How Having Crohn's Has Affected My Relationship With Food: An Update
If you read my original post about how having Crohn's has affected my relationship with food, a sequel is probably a decent surprise. It ended pretty definitively. Well, I've changed my tune. I'd part with the Crohn's and deal with the world's worst case of lactose intolerance forever. It'd be an easy choice. I'd have no hesitation whatsoever.
It feels a little silly to have to say that so explicitly. When I thought the inverse, I think I was in denial. It's not like I wasn't aware of how much I was destroying our bathroom or my own insides, it's more that I had just accepted it as my reality. The difference was whether or not the bad times were urgent or not. It was inevitable, or at least I assumed it was.
But the days of my boohooing over unspilt milk are behind me, and the reality of just how much my Crohn's affects my day-to-day has finally sunk in.
Maybe I've changed my tune because I found so many more lactose- and dairy-free options that don't absolutely suck ass. Green Valley makes incredible lactose-free cheeses that doesn't taste like a facsimile. Annie's makes a vegan mac'n cheese that I can actually stomach (even if it doesn't quite scratch the itch of the nasty blue box I miss so much). Even though they're all infinitely more expensive, at least I can have them on-hand as a safety blanket of familiarity.
I'm sure it also helps that my husband and I have been trying to cook more at home, meaning I can keep out more ingredients that fuck me up. Most food we'd buy out isn't nearly as good as what we'd make at home when we're being cheap anyway, and recovering from a bad time takes a lot of time and energy. Minimizing that recoup times has been a huge change for the better.
Or at least, it would be if those positive changes weren't what caused this to be the topic on the top of my mind to vent about. Sometimes I felt like the "one step forward, two steps back" thing was just an overplayed turn of phrase in movies and media, but I've never found anything else so annoyingly applicable to my real life situation.
After the quack and the knowledge I'd have to wait even longer for forward progress on my Crohn's treatment, I did something I should have done a long, long time ago: I started an elimination diet. I decided to actually learn what my trigger foods are during flare ups so I can minimize disruption in my day-to-day instead of continuing with my current solution of grin and bear it.
I know I shouldn't regret doing something that's so beneficial for my health and wellbeing, and I don't actually regret it, but fuck me if it hasn't been the single most physically exhausting and emotionally draining experience of my life.
It started off simple enough. I found a few foods that didn't give me the runs. Peanut butter on a bagel. Pancakes. Toast with non-dairy margarine spread and jelly. Fruit snacks and a couple other shitty little snacks that weren't good for me, but at least they kept me off the toilet.
Crohn's is weird because there are no obvious no-nos. Everyone's body is different; some people can eat leafy greens and fresh fruit, some can handle fried food, and some can even have popcorn, even though all of those foods are common triggers. While my testing is still a work in progress, I already knew I couldn't do pineapple, leafy greens, or greasy food in a flare without bathroom consequences which meant I didn't have to test those again.
Some sources were unexpected. Even though butter is so low lactose it doesn't affect most people, I can't do it. I just bought a lactose-free butter to see if I'm Just That Sensitive (especially since even Kraft shredded cheese with "functionally 0g of lactose" would get to me, but actual lactose-free cheese doesn't), but I haven't had a chance to really test it yet. But another few safe foods could easily be edited to use margarine, so I had access to scrambled eggs and "buttered" noodles again. It was a sad change, but at least it was tolerable.
I mentioned that Austin and I had been cooking more. We've even been doing meal prep! Austin batch cooks and freezes breakfast bowls for themself using a bunch of food that would ruin me, and I make myself lactose-free ice cream using the Ninja Creami my father-in-law got me for Christmas. It's nice to have something safe and customizable and delicious.
Until you learn it's not safe, even though you only have lactose-free ingredients.
I was struggling to figure out what the common denominator was in some unexpected trigger foods until it hit me like a ton of bricks: my gut can't handle acidity.
Let that sink in.
Do you know how many foods are acidic? Because the number is staggering.
- No citrus fruits, not even lemon juice in a marinade
- No tomato, and that means marinara, butter chicken, and ketchup
- No onion or garlic, not even the damn powders
My only thought was are you fucking kidding me?
The next time you look at ingredients on something you love, look for these. Do you know how many things on the shelves have onion powder, garlic powder, milk, or tomato? Because honestly it feels like fucking everything.
More things I've found I can't fucking have after buying them:
- Chicken stock. I should've known it'd have onion, that one's on me.
- Sriracha & Chalula. One has onion, the other has garlic.
- Kraft's lactose-free macaroni. This one caught me off guard with dried pineapple.
- Barbecue sauce. Unless you go mustard-based (gross), they all use ketchup.
Oh, the lactose-free ice cream that fucked me up? Best I can deduce, it was the rowan berry extract in the vegan cream cheese since it's apparently a particularly acidic fruit. There's $7 down the drain and the need to find another new replacement for an already bastardized recipe.
I was a split second from a full mental breakdown the other day over McDonalds.
We needed something for dinner after trying to cook a healthy, safe meal that didn't turn out with all the things I have to avoid. Ironically, mcnuggets and fries are a safe food for a good chunk of people with Crohn's because the stuff is so processed, your body doesn't really have to do anything with it. But you know what I couldn't have?
Literally any of their dipping sauces besides the mustards. And I fucking hate mustard.
I sat in my car on the verge of tears for I don't know how long. I don't even know how I kept it together. I was way too hungry to cook, too worn out to eat something that would hurt me after getting accidentally wrecked three days in a row, and too deflated to think of anything else. All I could think was, "What has my life come to that the best I can have is dry, bland, shitty somewhat-chicken from a terrible corporation that I can't even salvage with something tasty to mask the nothingness?" I love food so much. It broke my heart to realize this was my reality now. But food is fuel, and I needed energy to bounce back from the bad. I didn't really have a choice.
Luckily, my husband could tell how hard it was hitting me. They tried their best to make a safe sauce for me while I went to pick up the food. It was much better than the hot mustard I'd gotten with the food, thankfully, so even though it wasn't what I wanted, it turned otherwise inedible slop into something that tasted like food without hurting me in the process.
With a few tweaks and at least one more option to have a sweet or a savory, I think even days like this won't feel as terrible anymore. I'm was so grateful for a silver lining.
By this point, I've come to the conclusion I need to give up the ghost. I can't have friends or family cook for me when I'm flared unless I'm willing to be on the toilet the next day. Sometimes I'll make that call and deal with the consequences, but most of the time I'll just have to eat before I go or bring my own little shitty snacks to tide me over. My dietary needs are just... unreasonable. I feel too guilty telling people who are well-meaning all the things I can't have when they're trying to make a tasty meal for a group.
It's not even just the Crohn's limitations. It's the severe lactose-intolerance. It's the fish allergy. It's the insane amount of detail I have to do when checking each and every ingredient. It's rough in a world where everything's expensive, living is exhausting, and 99% of the food you love is going to hurt you.
Be kind to your bodies y'all, and I hope they're kinder to you than mine is to me.