Post #105: Dispatches from the land of wheat

This bread is sad, much like my colon. 

I spent over an hour wandering through the aisles of my local hippie mart, stocking up on bags of eight dollar gluten-free cereal and quinoa porridge, wheat free English muffins the weight of hockey pucks, and more produce than I have consumed in the last six months combined. 

I came prepared with double sided lists; I scrutinized each label for offensive additives, valuing purity of ingredients over taste and texture. I circled round and round the bins of dusty flours, spent far too much time choosing nut milks, and was so overwhelmed by the whole process that I didn't even think to head over to the cosmetics section for an impulse purchase (per usual). Exhausted, I loaded my purchases into the car and drove directly to the nearest pizza place. 

As I was somewhat guiltily eating my margarita pizza (sans cheese), I chose to ignore the shiny new wheat free foods banished to the dark corners of the trunk. As I sit here now, head pounding, body flushing, trying to keep said pizza down, three things are abundantly clear: 

1.) I am more afraid of this new diet experiment than I thought
2.) Emotional eating doesn't go away, no matter what your current relationship with food
3.) In some ways, I am more afraid of things changing (despite the possibility of improvement) than things staying the same

Isn't it interesting that when there is stress involved, the body overrides the mind's innate wariness about food and does a face plant into the nearest source of fat and carbs? In this case, food was both the cause of and (temporary, stupid) solution to the problem. Anxiety about changing my diet led me to eat a food with a high likelihood of making me feel like shit (mission accomplished!), all to avoid thinking about the other new foods I will be eating on Monday, which are healthier and probably less likely to make me ill. It's all very confusing. 

To put it another way: I am worried about eating almond butter when I have spent over a year ingesting/injecting a number of powerful immunosuppresents and other scary drugs with page long lists of potential side effects. 

It makes no sense. I know this. 

I could chalk this all up to nervousness about "rocking the boat," of taking any chance at altering the current, relatively stable (or at least predictable) condition of my bowels. I could say that I was worried about placing all of my hope in another plan, when other plans have failed so miserably. I could admit that I worry about making things worse, or messing up my body somehow, though the latter is unlikely. 

Those things are true, but I think the real reason I'm anxious is that this is the first proactive step I've taken beyond my doctor's guidance in quite some time, and as such is an acknowledgment that I want more, from my medicines, from my diet, from my life, from myself. 

It feels risky to not want to settle anymore. 

Especially when I know that more, in whatever form, might not be possible. 

And so tonight, as I try not to hurl, I am going to remind myself that any relative risk is worth any potential benefit. Just like I have to talk myself into trying a new pill, I will talk myself into this. At the very least, all of the new foods sitting benignly on my dining room table, sequestered from the rest of my pantry, are unlikely to give me nigh sweats, high blood pressure, joint pain, or tremors, and there is some comfort in that.