My Year in Weight Loss

On December 16, 2021, my husband and I began calorie counting for weight loss. He had been losing weight without it to that point, but to get to the next level of his weight loss journey, more was required. I didn't necessarily need to lose weight, but I wanted to see if I could. And I wanted to see what my body might be like if I lost ten pounds. 

I've never been able to lose weight on any diet I've tried throughout the years. At 5 foot 4, I was around 150 pounds throughout high school and only ever got as low as 145 in college. With very little muscle mass, because my main hobbies were reading books, playing the flute and watching TV (sports were a thing to be avoided at all costs). In the years following college, I stopped weighing myself, but I continued to be sedentary and ate a typical American diet consisting largely of fast food. 

When I first started to run, in my late 20's, I did lose some weight. But that only lasted when I was running 6 days out of 7 most weeks. Once I got a new job, the running schedule changed and I started trying other forms of exercise at the gym I got access to via that job. My weight, once I started measuring it again, was once again fluctuating between 145 and 155. CrossFit likewise didn't have much impact on my weight - except the year that I was training for a Spartan Race - I bulked up to 160, but I didn't care because I kicked that Spartan Race's butt. 

I did get down close to 140 during a CrossFit nutrition challenge, but I don't really count that, because it was a month of low carb and the weight just came back. So, I didn't really expect calorie counting to work for me. I had a deeply ingrained belief that my body just didn't want to lose weight so it didn't. 

We used the internet to find sources that would estimate our calorie expenditure based on activity level, and each picked a target daily calorie total. I ended up with 1500 calories per day, which I expanded to 1800 to 2000 if I did CrossFit or ran. I got Ambrose signed up to take a resting metabolic rate test to determine scientifically how many calories he should be eating each day to go into a deficit for weight loss. He found the experience so enlightening that he insisted that I sign up as well. My results lined up well with the totals I'd chosen, so I stuck with that, but added more protein into my CrossFit routine on the advice of the test administrator. 

At first, there wasn't a lot of movement on the scale. I even gained weight, though I've learned over the years that I tend to gain about 5 pounds while I'm on my period, which then goes away with as little effort as it came. But slowly, slowly, the numbers trended down. I hit 145, and I kept expecting a plateau. Although there were runs of higher weights on occasion, again and again, the lows kept getting lower. And the highs kept getting lower! 

On December 16, 2021, I weighed in at 149.4 pounds. 

On December 16, 2022, I weighed in at 133.6 pounds. 

I lost 15.8 pounds in a year, and I'm ecstatic. It was slow, but I feel like that just makes it more likely that it will stay off. I'm not done yet. I'm curious where I'll end up staying with this calorie regime (definitely not planning on lowering it no matter what). I'm kind of looking forward to trying to add muscle at some point, regaining a bit of weight for more strength. 

My diet is now largely defined by trying to accommodate my IBS, but I think the exclusions I ended up making over the course of the year helped me with this weight loss. I tried to eat foods with pronounceable ingredients and to avoid "natural flavoring" in ingredients lists. Part way through the year, I stopped eating yeast, which meant no more bread (no more toast!). And then I stopped eating yogurt, because it can have yeast. I miss both bread and yogurt, but the yeast exclusion makes me feel better. 

In addition, Ambrose and I stopped eating fast food and drastically reduced our consumption of any restaurant food. We no longer drink alcohol, another big calorie source. We did have cheat days, here and there, and we also ate much more while backpacking. Pretty much all rules were off for backpacking, and the first full meal after the trip. That means an at home, eat as much as you want meal, not a snack in the car on the drive home (nor a restaurant, because we avoid those largely due to sodium concerns). 

I'm amazed that this worked. That I fit in a size 4 dress in September. It gives me confidence that I can get my first bar muscle up at the age of 40. Yesterday, I hung from a bar by my hands for 2 minutes, unbroken, and then did 2 sets of 4 pullups. CrossFit and running both played a role in my weight loss as well. I'll admit, I was also sometimes motivated to work out because I wanted to be able to eat more. I don't know that calorie counting would have worked at any other point in my life. This was the right time for me, and I'm so glad I tried. 

Yeast Experiments

I've discovered that for my particular eating issues, eliminating the yeast in bread appears to be the most important part. Soy sauce has also been a culprit, but not hard cheese or grapes. I have been eating cheeses in my backpacking food without issue, and I ate some grapes when I took my niece camping. Neither of those affected me like eating some meatloaf with breadcrumbs did. 

I avoided eating the dinner roll that came with that meal, but the main course was meatloaf. And I knew that meatloaf would have breadcrumbs and that those breadcrumbs would be leavened with yeast. I ate it as a test, and the answer came back: nope. My body doesn't want to deal with yeast. 

The real question is why this was never brought up as a possibility. An uncommon food sensitivity, for sure, but when I continually expressed that I was not doing well, why would my doctors not suggest something less common? I've been considering what to tell my GP when I go in for an annual exam in the fall. Part of me wants to say nothing to her, just go and do the minimum, no complaints. I've been managing my symptoms without the use of laxatives for months - now that I have stopped eating yeast! 

It just feels so absurd that with all the foods they told me to avoid, they never brought this one up. 

But I'm figuring it out, and I'm doing better. I'm eating more foods than I was before, and I don't actually miss bread as much as I thought I would. I'm eating fruits and vegetables again, which makes me feel better overall. I really like fruits and, sure, even some veggies. I'm hoping that I'll be able to eat beans again - that experiment will definitely be coming soon! 

