My diet lately

I need a better way to keep track of time. Without tests and projects due, rotations are throwing me off. Since pretty much all I have to do is show up to my rotation site, there isn't too much to base the movement of time off of. I can't believe it's been almost a month since my last post.

I wanted to post tonight about what I've been eating lately because I've recently realized how horrible my diet is. So here it is:
-Bagels with peanut butter
-Cereal
-Healthy Choice Garlic Herb Shrimp frozen lunch
-Smart Ones Fettuccine Alfredo (I'm cutting this out as it's done more bad than good lately)

Did you get that? That's it. There are some random, snack-like foods I eat like Ritz Crackers with peanut butter or Wheat Thins, but that's about all I can handle lately. How sad is that? I usually end up having a bagel & peanut butter for breakfast and dinner every day and my Garlic Herb Shrimp for lunch. Every.single.day. EVERY F*CKING DAY.

I don't express my anger very often on here, but it is SO exasperating to have such a limited diet. I'm sure I could expand it somewhat, but A) I'm anything but a cook, so I don't know what else to try and B) I'm so afraid of something going horribly wrong after trying something new. If I had more time off to experiment, I would, but even though I have Friday and Saturday to try out new things, I've been sick or feeling sick every weekend.

I know for a fact I'm not getting enough calories or nutrients which is depressing. I got so close to my goal weight of 140 (I'm 5'10.5") but then started going back downhill again after I started having more episodes. Now I'm hanging out around 130. I don't like looking or feeling this thin. While people always ask me what I'm doing and then ignorantly say, "Well I wish I could have IBS so I could be that thin," I would give anything just to be able to gain some weight without making myself feel like hell.

I'm loving the Imodium because I don't have diarrhea anymore except around my period and when I forget to take it, but the other IBS symptoms are killing me. The gas pains/explosions are unbearable most of the time, and I still just get that sick feeling after eating something bad. Even though it doesn't end with diarrhea anymore, I still get the feeling that it's going to happen.

I need to take the time to sit down and find more meal options to add to my diet, but with Career Day for my pharmacy school coming up in a couple weeks, I'm too busy freaking out about the SIX interviews I have that day to make time for it or to have time to deal with the consequences of trying something that doesn't work out.

I'm just so tired of having such a boring diet. Does anyone have any tried and true meal choices that don't cause a ton of gas or diarrhea?

Rough stretch

The past couple of weeks (or is it months? Time has been flying by lately) have not been easy. While there have been some great days, most of them just seem to be rotten.

I feel like I'm getting back to the old days where simple food that I've previously had no problems with rip me apart. I'm back down to 125. Actually, when I weighed myself last night I was 124.6. :( I'll just pretend I never saw that because it depresses me. I swear it seems like yesterday when I had decided I was going to start cooking for myself instead of sticking to my staple foods. Now, not only can I not handle the meals I was cooking, I can hardly even handle my staple foods.

I've been eating mostly cereal the past couple of weeks with a few other meals thrown in there when I feel like I can handle it. A huge part of the cause seems to be stress. Other than random changes in my body's chemistry, that's all I can think of that could have changed. I just finished my last final today, so hopefully that helps.

I'm still going to my therapist and beginning CBT; I can't wait to see if that can really help me. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it does! I just can't deal with this downward progression in health and weight...there's only so much I can lose before I start feeling like a zombie all the time again.

Meds for IBS?

The only meds I've ever taken for IBS are mostly over the counter. I've used Pepto, loperamide, and GasX very regularly over the past few years. When this episode started they put me on Prevacid and that worked for about a week.

I got a prescription for hyoscyamine a couple of years ago, but never actually took it. Even though I'm a pharmacist-to-be, I still get scared when I read about side effects! I'd really like to try those now because the spasms have been my primary complaint lately. And spasms usually lead to diarrhea for me, so stopping those would be AWESOME.

What other meds have you been on that helped (or hurt) your IBS? Please leave me a comment or tweet @IBSRachel and let me know! Also let me know what kind of side effects you've experienced. If you don't wanna share all on here or on Twitter, you can send me an email: IBSRachel@gmail.com

It's Official

It's official- I'm down to 120 pounds. This is the 3rd sob attack this week thanks to the scale. That means I've lost 15 pounds in about 2 weeks....2 MISERABLE weeks.

Just to make sure we're all on the same page- I do NOT want to lose weight. In fact, I've been working very hard for the past 2 YEARS to gain back 10 pounds I lost when I first got sick and get my weight back up to at least 135. Now, 2 weeks of a flare up have ruined 2 years of work.

