OT - Health Update

Looks like you didn't need all those fancy tests after all !

Do you consult from home ?

You see I have this problem ........ lol

Dee in Oz

Hope you feel much better Sharon! I'd love to lose 3 kg but 'bland' and 'bronwyn' don't go together in the one kitchen LOL.

Bronnie

ROFLOL!! Oh Dee! I'm no doctor truly but I had to do something - it was getting to the stage where I wouldn't leave home for fear of not being near a loo (luckily at work I have an "en suite" ie the disabled loo in the sick bay is about 3 feet from my desk). And I don't see my diabetes specialist until late October, soooo.....

BTW take 2 bars of your favourite chocolate, send me a FQ and have a lie down!

Funny thing is, it's only me doing the bland! I still cook spectacular meals for the other lot! LOL.

Way to go Sharon!!!!!!

How very interesting, Sharon, and well done you! IBS can settle (I understand); so the bland diet need not be forever perhaps? (It's probably much more palatable than the Coeliac diet even so). You could do your trial periodically. Wishing you success with this self-help programme. . In message , Sharon Harper writes

Sounds ominously like gall stones to me! If it is, BTDT! And some of the symptoms are very like IBS (with which I was diagnosed 20 years ago, and the symptoms of which neatly masked the gall bladder disease for 10 years!).

Have you been scanned for gall stones? It isn't the big ones that cause the problem, it's the little ones... Eat something rich or fatty, or just too much of anything and the pain starts when the gall bladder (just under your ribs on the right) compresses to release bile to help you digest it... If a small stone gets lodged in the bile duct, the pain can be excruciating. If a stone or some gravel DO get into the digestive tract, it can cause all sorts of problems for days afterwards... And if it rests on the walls of the gut, it can cause erosions or even ulcers, adding to the problems! You might never get the pain of a lodged stone, but if there are small stones passing through the gut, they can take days to work through and for things to settle down again.

Here's a site that describes the symptoms nicely:

When you get to the bottom, remember that it says that after surgery, "most people will be aware that their pain has completely disappeared and they no longer need to avoid fatty food." That word MOST is very important! I *do* still have to avoid fatty foods! Helps me keep to my WW diet, I'm telling you! Almost 60 lbs gone now, and feeling so much better in so many ways... :)

Meanwhile, work out your trigger foods: mine were anything fatty (like fried stuff, cream, anything made with full fat milk or butter), all red meats, red wine, coffee, anything sweet like cake and chocolates (which are fatty as well!), some nuts, and just eating too much in one sitting!

Oh Kate - that sounds like a death sentence! Can you eat anything nice?!

Suzie B

Oh, I eat LOTS of nice food! Roast chicken, pork and lamb (red meat is OK now in small quantities occasionally), sausages (I sometimes have low fat sausages, low fat oven chips, and salad for dinner), most spices are OK, and I do a lot of cooking from scratch. I keep cake for treats (I've been dreaming of cake for weeks, but managed to overcome it with a half a small pear and almond tart on Friday ( I shared it with a friend) and a small slice of chocolate birthday cake on Saturday at my sister's

50th birthday party. I eat lots of spicy chicken and i also eat quite a lot of fish. I've cooked delicious things for lots of folk who never realised the casserole they were eating was a Weight Watcher's recipe and well within my points budget for a meal.

I just avoid things that are unnecessarily fatty (like fried things), fat laden (like ordinary sausages - I use the Bowyers low fat ones, or some speciality ones that are 98% lean meat from The sausage Shop), use low fat fromage frais or half fat creme fraiche on fruit salad (unsweetened), and so forth... I can drink coffee again, but not red wine, which is one of the few things I miss! I even have recipes for a reduced fat chicken korma, which is very good.

Yesterday I ate:

Breakfast: a jam sandwich (no marge - just jam!)

Lunch: all home made! :) Pasta salad with nuts Greek salad bean salad green salad (no extra dressing)

Dinner was pasta with a tomato and bacon sauce, made by dry frying the bacon with garlic, adding a tin of tomatoes, half a jar of pasata, and the minced remains of Sunday's Medeterrainian Roast Vegetables. For dessert I had a Muller Light yoghurt.