The Monster Expects Perfection

My brain likes to chew on things. I often find myself going over and over something that I said or did. Something that I'm not sure, on reflection, was done correctly or well or with the proper emotion. I can shut the chewing down for a while, but there's a tendency for my mind to sink back into those thought patterns, rehashing the past over and over again until I've convinced myself that I took the worst of all possible paths in my interaction. 

That's a monster. 

A voice popping up and criticizing my actions of the past. Nagging me to be better, to be more, to be perfect. An expectant weight of emotion. Inflicting suffering on myself mentally, but to what purpose? Is it like picking at a scab, only in my mind instead of on my skin? 

I don't think I'm the only person to do this, but it's not something that gets talked about a lot. 

My monster is an isolationist. It doesn't occur to the monster to push any of these feelings out and inflict punishment onto other people. Maybe that's a function of it being my monster. A function of who I am as a person. I'm not one to lash out, not very often. I more often lash in, punishing myself for perceived faults. 

I punish myself when I'm angry. I've read the phrase that anger turned inwards is depression, but I'm not sure if I quite agree with it anymore. I'm not depressed, and I doubt that I ever medically have been. I've just had lots of emotions, BIG emotions to deal with. And, over the years, I've dealt with these big feelings in various ways, some better than others. 

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if I had been better as a child at suppressing my emotions. Would I have been better off? I would have been yelled at less, because I would have cried less... But I wouldn't have learned how to process those big feelings by avoiding them. I mean, I'm no expert at processing them now, but I have strategies. 

Like, I know that I get irritable when I'm hungry. I fully embrace the term hangry, because I've felt it in my bones when backpacking. Knowing that, I can acknowledge that the emotion is coming from a physical need, and isn't a response to the situation that I'm currently in, or the person I'm currently with. Same thing if I'm frustrated or upset; I try to recognize what the cause is instead of either punishing myself or, on occasion, lashing out. 

It takes time to develop that sense of recognition. Time and self awareness. I've been trying to more fully develop my self awareness as I've dealt with the IBS diagnosis. After all, if a physical need can turn into an emotional state (hunger leading to hangriness), then surely an emotional need can turn into a physical state. Our bodies and minds are intertwined. So by being more aware of my emotions and what I'm doing with them, I might be able to reduce the impact of my emotions on my body. 

Weight Loss Update

This month, for the first time in my adult life, my weight was under 140 pounds. And while I only had a few days in the 130's before my period started and I bumped back into the 140's, I'm still pretty excited at this proof that the calorie counting that I'm doing is working. The weight loss has been slow, and definitely not in a straight line, but I've got a downward trendline. 

It's kind of great that I'm "only" at 143 during my period. I mean, I'd rather not have seen the scale go back to the 140s, but 6 months ago, my period would put me around 155 instead. That's great! 

I've been incorporating more vegetables and fruits into my diet, and my digestive system has been tolerating them well. My main issue used to be constipation. It was bad enough that I was managing it with daily laxatives. And now I'm not on any laxatives, and my output is regular. I don't know that the calorie counting has anything to do with it, but I do think that watching what I eat very closely has been helping my digestion. 

I haven't yet tried another yeast-adjacent food after the yogurt. The next one up will definitely be soy sauce, because I would love to be able to eat sushi in the manner to which I am accustomed. But I probably won't try it until after the traditional Memorial Day backpacking trip this weekend! 

Goodbye Yogurt

I've been doing very well, digestively speaking, with the elimination of yeast from my diet. I was surprised at just how much food is excluded in a yeast exclusion diet. No soy sauce, nothing fermented, and no yogurt. I'm a big yogurt consumer, always have been. For a long time, I thought I was lactose intolerant, but I'd still eat yogurt, because the probiotics were supposed to be good for me. 

When I got the IBS diagnosis, yogurt was one food that I never considered eliminating. I was no longer eating a lot of yogurt in yogurt form, but for a long time I've been using Chobani yogurt drinks as my pre-workout fuel for 5 am CrossFit classes. I don't like working out in a fasted state, and I don't want to get up early enough to eat a full breakfast before working out, so the yogurt drinks were a perfect compromise. I got some calories, but not so much food that my body couldn't handle it before a hard workout. 

I went a bit over 30 days with complete yeast exclusion, and then I reintroduced the Chobani yogurt drinks for my pre workout and post workout. (I'd received some advice to do protein before and after working out, and I've been doing 2 yogurt drinks for a few months around my CrossFit classes.) 

Now, to be fair, a few days after I restarted the yogurt drinks, I also started my period. And I know that my period has an effect on my digestion. So I gave the yogurt drinks a full two weeks of testing to make sure not to judge them because of the period. But even from the first day that I started drinking them again, I just knew. 

I could feel how they were affecting my digestion from the increase in burbling noises and feelings, but I hoped that maybe that was just from the good probiotics. But further use caused my digestion to head back towards constipation, culminating in a no-fun-at-all episode of vomiting a little less than 2 weeks after I'd reintroduced yogurt. 

It's possible that the vomiting was unrelated to the yogurt. It's possible that my period's influence on my digestive processes impacted the yogurt's effects. But for now, I'm calling it. No more yogurt. 

I'm going to work at getting my digestion back in order, and then I'll try adding soy sauce back into my diet and see what that does. I'm crossing my fingers that I can tolerate soy sauce, because I love my husband's chicken adobo. 

