Eating Whatever

I had Ulcerative Colitis for about a decade. In that time I tried endless things to handle it, including various diets. None of these worked for me, but I did learn over the years which foods I had to avoid because they inevitably caused problems: broccoli, seeds, certain tomato products when I wasn’t feeling perfectly, etc. I was also very good about eating sugar (I hardly ever had any). I gave up sodas and junk food entirely. Occasionally I would use a little candy if I hadn’t eaten and my blood sugar was getting too low (for the last while I was too thin to have any kind of fat reserve).

But since I’ve had the surgery I can eat WHATEVER! It’s great. People are used to me having limitations so I’ve been asked a couple of times what I could eat. And now I reply, “WHATEVER”. It’s really cool to be able to eat broccoli and have some sugar (my wife is really happy about having someone to “eat desert with” as I NEVER would do it before). I still eat very well thanks to my wife’s care in cooking for our family, but it’s wonderful not to have to have such attention on food and just be able to enjoy it.

The other change is that I can enjoy it. For the last long while, food was very uninteresting and I wasn’t able to gain weight. But now I can eat like a pig (I’m constantly surprising my wife with the quantity I can put away) and the scale is continuing to go up.