I don't even know what to do. The episode I'm having now has brought a new symptom- nausea. That's not something I know how to deal with. With diarrhea, I'd take Loperamide, wait a few hours & be ok to start eating blandly again. But with the nausea, I don't ever feel like eating. All I've had for the past few days is a couple of bagels, rice and some cereal. How the hell am I supposed to get my weight back up if I can't eat anything? Even drinking water makes me feel even more lousy.

While we're on the topic- if you're going to take anything for nausea, make sure you have some down time! I took Dramamine last night and it knocked me out. I've never been drowsy like that before, and while I was happy it kept the nausea at bay, I was worthless! I had to get up at one point to go to the bathroom, and I stumbled the whole way there, could hardly see anything, and really don't remember most of it. Quite an experience. But it did work, and I'm thankful for that. The only bad thing is now that I'm awake, it's starting to come back. I have a week's worth of studying to get done today and there's no way I can be knocked out like that again.

I'm almost hoping that this is just some version of the flu and that it will all be over soon. This is the third day I've been nauseous, so I'm hoping it will be coming to an end soon. As soon as it does, I'm going nuts with junk food (tolerable junk food that won't cause another episode, of course...sigh) and putting that weight back on ASAP. I know there are so many people out there that would probably be super jealous of me losing 15 pounds in two weeks, but this is scaring the shit out of me. I just hope that it stops here and doesn't go lower. If I get into the teens (hundred-teens), I don't know what I'd do. I haven't been that skinny (read emaciated looking) since middle school. And I was shorter in middle school so it didn't look funny/sickly.

Wish me luck :/

A Flashback to the Past

I have been so lucky in the past year or so. Too lucky. So lucky I almost feel like I'm running out of luck. About a year ago, my symptoms quickly started to vanish. As I would try new foods, I found that almost none of them brought on symptoms that they had days or weeks before. I found myself spending less time in the bathroom or bed, and more time out doing things I actually wanted to be doing. I felt guilty for that. I still do.

When I say, "I have IBS" now, I feel like I'm a bad person. The IBS I have now is nothing compared to what I had over a year ago. This is a joke compared to that. I still experience flashbacks, or relapses, to those horrible days and exhausting symptoms, but I hardly ever have the urgency, my stools are perfect now, I go weeks without the pain, and I am eating closer to a normal diet. I have PIZZA about two times a week. PIZZA! Two years ago, I never thought I'd taste it again. Granted, it's the freezer kind which is much more predictable in terms of ingredients and fat content, but I still never believed I'd be to this point.

With that said, something happened today. At lunchtime, I was making a turkey sandwich, but when I pulled the turkey out of the package, I noticed there was something that looked like a fingernail in the middle of each of the slices. I'm sure it was just a piece of cartilage or bone from the turkey, but I couldn't determine exactly what it was or be ok with eating it. So I threw the sandwich away. I was upset after that because I had been looking forward to having it. When I get upset about a meal going awry, I tend to console myself by eating junk food. I know this makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but it's what I do. When I get stressed, I turn to food. When I'm stressed and eat the wrong food, I get sick. My logic defies me. Anyway, when I say junk food remember- I mean junk food that has received the "Rachel Seal of Approval." These are foods I've tested out and made sure that they don't make me sick.

But tonight, I picked two things that had been sitting in my pantry for a while. And I also went a little overboard. I had a stressful day today between school and Koopa acting like a nut, so I believe that contributed to it quite a bit. So now I'm laying in bed, unable to do anything except blog and try to focus on computer-based homework. Koopa is downstairs and his chain is jingling a ton which means he is probably causing even more of a headache. Alexey is at work, so I'm the only one who can deal with it. But I can't.

I feel absolutely worthless, but I can't do a damn thing to fix it. I have to sit here with my heating pad and be ready to run to the bathroom. No matter how guilty I have felt lately for having an "easier" form of IBS for the past year, I would never want to revert to my days being spent in bed next to the bathroom. This is torture. As I lay here, all I can think about is how much I want to be out of bed doing this or that. And it leaves me no choice but to think about things I don't want to think about. Like, "what if I never get rid of this? What if it sticks around for my whole life?" Or "this is going to keep me from having kids."

I'll have to save expanding that last thought for a later post because this one is already getting pretty long. I just know that I do not miss feeling like this at all.

Here's to heating pads that make it "bearable" and kitties that lounge in bed with you. :)