Re-evaluating My IBS

I believe that one of the hardest things to tell people is that they are making themselves sick. 

It's an implication of responsibility where most of us want none. 

It's a condemnation that gets our monsters riled and defensive.

It feels like victim blaming. 

But sometimes, we are making ourselves sick. 

Consider my husband. He was told by several doctors and medical professionals that he would have to be on medication for high blood pressure for the rest of his life. That is only the reality if he didn't stop making himself sick. He has spent the last several years working on reducing his body weight, and he has succeeded in going from 4 medications to one half of one medication. He changed HIMSELF rather than continuing to make himself sick and be dependent on those drugs.

For years, I was told that I had Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) and the doctors liked to do a little dance around the fact that I was making myself sick. They never outright said it, but there were lots of questions about my mental health, how much I was exercising, whether I was getting enough sunshine. Those don't seem super relevant to a digestive issue, do they? I always felt they were implying the whole thing was psychosomatic. 

Now, I'm not sure if I have IBS, but there is no definitive test for IBS. There is no way to prove that I have it or don't. So I'm going with a new theory, that the way I was eating was no longer sustainable for my body. 

My weight has been relatively steady, but my cholesterol has been on a steady march upward. What I didn't want to consider was that the food I was eating, the food I most enjoyed eating (because it's designed to be enjoyable), could be part of what was making me sick. And by choosing those foods, I would thus be making myself sick. 

There might also have been an undiscovered food intolerance in there, but I believe the main thing that's helping me regain some control over my digestion is cutting out the literal crap I used to eat. I love Cheetos. They are my favorite chip. And I miss their taste, and licking the damn cheese powder off my fingers. But I haven't eaten them in over a year. (Funnily enough, I might have discovered the food intolerance by trying to find a healthier substitute for Cheetos; I tried a vegan cheese puff and the reaction convinced me to try cutting out yeast.)

I've eaten fast food once in the last year, and even my restaurant trips have declined precipitously to no more than once a month. 

The Food/Industrial Complex is about profit. The only way to profit off of food for people is to make food that is so unsatiating that people don't ever really feel full eating it, and so delicious that people don't notice how much of it you eat. There's no profit in providing proper nutrition in proper quantities. No, they have to make bigger containers (larger people). They have to manipulate flavor and texture so that food becomes as close as possible to addictive. 

And it's all free choice, right? Americans just choose to eat the most aggressively advertised foods, which are chock full of sodium and fat. Freedom! To become a growing waste disposal unit. To end up on a dozen medications for high blood pressure and heart disease and diabetes. To be unable to move functionally. That's freedom. 

I don't always choose the right foods, but I'm making a conscious effort to make those better choices. To improve my eating with more fiber, including what fruits and vegetables I can tolerate. I've even started eating Cheerios, which, while highly processed, are my baby-step towards eating more whole grains. I'm hoping to switch to oatmeal at some point, but I'm still experimenting. 

I'm making a choice to actively try and change how my digestive system functions by eating better food, instead of trying to medicate my way out of a syndrome I might not even have. So far, I've made more progress in 30 days than I had in the last 6+ years since the original IBS diagnosis. I'm going to stay the course and see where these choices lead me. 

Hopeful Possibility

In the years since I first started trying to fix the intense gut pains that, in some way, have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but that I only began to work on in 2015, I have cut a LOT of foods out of my diet. It started with a recommendation from my doctor to try the low FODMAP diet, because my symptoms matched Irritable Bowel Syndrome. That diet is supposed to be used briefly, in a way. One cuts out all foods with FODMAPs, which is an acronym for a certain type of fiber, and if one feels better, then one adds back in one food at a time to figure out which foods are triggering. 

I followed that diet. I did not experience relief. So I added some things back, and I tried to eat things that didn't make me feel worse. But it was hard to know what those things were. A few years later, I got diagnosed with mild delayed gastric emptying and they told me to cut out fiber. 

I didn't get much information other than, cut out fiber. 

Everything I read online indicated a diet low in fiber shouldn't be long term and should only be under supervision of a doctor. My doctors looked at me like I was crazy when I talked about reintroducing fiber. 

It was as if they were convinced simultaneously that 1) what I had wasn't going away and 2) they couldn't prove that I had IBS. But if they couldn't even prove that IBS was the problem, because IBS is, itself, not well understood, then how could they expect me to trust that I couldn't change anything? 

Last year, I started trying to eat more healthily and focused on the removal of foods with "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors" in the ingredients list. I figured that if something was irritating my gut, then I should know every ingredient that I ingest. Those two phrases can be substitutes for any number of compounds, any of which could cause me trouble. The less of those I ate, the better, I figured. 

And in December, my husband and I began calorie counting. We keep track of what we eat and how much of it we eat. Turns out it's hard to find foods that not only exclude unnamed flavor compounds, but also fit in with the kinds of food I currently allow myself - low fiber, trying to avoid most FODMAPs with the exception of apples because that's one food that I haven't had trouble with. I ended up trying a food that contained nutritional yeast. 

It messed me up. After that, my digestion went crazy, causing constipation and bloating. I felt my stomach gurgling that night and I kicked myself for not looking up if yeast can cause issues with IBS before I ate the damn things. But I didn't go checking until the next morning, where I found absolutely no counterindications regarding IBS and yeast. 

But I did find information about yeast intolerance, and I could check off just about every box for symptoms of a yeast intolerance. 

