I’m going to tackle each one of the challenges I had in my previous blog post and dedicate an entire post as to how I functioned and coped with the issues and challenges. Remember – this is just what worked for ME! You may have success doing other things and that’s amazing too.
Digestive issues. This is loaded topic. WHY? Because many of us stopped eating entire food groups because we were told they were causing digestive issues! How many of you are gluten free, despite not having a “diagnosis of celiac disease”? How many of you SWEAR you can’t eat gluten because you “have a bad reaction”? How many of you can’t eat processed carbs because “I swell up so bad”. How many of you can’t eat dairy because “it hurts your stomach?” So here’s the thing. When you are recovering from any type of disordered eating, I would encourage you to let go of these foods rules. WHY? Well because a lot of them are bullsh*t. There I said it. At least 90% of you who claim you can’t eat any of the foods mentioned above, actually can. I’ll said it again. I’m calling you out.
I firmly believe that the ONLY WAY to find out for sure of you TRULY have intolerances to the foods listed above (and a tone more) is if you can gain food freedom by actually eating those foods. When you make the decision to eat the food from a place of intuitive eating and understanding of your body RATHER than because someone told you to do it from a place a restriction, you will most likely NEVER want to eat the foods that cause trouble. I’m also going to bet that MOST of you will be able to eat ALL the foods you have been restricting for years or decades with EASE once you make peace with them.
Others in the industry have done far more research than I have on this topic so I encourage you to seek their advice, but let me just say that once you know what you like and what your body loves, it’s going to take A LOT to eat that undesirable food on purpose knowing you will have symptoms from consuming it afterwards. You are NOT GOING to want to intentionally hurt yourself. And when you make a decision to consume the food, you are willing to live with the consequences. I can tell you after doing this for over a year, there are VERY few foods that I will willingly eat knowing that I’m going to feel like crap after eating. WHY would I want to do that to myself?
Ok, moving on. In my case, the digestive issues were mainly being bloated, like uncomfortably bloated ALL the time no matter how much food I ate. And the BIG ONE was heartburn. I was able to work through the bloating with relative ease. I basically told myself that it was temporary and that my body knew what to do with the food. I made sure I didn’t wear anything with buttons or a zipper on my pants – think lots of stretchy long maxi dresses or soft cotton leggings with a minimal waistband. I actually pretended that I was pregnant at times so that I would treat my belly with respect instead of shame. It was just a lot of food and my body didn’t quite know how to digest everything yet. It was slow and took forever to digest. I would be burping up the previous days breakfast when I was sitting down for my next days breakfast. I would place a warm heating pad on my belly and drink warm tea at night to soothe my stomach. At that time my rib muscles would also become VERY sore from holding up my bloated belly all day long. It also started to hurt my back from carrying the extra weight as well. I did what I would have done had I had these symptoms during pregnancy – I laid down, took pressure off my stomach and did exercises and stretches to make sure the muscles stayed loose and strong. Something else my therapist also told me – if you were a thin person going to the doctor asking for help with bloating; what would the advice be? What *should* a health provider say to someone who has bloating who isn’t fat? Take that advice FIRST AND FOREMOST and don’t get shamed into some telling you that you’re bloated because “you’re fat and overeat all the time”. NOT TRUE and horrific advice.
HEART BURN. OMG. The BAINE of my existence. Let me preface this by telling you the ONLY other time I have experienced painful and consistent heartburn was during my 2 pregnancies with my kids. At the time I survived off of TUMS and it helped. I did have to go to the hospital for IV fluids once when I had the stomach flu while pregnant and my heartburn was so bad that I couldn’t even drink anything without throwing up (I kept throwing up the TUMS too, ha!). Once I delivered, like within 30 min, the heartburn was gone and I tossed the TUMS in the trash. Over the years, despite my eating disorder, it was a rare occasion for me to get any type of heartburn or indigestion. Fast forward to about 10 months after I started recovery (so August 2021, I’m about 4 months post ALL-IN at that time) and all of a sudden I start getting daily heartburn. And not just daily, we’re talking all night too. And it comes out of nowhere. I’m perplexed because I didn’t change anything that I was eating. I didn’t start restricting in ANY way.
SO, like I was taught when something painful came up during my recovery, I asked myself “What would a skinny person be told in this situation?” Well, I figured I could go to my local pharmacy and ask the pharmacist about how to treat raging heartburn. He didn’t say anything about my weight, what I was eating, etc…. just told me about 2-3 different options and let ME deicide what I thought was best for my situation. Can I say that my experience with that pharmacist was one of the best I’ve had? He didn’t tell me that I should “try” to lose weight first and that it would help with heartburn. He didn’t tell me to “watch” what I was eating that that could contribute to my heartburn, he didn’t tell me that exercise would help. Nothing. He listened to what I was saying and gave me medical treatment options. What he did say, and it turned out to be very good advice, was that if I took these particular medications for about 7-10 days without relief, that I should seek advice from a medical professional.
