My dysfunctional relationship

It's true....there is a dysfunctional relationship present in my life.

It's with food. I have a love/hate (I love it; it hates me) thing with food. Food nourishes us, allowing us to grow and thrive. Food can be pleasurable or utilitarian; it can be pedestrian or avant-garde; in my case, it's usually the enemy.

There are specific foods I really enjoy, much to the detriment of my waistline--cheese and candy are two that come immediately to mind. Other foods I love are pasta and pork, also not so healthy. But on the other side of the plate, I also love fresh green salads, vegetables (especially artichokes and broccoli), beans, and most fruits. The dysfunction? I can't eat them. Pasta, cheese, pork and candy--no problem!  But the healthy things I like? More often than not, they cause me pain.

The past two days I've had lots of pain, I think due to a stomach virus, but I can never be sure. I have an autoimmune disorder called Crohn's Disease; I was diagnosed with it when I was 12. The long-term effects of having Crohn's for more than half my life are not pleasant (what diseases are pleasant?): much higher colon, stomach, rectal and other cancer rates; lots of intestinal scar tissue built up from years upon years of inflammation, which creates blockages; arthritis; eye inflammations...the list goes on and on.

But getting back to the dysfunctional relationship I have with food. When I'm feeling good, I can eat mostly anything in moderation without incident. There are some "trigger foods" that I have to stay away from all the time, like broccoli and cauliflower, popcorn, and nuts. In any quantity, these foods make me sick. And I miss them, like you can't imagine. Sometimes I "cheat" and will have a tiny piece of broccoli if it's in something I've heated up or one piece of popcorn if someone makes it at work, but any more than that and I know I'm headed for disaster.

When I'm not feeling good, my food choices are severely limited, if not completely taken away. I'm a big proponent of Ensure drinks when I can't tolerate anything solid. Also, Extra Noodle Soup by Lipton/Knorr is good, if I feel like I can "eat". But when I bounce back from a bout of stomach virus or Crohn's flare, I want to eat everything I've missed. And this is where the dysfunction comes into play.

I've often said that I think that my health history has resulted in a type of reverse eating disorder. When it comes to something that I love, like macaroni and cheese or pork tenderloin, I will continue eating even after I'm full--I will eat everything there until nothing remains. I theorize that I do this not out of simple gluttony but because there have been so many times when I wasn't able to eat anything at all.

[When I was in high school, to prevent a surgery that would cause me to miss weeks of school and to lose part of my small intestine, I was put on a no-solid-food diet for about 6 months. I drank 6 cans of Ensure a day, and supplemented those with jello, hard candies, Ensure pudding (as disgusting as it sounds), and pickle juice. Yes, pickle juice. I think I needed the sodium. You know what I missed most during those hellish months? The simple act of chewing. And the food I wanted with all my heart was bread.

I ended up having the surgery anyway.]

I have missed Thanksgivings due to either not feeling well or being on asinine diets like the no-solid-food one, or the low-residue diet. For that Thanksgiving dinner, I was able to have 2 oz roasted turkey and some cranberry sauce of the canned, jellified variety. No gravy (too much fat). No mashed potatoes or green beans or pumpkin pie (too much fiber; fiber creates residue). No stuffing because the kind my family eats is made from wheat bread (again, too much fiber). No rolls because my family doesn't do rolls on Turkey Day--but I think I might have had a piece of soft white bread with some low-fat spread on it as a "treat."

Right now, I am craving some mac n' cheese, the boxed Kraft kind. And I know if I made it, I would shove the entire thing in my mouth, more than making up for not eating anything both today and yesterday with the calorie, fat and sodium counts. Now, as a nod to my health, I would make it with fatfree milk, but I would add a generous pat of butter to each bowl along with some Parmesan cheese and garlic powder. Yum.

So, food, the thing that we all need to live, is my enemy. For lack of more eloquent phrasing, it sucks.