So now I'm trying 30 days without eating yeast. My husband has cooked up some roti for me to eat instead of sourdough bread. I've discovered the crackers that I relied on for snacks and meals also have yeast so they're out. I'm counting day 1 as March 17, since I did a liquid diet that day (no, not beer, that's got yeast). But I'm already showing signs of better digestion. 

I'm feeling both positive and angry. Excited and sad. Because if this turns out to be the thing, the big thing that has always been wrong with me, that is, maybe, the reason that I've always been a bit overweight, then that it will be amazing that I found it. But terribly frustrating that it took so long to figure it out. And infuriating that no doctor once suggested it as a possibility. 

Still, this might just be a wild hare that I'm chasing. I need to be prepared for the possibility that whatever is going on can't be fixed by a simple dietary exclusion. Or, at least, not this particular exclusion. 

Health Update

My body is actually doing really well right now. I've gone several nights without using a sleep aid beyond melatonin. I even had a nice normal bowel movement on Tuesday morning. 

The trial run of Trulance, which gave me diarrhea for about 4 hours each day for 7 days straight in early October (except when I had to hold it for a haircut - then I got constipated), did not meet my criteria for success. And afterwards, I was just feeling worse and worse, not just in my abdomen, but overall. I caught some kind of cold, but it wasn't that bad. 

But I was pretty sunk in a malaise. I started thinking about how I've been diagnosed with a functional disorder, and what that really means. Something is wrong in the flow of my digestion. Something that makes me hold on to fecal matter until it gets hard and difficult to pass. 

Instead of asking myself what was wrong when I had signals from my belly, I asked my body to let things flow. I rephrased it from pain to sensation. That doesn't always work, but it can help. 

I guess I've made the turn from looking to medicine to "cure" me to looking to my mind to "heal" myself. I'm not trying to deny science here, or disrespect medical professionals. But they honestly do NOT know what is going on with my digestion. My symptoms fit a pattern, and all they can do is try to treat symptoms. There's no ferreting out a root cause. 

At my last appointment, the doctor asked me several times about getting exercise and being out in the sunshine. He was, to me, clearly conveying that my issues had a psychological or mental aspect. Though he also said, several times, that I am not crazy. Yeah, dude, I know that. I've known crazy, and it ain't me. 

But not being crazy doesn't mean that my mental state won't affect my physical state. Our bodies and minds are tightly interwoven. One cannot exist without the other (not yet, anyway, insists the scifi fan in me). I remember hearing at some keynote address at a conference an idea that has stuck with me.

When one is nervous, one might feel butterflies in the stomach. If one names that feeling anxiety, it feels awful. But if one were to name it excitement, then the feeling is transformed into a positive one. 

It's nearly the one year anniversary of my mother's death. In less than two weeks, I will be at her memorial, celebrating her life. I have some anxieties about the whole event, from seeing my extended family to actually mourning her with my family. I'm not going to bottle them up. I'm going to emotion my way through and allow myself to feel what I feel. 

No swallowing those emotions and letting them interfere with my body's function. Not while I'm finally starting to feel better. 

I rather think that the diarrhea from the Trulance might have been a positive. I certainly felt empty after it was over, and maybe that's what I needed to start again. 

I'm still getting some intermittent intense sensations in what seems like the regions of my ovaries, but that is likely painful, but harmless, cysts. I will trust that my body will tell me if I need to do something more about them. 

Maybe if I repeat that enough times to myself it will work. I figure it has as much of a chance as anything else I've tried. And it's cheaper. 

Health Update

Warning: frank talk about poop to follow. 

I've pretty much been in pain every day for the past couple years. Maybe not the whole time, and mostly at a level that I can bear, but still. So I decided to try and push the gastro doc to actually do something to treat me instead of, like the last one, brushing me off with vague instructions never to eat fiber again. 

The first such attempt turned out awful. The pill pretty much destroyed my weekend and my butt. Instead of a cessation of pain, I got diarrhea and vomiting on day one, which faded to diarrhea only the next few days. I stopped that one, but it still hasn't fully left my system. 

And now I have to decide whether I try the next one or just give up on Western medicine entirely and try something different. My husband and I recently watched a convincing video on the importance of the microbiome on gut health, but when I brought that up with the doc he said that there wasn't enough robust evidence for them to do that kind of testing at his practice. 

To which I wonder exactly what kind of rigorous studies the medication he did give me has gone through. And I really can't help but wonder how much money the pharmaceutical companies are paying to convince doctors that their drugs are good. Sure, the drugs need to pass FDA approval, but they are not infallible or proof against lobbyist dollars. 

Writing that makes me feel like a conspiracy theorist. But I am finding very little trust in the American health care system within myself. The systems seem to be run purely by financial interests, mostly focused on the insurance companies' abilities to avoid paying for services. Heck, the doc even mentioned that if he went with this one drug, the insurance company would tend to fight him on it, and without insurance it costs like $300 for a month's supply. 

And, because I know how much some drugs cost without insurance, $300 per month doesn't actually sound that horrible, though I certainly don't want to pay that. 