So, after about 7-10 days of taking a form of an acid blocker, I was still having raging heartburn. At this point I was really narrowing down what I wanted to eat. I was sticking to things that were white and bland – think crackers, toasts, bananas. The stuff they tell you eat after recovering from the stomach flu. But eating that for weeks and weeks on end? It gets old and at one point I wasn’t even hungry anymore. I was also exhausted. I was not aware of how tiring it was to walk around with heartburn all day. It ZAPS your energy, that’s for sure. So when I realized I needed medical help, I just didn’t want to go to my family doctor because a) she would have fat shamed the sh*t out of me like she had done for the past 20 years of seeing her (there’s a shortage of family doctors in my area, so I really didn’t have a choice) or b) seek another medical professionals opinion. CUE my naturopath.
I saw a naturopath way back when I was still restricting for some abnormal thyroid results. Eventually they stabilized because, WHOA, big concept, I started eating carbs again and my levels “miraculously” normalized. The naturopath didn’t do much – they told me I had to change my diet and restrict certain foods. It didn’t work and I saw him for 2+ years and spent $1,000s of dollars. Like I said above, my labs normalized after I consistently ate carbs. BUT, I had spoken to my dietician who told me that a large percentage of those revering from anorexia actually experience heartburn. BUT, she continued, the reason for the heartburn is NOT because the stomach acid is too high, it’s because it’s too LOW.
Say what? TO LOW? Well, if you think about it, I was only eating about 3 times a week. Why in the world would my body spend her precious energy continuing to make stomach acid and digestive enzymes? It figured out pretty fast there was no food coming. So it stopped. And when I ate, it released a small amount of acid/enzymes and SLOWLY digested the food. So, when I started eating food regularly again, my digestive tract literally could not keep up. Hence the bloating, gas, burping, etc. After this new information, I was encouraged to see the naturopath to help me supplement with Hydrochloric Acid (HCL) and Digestive Enzymes.
I’d like to say that I took the supplements the way he told me to and after 2 weeks everything was fine. IT WAS NOT. The entire process took about 3-4 months. Let me preface this by saying that you absolutely can find information about how to supplement with HCL online. There are protocols from various gurus in the healthcare field. I made the decision to seek a medical professionals help in the form of a naturopath. This is what I advise you to do. HOWEVER, and I say this with a very stern voice, do NOT let the naturopath trick you into doing anything related to diet culture. It is a very rare find in the medical world to find a health care provider to be Health at Every Size (HAES) informed and aware. They may try to change your mind and tell you that your heartburn is related to your diet and weight. Do NOT fall for this, ok? Inform them you need guidance and support supplementing with HCL and any other supplements that may help (enzymes digestive bitters, etc).
The process was very up and down. I started the titration of HCL at each meal and up and up the dose went. But it wasn’t helping. Instead I still had heartburn and a whole bunch of other symptoms. And the other reason why you need a medical professional – you may give yourself a darn ulcer. WHY? Because you are introducing high levels of HCL to your stomach, which hadn’t had high HCL levels for decades. And because of that, it really didn’t build up the lining of your stomach properly (well, because it didn’t need too). So, if you all of a sudden introduce HCL to a stomach that doesn’t have the proper protective lining, you set yourself up to be at risk for an ulcer (which is essentially a hole in your stomach lining). But I persisted. I had to start and re-start the titration up several times. I thought I needed 4 caps with each meal, but it turned out I only needed 2. The key for me was GOING SLOW. A lot of the protocols say to increase after 2 days or similar? I stayed on the same dose at a certain meal for a WEEK before making any changes. So for example, I would start with 1 capsule at breakfast, nothing at lunch and dinner. After a week, I would add 1 capsule to lunch and none at dinner. And finally, after a week, I added a capsule to dinner. I repeated that process, gradually adding ONE capsule at a time, over the course of 3-4 months. That’s what finally did it.
Once I was consistently heartburn free for about 2 weeks I started tapering backwards and did the opposite of what I did when I added the HCL capsules. I was also taking other supplements as well to aid in my digestion (Digestive betters, Digestive Enzymes, etc….). Now, at about 14 months post recovery, I’d say I get heartburn about 1-2 times a month. I’ll normally just take some digestive enzymes or something else along those lines. Occasionally I’ll have to take and HCL cap every now and then, but it’s at most 1 a day. It’s manageable now.
One thing I do what to add, is that once I got my heartburn under control and could start eating all types of food again, I did notice that certain foods “flared” my heartburn. But, without being able to eat ALL foods and not demonizing certain foods that diet culture says cause heartburn (think – fried foods, fatty foods, alcohol, chocolate etc…) I found out what foods triggers MY HEARTBURN. I can tell you that yes, alcohol most definitely caused my heartburn to rage up. BUT you know what didn’t? Chocolate and fried foods. I also have a tough time with pop – both diet and regular. BUT I’m ok with flavored carbonated water (think – Soda Stream, Bubbly, AHA type drinks). This is where I could give up pop/alcohol without ANY hesitation because I knew that it caused horrible heartburn. And WHY would I want that? If I presented with the opportunity to consume alcohol, for example, I had to make a decision on whether or not it was worth it for me to consume. I had champagne on new years eve and was prepared for the heartburn the next day, but I was OK WITH THAT because I knew that I only drank champagne once a year and made a decision to drink it anyways. Do you see where I’m coming from here? So my advice to you is eat ALL FOODS to determine which foods your body really can’t digest or tolerate rather than someone else telling you what’s best for YOUR body.