Tuesday, October 2, 2007

Urgh

Oh boy. Yuck.

Today has not been a good day for me with food.

I met the dietician at 9:30, and we had a great visit until about 11:15. However, due to a test she did on me, I was only allowed to have water before we met.

By the time I got to work at 11:45, I was ravenous. I heated up my lunch right away and ate about 2/3 of it.

But I felt weird--shaky, strange. And tired--I slept terribly last night.

For some reason I thought I wanted chocolate. So I had one ounce, and then another.

A couple of hours later, I got this euphoric idea to make macaroni and cheese for dinner--to figure out how to make mac'n'cheese that I can eat (that has no cow dairy in it). When I left work, I picked my husband up from his job and headed to Whole Foods. I asked the guy at the cheese counter what sheep and/or goat cheese he would recommend for mac'n'cheese, and he gave me a sample of one. It was delicious. I bought it and another kind.

When I got home and was ready to grate the cheese I had sampled, I noticed that--so random!--it contained egg whites. Egg whites in goat gouda? Yep. Eggs are my worst food allergy. I sent my husband back to exchange the cheese for another kind and fretted a bit over whether the sample I'd eaten would upset my stomach.

While he was gone, I ate bits of the other two kinds of cheese I used. Finally, I was concerned I wouldn't be hungry for dinner if I kept eating, so I stopped.

At one point while my husband was gone, I thought, Is mac and cheese what I really want? A wave of exhaustion hit, and I thought, No, what I want is sleep.

But I didn't listen to my body. I thought, Well, I have to make dinner anyway. I decided to make the mac and cheese with butternut squash soup and sage added so that it would be tasty but a bit healthier.

Then I decided I would drink a fruit-juice-sweetened soda from the fridge. Why? I don't really know. And after one sip, I didn't want more. But I kept drinking it. I didn't listen to myself. Why?

My husband and I invited over my best friend and her fiance; my best friend had asked for my help with something, and I was making a huge pan of macaroni, so I thought they could just eat with us. They brought a salad of greens, dried cranberries, dried banana slices, and sunflower seeds, and we ate poppyseed dressing on it. I ate a salad, and then I thought, Hmm, I don't really want very much mac and cheese now. So I took what seemed a moderate scoop of it--1/2 c. to 2/3 c. maybe (it was the main dish, right?)--and ate that. Everyone else ate seconds, which made me feel a bit ill just to watch. I felt so full of fat, so full of dairy, even though it wasn't the cow dairy I'm allergic to. It was so rich and . . . then I had to go to the bathroom.

My stomach got upset and is still upset. I didn't get to help my friend; I just went and lay down on the bed face-down. Her fiance stayed with my husband to wash dishes.

Was it the macaroni and cheese itself that made me sick? The amount of dairy fat I had? The sample of cheese I ate that had egg in it? What role did my exhaustion play? Who knows? But the rare times when I feel this way strongly reaffirm to me that when my body speaks, I should listen.

And now I'm listening by going to bed early.

4 comments:

Kim said...

I hope that you feel better soon!!

Andrea said...

I HATE days/nights like that. Hindsight is 20/20, huh?

The salad sounds awesome, tho. Tell your friends they can bring me salad any time. ;)

Feel better soon.

Jen C. said...

A valuable lesson to be sure. When your body speaks, stop and listen. Honest to goodness, it will never lead you wrong. If we all could just learn to listen to our intuition we'd be so, so much better off! Hope you're feeling better today.

Laura N said...

The emotional mind often trumps the body, though, when we are feeling tired/weak/stressed.

I hope you got enough rest to have a stronger day today. Feel better!