It was also interesting for me to consider that even though the microbiome doesn't have robust enough research, something that has been essentially proven only to help some people, avoiding FODMAPs, was something that the doc recommended, bringing it up when I mentioned making my own applesauce because apples are high in FODMAPs (FODMAPs are a type of carbohydrate that have a "strong link" to digestive issues). Of course, fruits that are low in FODMAPs are high in fiber, such as citrus and green bananas. And while I have some doubts about the IBS diagnosis, the delayed gastric emptying thing feels correct. I've felt how my body no longer likes dealing with eating things like pineapple. So fibrous. So delicious :(

I had been eating bananas as my fiber for a while, but I switched when I read that those can cause constipation. And I rarely ate green ones. But I did try the low FODMAP diet, way back when this whole rollercoaster started. It had absolutely no efficacy for me. Low fiber did help for a time, but I have not found what it is that will bring me back to pain free equilibrium in my gut. 

There's a part of me that really wants to find an answer without resorting to prescription drugs. But the larger part of me just wants an answer. 

So I'm still looking. 

It's a Pain

I've been feeling off for a while now. Off enough that I did go to the doctor's office, and I will be getting some diagnostic stuff done, but that won't be for another few weeks. In the meantime, I'm just trying to deal with it. 

It's more difficult to deal with than usual, because I don't know what's wrong and I don't know how to fix it. I feel like my brain is not operating at its normal speed. I'm losing track of things that I don't usually lose. I fumble and bumble. There's a near constant lump in my throat and pain behind my sternum. My abdomen is a basket of random pains that strike on their mysterious whims. 

Part of the abdominal pain is premenstrual right now, and that makes things even worse, because I'm emotional and I know it. And it's perfectly normal for me to be in pain during my period, right? 

One thing that bugged me when I went to the dr's office was that I mentioned easing myself back into eating a bit more fiber, some fruits so I'm not going totally fiber free. And she said, essentially, that my IBS and gastroparesis were permanent and I needed to keep that in mind. 

At the time, I didn't reply, but later I wished I had. I wished I had looked at her with incredulity and asked if she had, unbeknownst to me, discovered the sure cause of my condition, and proven that I had IBS. And, since she now knew this for a fact, I would most certainly be interested in how she came to this miraculous conclusion. 

Probably for the best that I didn't say anything. 

If anything, doing the experiment with the laxatives has shown me that my body does not react like I expected, based on what I'd read about IBS. They should have just worked, but they didn't. I've stopped them for now, though I'm still drinking a can of old fashioned prune juice each evening. It seemed like the right thing to do after I had a bout of diarrhea. 

I went to work on Monday even though I really didn't want to. I wanted to stay in bed. Instead, I went in and spent a very active day moving my office. It doesn't seem right to take a sick day when I don't know what's wrong, and when I couldn't do anything for myself other than rest in bed. I rested all weekend. I slept over 10 hours Saturday night! 

I'm trying to troubleshoot this, but I'm not finding anything that has a particular affect on how I'm feeling. Caffeine, pain killers, antacids, more sleep, rest, exercise, more water... My head doesn't feel quite right, but I'm capable of doing everything I need to do. I can drive and work. Ride my bike. Run. 

So I'll need to find and try different things since the things that I've tried have had no effect. Always good to get it out on the page. To write out the problem often brings the solution into greater clarity. For me at least. 

Digestive Health Update

My body has decided to debut some new flavors of pain in the last couple weeks. Usually, I'll get some general gas pains, but I can mitigate them by taking GasX and, to an extent, by slowly rolling around to help the air get out. I've felt something close to this new pain before - when I had stitch-like pain it turned out to be a backup of diarrhea causing the pain. 

But the new pain is only a little like a stitch. It's more like a hot coal temporarily taking the place of an ovary. Or like a really hard pinch that is somehow coming from the inside. It comes and goes, occasionally coming hard enough to stagger me if I'm standing. 

It's annoying during the day, but really hard to deal with at night when I'm trying to sleep. During the day, I can stuff my brain full of distractions. If I'm supposed to be awake, I can push through it. But once I'm supposed to shut down and relax and STOP thinking, the pain takes center stage. 

I like to sleep on my stomach, half curled up, embracing a pillow and nuzzling my husband with my feet. I can sleep on my back or my sides if needed, but they aren't the favored positions. With this pain, a total of 0 of those positions alleviates the pain. Most positions aggravate the abdominal pain, but especially my favorite. So I've been relying on sleep aids, with mixed results. 

These new pains are also, probably, a poop baby. I've been trying to encourage that lump to flow through by drinking a LOT of water (seriously, I drank more than 1.5 GALLONS on Sunday). Usually, a liquid diet or just increased drinking helps my flow. And, since I'm also taking laxatives, the fact that I haven't cleared this is very weird to me. 

My body is very weird to me. 

I wish I understood it better. I wish I knew how to translate the sensations that it gives me. To know when the sensation means I need to rest and when it means I should push harder. When I should drink more water and when I should drink less. 

I have been paying a lot more attention to my body in recent years, trying to troubleshoot my digestive issues and get fit enough for my backpacking goals. And I have learned a lot, especially about some foods that are always bad for me (pineapple, red wine), and how my irregular period actually works. 

I suppose it's nice that there's more to learn. I do like learning. 

Now, if I can just learn how to clear up this current pain. . . 

IBS Update

Well, I've been using laxatives for a couple weeks now. I have tried four different kinds so far. I want to try and avoid the stimulant kind, because that tends to be more painful in the gut, so after an initial stimulant I went to stool softeners. These worked, kind of, but it felt like after a few days they didn't give the same results. It seems weird that my body would adapt to them so quickly, so I figured that just means I should try a different one. 

The next trial is an osmotic type, which is easier to consume, in a way, because it's a powder that dissolves in any liquid rather than a pill. But I really need to take it with something flavored, because taking it with plain water made me feel like I was drinking plastic, and it was hard to finish. 

