. Getting a crockpot may well be a really good alternative. I can use whatever I prepare for my breakfast, put the rest in the fridge and have Scott and Delia eat the rest for dinner.
I need to suppress my need for novelty in my food (I hate eating the same thing two days in a row, let alone two meals in a row) because cooking in bulk makes a lot more spoon sense. I need to persuade myself that sauces aren't evil because that's one way to create new flavors in old dishes, cook bland then use sauces for each meal. I may prefer marinades, but there's nothing inherently wrong with dipping sauce. Besides, Delia hates both marinades and dipping sauces. We're cooking meat with nothing but either salt or tenderizer because that's what she'll eat. I'm not going to get marinades until she's older.
I need to accept that I'm not going to eat the same things Scott and Delia do at any given meal and get used to eating dinner leftovers for breakfast (or giving them my breakfast leftovers for dinner) and things they think are breakfast foods at dinner. My body seems to invert the culturally accepted order of foods by wanting protein and fat (much more protein) rather than starches for breakfast and becoming draggingly fatigued if I eat starches without enough supporting fat and protein. I'm much better off with chicken for breakfast and oatmeal (or potatoes or rice or pancakes or bagels) for dinner than I am the other way around.
I need to remember that nausea is a major symptom of my migraines, sometimes happening before I notice a headache. My not wanting to eat can mean that I have a migraine and haven't realized it yet.
I need to remember that having broccoli on the table for Delia doesn't mean that I can't add another vegetable that's less likely to give me gas or that appeals to me more right at that moment.
We need to start logging our leftovers. We've started doing it several times, even bought a dry erase board and stuck it to the fridge. We just get distracted and tired and don't keep up. (And Delia likes to write on the board. It's hard to keep her from doing it.)
I need to talk to my doctor about an alternative to nexium. Waiting twenty minutes after I take it to eat is really throwing my mornings off. It works better than anything else I've tried, but I'm losing the window of just out of bed energy. That is, once I sit down, it may take me a couple of hours to find the energy to get back up or to stay up for long, but up until I sit down, I can manage to do things like preparing Delia's breakfast or unloading the dishwasher. I expect that I could make some food for myself if I didn't have to worry about it getting cold.
My list of off-limits or mostly off-limits foods includes eggs, nuts, peanuts, purple grapes, purple grape juice, red wine, sausage, ham, peppers (*all* peppers with no exceptions), tomatoes, black pepper, white pepper, oregano, turmeric, cumin, wasabi, paprika, a few other spices that I can't think of right now, and anything with a texture that isn't solid but is thicker than pulpy orange juice (when things are really bad for texture, I have trouble with mashed potatoes, oatmeal, yogurt and such. Usually, things aren't that bad, but they have gotten that bad a time or two in the past, and they tend to get worse when I have a food like that frequently).
I need to be cautious about beef (Scott's severely allergic, epi-pen level), dairy (some years, I'm allergic to it. Some years, I'm not. I've been told to expect the allergy to come back), fruit (I can't predict when it will make me sick and when it won't), anything that causes gas, insoluble fiber, grilled/charred/blackened food, anything cooked with peppers and anything greasy (early in the day, I may be okay with pepper contamination and/or grease if I pop a few Tums. Late in the day, it means hours of lost sleep).
I have trouble with bread products if they're dry, and by 'dry' I include more than 24 hours old. (I really don't understand how anyone can eat croutons. I know people enjoy them, but...) I have to butter them, dip them in oil or broth, or otherwise soften or moisten them. Otherwise I can't choke them down. This makes sandwiches problematic in many cases, quite apart from the fact that there's usually a lot more bread involved than is really good for me early in the day.
I have to be especially cautious about anything I eat within about six hours of bedtime and increasingly cautious the closer I get to bedtime (within two hours, I can get away with salted (but not buttered) popcorn, plain vanilla ice cream, plain fruit flavored ice cream or sherbet, and other similarly unchallenging items. Vanilla ice cream and popcorn can both be used to ease reflux if I'm having trouble that late at night.)
I dislike but can survive eating cucumbers, mayonnaise, rye flour, caraway seeds, black licorice and an assortment of other things that I can't think of right now. Nine times out of ten, though, my saying that I don't like a particular food means that it makes me sick.
I'm usually safe with garlic and pretty much always safe with ginger, so it's not that I can't have any spicy foods.
*My ideal breakfast is about one third protein, one half vegetables and one sixth starches. Oh, and it has to be something I can stick in the microwave or the toaster oven without doing more than about thirty seconds of set up.
I'm serious about the no advice today thing. Really.
Sympathy and discussion of other topics entirely are potentially helpful to help decrease my anxiety. In a few days, I may link back to this and ask for advice. I just don't want it today when I'm too likely to savage people over it. Articulating this stuff is terrifying but necessary, and this is something that I don't have good solutions to yet. I've got some ideas (crockpots and freezers figure prominently. We currently have the latter but not the former).
I need to remember that there's a reason I eat in the patterns I do. It's not necessarily a healthy pattern, but it's sometimes what I can manage and is better than the other manageable patterns which largely involve not eating. For me, preparing food and eating it take spoons. Sometimes, preparing food takes enough spoons that I can't bear to eat what I produce or that I can't do it and get Delia fed and dressed. That means that I take care of Delia first and then see what I've got left for me.
I'm prone to eating large meals when there's food available, particularly if somebody else prepared the food. This is because I don't know when I'm going to have access again or when I'll have energy enough to both get access and eat again. The fact that I'm sometimes too tired to eat means that my body hoards calories. It also makes sugary treats very attractive, even mediocre sugary treats. I can run for three or four hours on just a cup of coffee if it has enough honey in it.
