To Eat or Not to Eat?

Allergic to peanuts? Don't eat them.
Celiac Disease? No gluten for you.
Lactose intolerant? There's a pill for that.

Crohn's Disease? Your new life mission is finding food to eat. No definite guidelines, no magic pill, no list of toxic foods. I'm not trying, by any means, to reduce the issues of people with the other examples I listed above - I have friends who fit into all of those categories, and it can be hard. But Crohn's seems to be a different struggle.

Even trying to be an active part of The Crohn's Disease Forum (a very helpful site I might add!), reading through the advice of Crohnie's world wide, young, old, recently diagnosed, and veterans, there is no real answer to help with this quest towards tolerable food. You are essentially on your own.

Everyone with CD is different. We all have CD in different parts of our Gastrointestinal systems. Mine is mainly located in my colon. Everyone has certain foods that are safe, and certain foods that are seemingly toxic. It's all about controlling inflammation, which can be difficult when your body is attacking itself.  So I suppose it is more like avoiding food items which tend to aid in inflammation.

So. What to eat? It is the question I ask myself every day. And for a girl who had been eating whatever she wants her entire life up until this past year - it's hard! Ok ok, I was lucky. I was athletic and blessed with a fairly good metabolism. I was very healthy with my choices, but could also indulge in my overactive sweet tooth, and let carbs be my best friend. These days, sometimes just looking at food is a turn-off. It's as if the fear of the consequences of said food item pushes me to just not want to eat at all. Things that are definitely bad? Raw veggies. Not even raw actually. Sometimes even the not-cooked-enough-to-the-point-of-mush veggies don't sit well. If you had asked me 3 years ago if I ever thought I'd say the sentence "I really just wish I could eat salad instead of this bowl of spaghetti" I probably would have laughed in your face.

Another point I've learned recently: READ FOOD LABELS. Processed foods are generally worse for you, we know this. But sometimes, I find I revert back to my old "I can eat anything" self if I'm having an ok day, without thinking. This became a problem a few hours after I housed an entire bag of cheese puffs. The main ingredient of cheese puffs you might ask? I always avoided that question - they're just cheesy styrofoam right? Wrong. Corn meal. CORN. Corn. corn. For the one main item that I need to keep out of my diet, you sure do show up in just about everything.

Le Sigh. Just another day.