The first few days went well, but, again, it feels like they are losing efficacy in a very short period of time. I don't do well with fiber due to mild gastroparesis, but I'm thinking that I might try very small doses of psyllium fiber with plenty of liquid. When I was first diagnosed with IBS, I took psyllium regularly, but I stopped after the gastroparesis diagnosis. 

Even though I haven't fine-tuned my laxative use as of yet, I'm feeling a lot better in general. The simplified diet seems to be doing me very well - and it's helping my husband lose weight also. I'm not really looking to lose weight at this point; I'm focused on fixing the gut and preparing for summer backpacking season more than on weight loss right now. 

It's been interesting doing twice daily measurements of my tummy. I started doing it as a way to track my bloat, and possibly confirm when my physical sensations are actually telling me about bloat, rather than different kinds of pain. In the past, I'd be pretty sensitive to my waist measurements and freak out about them going up. Now, I'm just observing, and not putting any meaning into the numbers. After all, my pants fit either well or loosely at the moment. 

The hard part about the simplified diet is staying the course. And I'm going on a trip soon, during which I may have little control over what I eat. I will be bringing some snacking food, not partaking of alcohol, and avoiding serious trigger foods at least, if not strictly adhering to the simplified diet. 

Once I get back, I am prepared to have to do some resets - I anticipate my sleep schedule and diet will both be out of whack. So, I'll wait to try the fiber experiment until after I get back. 

Sometimes, I wish I could be more rigorous in my self-experimentation, but alas, I live in the real world, not a lab. 

Just Relaxative

I feel shame at the idea of taking laxatives. Laxatives are "gross" and "yucky" and taken by bulimics and I'm not that. I'm not gross or yucky and I certainly don't have an eating disorder, as my gastro was happy to write in my chart that I'm overweight and therefore can't be sick. 

Ahem. That's why I resisted taking them for so long. Along with a convenient belief that taking laxatives regularly can make you dependent on them. That, apparently, is NOT a thing. At least, not for folks already diagnosed with IBS. After all, my bowels are already "lazy". If I'm already constipated all the time, I don't see how laxatives could break me more. 

Which leaves me with only the flimsy "gross" excuse. But what is worse? Feeling like I'm gross for taking laxatives or being in constant pain from constipation? 

Turns out, being in constant constipation pain is worse than taking laxatives regularly to prevent such pains. Shocking!

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what dosage will help me stay comfortable and flowing. One per day of a softener helped, but I felt like I could use more help. So, I tried two a day, spaced out. One in the morning and one before bed. 

But I'm not liking how that's working. Or rather, it doesn't appear to be working the way I was hoping. So I'll be changing things up to try two doses at night, together, and see if that makes me feel better. 

I'm trying to avoid the stimulant laxatives on a regular basis, because they can work almost too well. I actually took one of those when I first started this experiment and I ended up waking up in the middle of the night with an urgent need to visit the bathroom, and stay there, for several hours. I'd rather keep things less stimulated than that. 

If the softeners don't work sufficiently, maybe I'll try the stimulant route, but I'm not there yet. The main thing is that I'm now working on trying to get my bowels to be happy bowels instead of bloated, constipated bowels. 

The other aspect I'm working on with my IBS is diet. For a long time, I tried various diets, from low-fodmap to low fiber, and lately, I've been trying to limit my food to simple foods that I can read all the ingredients for. I'm not saying that I'll avoid ingredients that I can't pronounce or are more than a set number of syllables. No, I'm trying to avoid foods that don't list their ingredients explicitly, on the theory that those unnamed additives could be contributing to my issues, and how can I know what affects me if I don't know what is in what I eat? 

Therefore, if an ingredient list includes such phrases as "natural flavors" or "artificial flavors", I'm either avoiding it or making it a very rare part of my diet. Since there's no way for me to know what those ingredients are, or if they change, it just makes sense to me that I should avoid them while I'm trying to reach an equilibrium with my IBS. A state where I can, with some vigilance, mostly forget that I have it. 

IBS Flares Again

Coming onto four weeks now that I've been having near constant tummy pain. There is some ebb and flow throughout the day; it just comes back so frequently it may as well have never left. It seems likely that I ate something I shouldn't, or in a bigger quantity than I should have, and then the stresses of life started tag-teaming in once that particular trigger had passed through my system. 

Well, one stress in particular. The events of January 6th seem to have had a significant impact on my stress levels. Both my husband and I were a bit tense between that day and inauguration on the 20th. But now that date has passed and I am no longer stressing about the state of the world quite so much. 

Instead, I'm stressing about my pain. I know I shouldn't do that. I know I should try something other than thinking about it. But it's really hard not to think about it when I lay myself down to go to sleep. During the day, I can find distractions. There are things to do that can pull my attention away from the burning pain lodged in my abdomen, like exercise or television shows or video games - even writing. 

Not so in bed, where I usually fall asleep by breathing and not thinking too much. And, to be honest, I'm not that good at falling asleep even when the IBS isn't flaring, so when I add that to the IBS pain that lights up my nerves as much as a spotlight in my eyes would. . . I find it extraordinarily difficult to fall asleep. 

And when I do get to sleep, with the help of a rotating variety of over the counter medications, I don't sleep very soundly. I've determined this by two observations: 1) I wake up exhausted, and 2) my husband, who on weekends will generally wake up before me, told me I was moaning in my sleep. 