I had a tall skinny latte while out with the lads (we went to Bluewater and the lads climbed the Big Blue Rock while I went to Lush, then we hit the book shop, the Lego shop, and the cinema!).

Adding it all up, I had 15 of my daily allowance of 18 WW points. Bit on the low side, but I'm still recovering from the stinky cold that went to my sinuses over the weekend.

I don't *do* boring food. Some of it is very plain, but then who needs to tart up a salmon filet, new potatoes, and either fresh veg or salad? What could be less boring than best local lamb roasted and served with a gravy made of red wine, quince jelly, and the meat juices and served with roast potates ('dry' roasted with just a spray of oil rather than swimming in grease) and fresh local vegetables? (I find red wine is OK for cooking with, but I can't just drink it.) I look at working out low fat alternatives to traditional fat laden foods as a challenge. After w while on a low fat diet, you lose the taste for really fatty things.

I don't even know what Coeliac Disease is, but it doesn't sound fun in the least.

I now get the most awful indigestion if I eat fatty things. - the best incentive not to eat them

-- Sally at the Seaside~~~~~~~

Sharon,

If you can get it by you. "The New Eating Right for a Bad Gut..." is an EXCELLENT book. I have IBS on top of boughts with ulcerative colitis.

Since I want kids I figured I better finally do something to my body under control before we start trying. This book really helped. I am even eating vegetables after 35 years of avoiding them :-)

You should be able to use some spice, mild like pepper and sea salt, to make things less bland.

Keep us posted.

Jenn - a.k.a Tiny Tyrant

Exactly! And once I set off the IBS, THAT can last for days... :(

Oh wow - can you come over to Southend please and sort my food cupboards and freezer out - AND write me a diet plan?

Suzie B

'Tiz easy...

We eats LOADS of fresh fruit and vegetables (cooked and raw), and plenty of complex carbs, and enough white and low fat meat and fish to maintain a healthy protein intake. I plan the meals, write a shopping list according to the plan, and DH shops to the list. He's getting better at not buying things that are not on the plan, so while the food we buy may be more expensive than of yore (good quality sausages are more expensive than naff ones per pound, after all), we consume less of it and waste far less than we used to! In the long run, I think we save quite a bit by not snacking on crisps/chips, biscuits/cookies, cake and such, and chomp into apples, bananas, carrots, cucumber, and the occasional Go Ahead bar when we get really needy for something sweet. The real trick is to save the cake&bikkies for treats. I find that though they are more expensive (or partly BECAUSE they are more expensive!), individually wrapped treats are less of a temptation than whole packs of things like chocolate digestives. I always had a compost heap in the bottom of the fridge - now that rarely happens! I don't get stuff 'because it's in season' or on special offer: I get it because it's on the menu! We also buy low fat or reduced fat versions of anything we can, and I bake things like chicken breasts, chops, sausages, and the like rather than frying them. I use herbs and spices to flavour things.

I also cook from scratch: very few jars of pasta sauces enter this house these days. Tomato based ones are really easy (like last nights!), and really low in points, and a very little cheese on the top goes a long way. To make a baked pasta dish, I just use more or less what went in last night's and drift a couple of ounces of low fat cheddar on the top, pop it in the oven, and serve it with salad. Rather than bacon, you can ring the changes with tuna, make it totally veggie, add chili... Whatever floats your boat! :)

Tonight we had some of Sunday's roast chicken, cold, some cold ham, rice salad, lettuce, and tomatoes. The rest might well become low fat Coronation Chicken.

I need to do the menu for the coming week. Do you want me to post it when I do? I can include some recipes for the less common or specially low fat versions of things.

Sharon, I'm so glad you seem to have discovered what the problem has been and -- even better -- what to do about it! It's too bad that the really yummy things are always the ones we must cut out, isn't it? :S But if the results are so good, it's worth it! :D

Oh, yes Kate, please do post your plan!! I really need to get back on WW Program. Now, what is Coronation Chicken?

Thanks!! PAT

Kate Dicey wrote:

Ok, I'll do that. Coronation Chicken is cold chicken in a curried mayo sauce.

Very interesting - thanks Kate!