That's not the way I prefer to do it. My preference is a large breakfast. I may or may not eat again until dinner time (I prefer an early dinner on those days). If I do eat lunch, it'll be smaller than breakfast but larger than dinner. I have to be careful about lunch because I sometimes end up eating multiple snacks instead (assuming there's stuff available) and not really being aware of what I've eaten. Dinner's pretty much always my smallest meal unless we go out or are having a celebration of some sort.
I think I'm basically caught between conflicting needs-- fatigue and nutrition; ease and allergies, reflux, IBS and migraines; fatigue and money; Delia and me. I can spend $10 at the Japanese restaurant near Delia's pre-school at lunch time and get a meal that's very near to my ideal breakfast* (a chicken teriyaki bento with miso and a salad. Lose the green pepper mixed with the veggies and the tomato from the salad, and it would be perfect). I can eat pre-packaged food that contains things that make me sick but that's easy to prepare. I can eat pre-packaged food that's not very good for me but that's easy to prepare.
The best time for me to cook or bake-- at least in terms of spoons-- is after Delia's in bed, at exactly the time when I can't eat. It's unfortunately a very tiny window that doesn't allow much scope. Starting something that needs to bake for two hours at 8:30 and needing to get it in the fridge by 11:00 is cutting things very fine. Getting a crockpot may well be a really good alternative. I can use whatever I prepare for my breakfast, put the rest in the fridge and have Scott and Delia eat the rest for dinner.
I need to suppress my need for novelty in my food (I hate eating the same thing two days in a row, let alone two meals in a row) because cooking in bulk makes a lot more spoon sense. I need to persuade myself that sauces aren't evil because that's one way to create new flavors in old dishes, cook bland then use sauces for each meal. I may prefer marinades, but there's nothing inherently wrong with dipping sauce. Besides, Delia hates both marinades and dipping sauces. We're cooking meat with nothing but either salt or tenderizer because that's what she'll eat. I'm not going to get marinades until she's older.
I need to accept that I'm not going to eat the same things Scott and Delia do at any given meal and get used to eating dinner leftovers for breakfast (or giving them my breakfast leftovers for dinner) and things they think are breakfast foods at dinner. My body seems to invert the culturally accepted order of foods by wanting protein and fat (much more protein) rather than starches for breakfast and becoming draggingly fatigued if I eat starches without enough supporting fat and protein. I'm much better off with chicken for breakfast and oatmeal (or potatoes or rice or pancakes or bagels) for dinner than I am the other way around.
I need to remember that nausea is a major symptom of my migraines, sometimes happening before I notice a headache. My not wanting to eat can mean that I have a migraine and haven't realized it yet.
I need to remember that having broccoli on the table for Delia doesn't mean that I can't add another vegetable that's less likely to give me gas or that appeals to me more right at that moment.
We need to start logging our leftovers. We've started doing it several times, even bought a dry erase board and stuck it to the fridge. We just get distracted and tired and don't keep up. (And Delia likes to write on the board. It's hard to keep her from doing it.)
I need to talk to my doctor about an alternative to nexium. Waiting twenty minutes after I take it to eat is really throwing my mornings off. It works better than anything else I've tried, but I'm losing the window of just out of bed energy. That is, once I sit down, it may take me a couple of hours to find the energy to get back up or to stay up for long, but up until I sit down, I can manage to do things like preparing Delia's breakfast or unloading the dishwasher. I expect that I could make some food for myself if I didn't have to worry about it getting cold.
My list of off-limits or mostly off-limits foods includes eggs, nuts, peanuts, purple grapes, purple grape juice, red wine, sausage, ham, peppers (*all* peppers with no exceptions), tomatoes, black pepper, white pepper, oregano, turmeric, cumin, wasabi, paprika, a few other spices that I can't think of right now, and anything with a texture that isn't solid but is thicker than pulpy orange juice (when things are really bad for texture, I have trouble with mashed potatoes, oatmeal, yogurt and such. Usually, things aren't that bad, but they have gotten that bad a time or two in the past, and they tend to get worse when I have a food like that frequently).
I need to be cautious about beef (Scott's severely allergic, epi-pen level), dairy (some years, I'm allergic to it. Some years, I'm not. I've been told to expect the allergy to come back), fruit (I can't predict when it will make me sick and when it won't), anything that causes gas, insoluble fiber, grilled/charred/blackened food, anything cooked with peppers and anything greasy (early in the day, I may be okay with pepper contamination and/or grease if I pop a few Tums. Late in the day, it means hours of lost sleep).
I have trouble with bread products if they're dry, and by 'dry' I include more than 24 hours old. (I really don't understand how anyone can eat croutons. I know people enjoy them, but...) I have to butter them, dip them in oil or broth, or otherwise soften or moisten them. Otherwise I can't choke them down. This makes sandwiches problematic in many cases, quite apart from the fact that there's usually a lot more bread involved than is really good for me early in the day.
I have to be especially cautious about anything I eat within about six hours of bedtime and increasingly cautious the closer I get to bedtime (within two hours, I can get away with salted (but not buttered) popcorn, plain vanilla ice cream, plain fruit flavored ice cream or sherbet, and other similarly unchallenging items. Vanilla ice cream and popcorn can both be used to ease reflux if I'm having trouble that late at night.)
I dislike but can survive eating cucumbers, mayonnaise, rye flour, caraway seeds, black licorice and an assortment of other things that I can't think of right now. Nine times out of ten, though, my saying that I don't like a particular food means that it makes me sick.
I'm usually safe with garlic and pretty much always safe with ginger, so it's not that I can't have any spicy foods.
*My ideal breakfast is about one third protein, one half vegetables and one sixth starches. Oh, and it has to be something I can stick in the microwave or the toaster oven without doing more than about thirty seconds of set up.
I'm serious about the no advice today thing. Really.