Pretty much, I don't want to go to a doctor, because I've already been diagnosed with IBS and I've been told what they can and can't do (spoiler, mostly can't) for me. I'm reading a book on managing IBS, and I hope I can get something actionable out of that. 

I'm really tired of being tired all the time. I have motivation for this pain to be over. IBS is not a psychological disorder, but it can, along with other diseases, be affected by stress and anxiety. I'm not sure what I'm stressing about. Unless it's just that I'm stressing about the pain because I'm in pain, which would be just perfect. I honestly feel like I'm too tired to be stressing though. The stress could be caused or exacerbated by the sleep situation. 

Maybe if I try really believing that the pain from IBS is neither harmful nor a harbinger. And if I try trusting that if there is something really wrong, my body will tell me with more than just pain. 

On the plus side, the nausea has been decreasing this week, so I think I have turned a corner. I'm just on a slow slope back to my normal. If I pretty much have to figure out how to manage this on my own, then I might as well see what I can try, beyond dietary adjustments that have been somewhat helpful. 

I also have a cold of some sort, which can't be helping things. Especially because I was pretty much ignoring the cold in the hopes it would just go away, but my husband insists on me acknowledging that yes, I have a cold, and I should, like, treat it and stuff. :)

Tummy Troubles

I didn't want to see someone new for my annual wellness exam, but my regular person was out on leave when I was supposed to get it done. So, new person to explain my diet to, knowing that they won't be able to help anymore than anyone else. I've reached a point of just experimenting with foods slowly and I know I'm not getting enough vegetables in my life, but the fiber still triggers gastroparesis pains/issues. 

It wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. This new person wasn't all that interested in me, and I didn't have to explain too much. Just that I'm doing the best that I can and exercising a lot and I'll just have to wait and see if my numbers are looking okay from the bloodwork. At this point, I'm assuming that they do look okay, because I have not been called back for a follow up, and they're usually pretty quick about that. 

I've been in a bit of an IBS flare for a couple weeks now. I can't seem to get out of it. My bowels are still moving, but I'm getting mucous coming out and hard stools. Plus nausea and gas and general tummy pain. The usual. 

I know that anxiety over the state of the world is contributing to the tummy issues. I need to figure out a way not to let that stress affect my tummy. Because I don't want anxiety to make my tummy hurt, which then makes me more anxious, which then makes my tummy hurt more etc... 

Maybe retreating to a cave for the next ten years would do the trick...

Since I can't do that (yet), I'm going to focus on what I can control. I will get my solo book written and published. I will exercise: CrossFit goal is 5 times a week, running goal is 3 times a week (1 can be a run/walk as long as there's elevation gain), and I decided to do Power Abs again for the month of November. I will do my job at work and keep getting paid. I might even write another book that's been percolating in my head since August - but solo first. Only got about 1000 words over last weekend. This weekend needs to be better. 

And it will be. 

Food Testing - Complete Cookie

Since I was not able to complete my planned hike last year due, in part, to my food choices, this year I'm doing something a little different. During this off-season time of year, I'm going to be testing out bars on a weekly basis. I'm spacing them out so that one "bad" bar doesn't impact how I feel about the other bars.

I started yesterday with Lenny and Larry's Complete Cookie, Snickerdoodle flavor. And my initial impressions were good, though not enthusiastic. Within an hour of eating it, I'd written up my thoughts: The cookie is easy to eat. It is soft and does not require a lot of chewing or a lot of water, though some water is good because it can get a little dry. I felt some tummy upset while eating it, so I don't think I'll be eating it again. I think the culprit is a bit too much fiber (10g).

Yeah, I should have heeded what my body was trying to tell me as I ate that cookie. By lunch time, my tune had changed from a mild review to a vehement hell no.

Turns out my instincts while eating it were correct. It does have too much fiber for my particular needs. That fiber created a conga line of gas bubbles in my intestines that tormented me all afternoon and into the evening. I got very bloated and passed gas far too many times for being in an office (thank goodness I'm not in a cubicle right now, but I had to hope that no one came to my desk to ask for something that would involve them sitting hear me). It seems to have triggered a small IBS flare up, involving pain along with the bloating and gas, as well as some constipation. I'm really hoping this passes quickly, but I might have to resort to liquid diet to clear myself up.

It's good to be able to cross something off the list, and I'm glad that it wasn't something that I bought a whole box of. So far, there's only one of those, and I already had Ambrose try one so if I can't eat them, he'll be able to. Next week, I'll be trying something else, and I really hope that even if it doesn't work for me that it doesn't trigger anything like this one did.

Diet Confusion

After my solo hike revealed that the bars I bought to have more fiber in my diet made me pretty sick when I abruptly started eating them again, I kind of started to toss my whole diet plan out the window.

What do I mean by kind of? Well, I'm not actively seeking out more fiber in my diet. But I have tossed some of the rules out the window. For example, Ambrose bought some black beans and coconut rice dehydrated meals for our Queens River trip. And I hadn't eaten beans for months because of the whole fiber elimination. But I did alright with them on that trip.

So I decided that I could have myself some blueberries from the farm stand. And I haven't been quite so strict with certain foods. I have found that fresh and frozen pineapple does not sit well with me, though the kind that comes on pizza seemed to do okay. And beer hasn't been giving me stomach problems either.

I am going to move forward with trying to have moderate fiber intake and see how my body does. If I find a food that doesn't sit well, I'll take note and avoid it. I didn't find that the low fiber diet was actually helping all that much. It seems more like I have to work on moderation and pay attention to what I ate recently when I have stomach trouble.

Overall, I feel a lot more in control when it comes to my stomach pain, even though I stopped tracking my food and bowel movements when I went on my solo trip and never really started back up. I'm pooping regularly enough and while I could probably be eating more healthily, I'm not overly concerned at this point with tracking. The tracking itself becomes a stressor and I'm going to try and avoid those as much as I can as the backpacking season has wound down and my opportunities to destress in nature become more limited.

Getting Enough Water

First for weight loss purposes, and then because of the IBS diagnosis, I have spent the last couple years trying to drink large quantities of water each day. A gallon a day, sometimes more. And, during the same period, I've had an increasing number of headaches.

The other day, I forgot my water bottle at home when I went to work. Typically, I'll fill up a quart Nalgene bottle with hot water in the morning and make an herbal tea to drink. I count herbal teas as water since they're pretty much flavored water. I'd usually drink two of those before lunch and at least one after, then another quart after getting home from work. If I exercised, then I'd add a sports drink type thing to try and keep my electrolytes up.

But without the Nalgene bottle, I ended up drinking a lot less altogether. Maybe 16 ounces of tea in the morning. Maybe a quart of water the rest of the day. And, unlike a lot of work days, I didn't get a headache. So I decided to try consciously reducing my water intake as an experiment, and last week was the first week in a long time that I didn't get a single horrible headache at work.

So maybe my quest to "stay hydrated" has backfired on me. It's definitely an experiment that I'm going to be continuing to try and find out what the right balance of water is for me to drink in a day. I'm going to pay attention and try to figure it out without getting constipated or getting headaches.

Too Much of a Good Thing

I've been feeling much better since focusing on a low residue diet. I'm not able to eat whatever I want, but I do have a lot of options for what I can eat. Most of it is of the less healthy variety, because of the whole low fiber thing, but my weight has been fairly steady so I'm not too worried about that. I do miss nuts though. And beans.

I was happy that not all fruits were off the table. I can eat apples if I peel them. Cantaloupe is allowed. And watermelon!

The problem is that I still need to keep below a certain level of fiber at a time. I can have some watermelon, some cantaloupe, some peeled apples or applesauce. A banana. But having a lot of any of those, singly or in combination, well, it turns out that's not so great on my stomach.

Last Saturday, after doing the obstacle course race class and the obstacle course boot camp, I indulgently bought a large quantity of pre-cut watermelon. Now, I did share this bounty with my husband, but I also ate a lot of it myself. And while I avoided eating seeds, turns out I ate plenty of fiber.

The rest of the evening, I was bloated and cranky. The sick feeling carried on a bit into the next day, but it wasn't too bad. But it kind of got worse in the following days. For the first time in a long time, my sleep was interrupted when I woke up at quarter to four on Tuesday morning and couldn't fall back to sleep. It felt like I needed to have a bowel movement, but nothing was moving. And when I was back in bed trying to sleep, I had this awful burning sensation in my tummy no matter which way I turned.

While I'm glad I only woke up 45 minutes before my alarm was going to go off, I'm disappointed with the lingering effects a single over-indulgence carries. I've got an increase in tummy aching going on and pooping is not feeling quite right.

On the other hand, at least I know now what that kind of thing can do. In the future, I can make different choices and be more moderate when it comes to fruits. And maybe, someday, I might be able to eat strawberries and blueberries again, because forget the beans, those are what I really miss.

Oh, Coffee...

I've resisted taking this step for a while now, but, on Sunday, I finally decided to quit coffee.

Coffee is one of the foods that I should be avoiding on a low residue diet. I wanted to see if I could "get away with" drinking my single morning cup each day, and, for a while, it seemed that I could. But I started paying more attention to how drinking coffee made me feel. And while on the weekdays it seemed to be treating me alright, on the weekends, I did not enjoy it.

If I drank coffee before working out, then I had to deal with a lot of needing to pee. Plus I would get some lightheadedness and just generally not feel that great. And my weekend workouts run late enough that drinking coffee after them can keep me up at night. My husband can drink coffee whenever he wants and still be sound asleep five minutes later. I can't drink coffee within about 6 hours of bedtime without feeling the effects.

The other factor that made this a difficult choice was that I am one of those people who have a hard time stopping coffee. I get physical withdrawal effects, including an incredibly nasty headache that can last a week if I go cold turkey. I'm trying to ease the withdrawal by not completely cutting out caffeine, but instead greatly reducing it by switching from a morning coffee to a morning green tea.

Well, I did go all day Sunday without any caffeine, so I had a headache most of Monday even with the tea. But then on Tuesday, I woke up feeling more awake and alert, even at 4:30 in the morning. The headache did come on Tuesday, but it didn't come on as quickly as Monday's or as strongly, so I think this method will prove better than cold turkey for me. I've gotten off coffee before, and I know that I don't need it to function. In some ways, I function better without it. I'm hoping to discover whether my tummy functions better without it.

I'd hate to say goodbye to coffee for good. I never liked the taste of it as a kid, but I've always loved the smell of it. It's a nice morning ritual. But if I can prove to myself that it adversely affects my tummy, then I'll stop. That can't be any harder than getting up at 4:30 in the morning to go to CrossFit, right? And I do that all the time now, even though there was definitely a time in my life when if I was awake at 4:30 in the morning, it was because I never went to sleep.