Are you walking the talk on healthy eating?
2021 had been a good year, and I was looking forward to spending the Christmas holidays upcountry with my family.
I must have traveled home three other times that same year, spending about two weeks each time.
Still, I had to travel that Christmas. Spending holidays away from home is unheard of in our family. Unless you’ve got some important job in the military and your country needs you.
Not being so lucky, I purposed to drag the travel out to just a few days to the day. One night on the week of the 20th, I woke up in agonizing pain.
At first, I wasn’t sure whether it was my chest or stomach. I only knew that sleeping while hunched over gave me some relief. But that soon ended, and I lay writhing in pain from one edge of the bed to the other. It was 1 am.
There was nothing but time. And nothing left to do than think.
That’s how I remembered the spicy meat stew I had been excited to make, the culprit behind the current situation.
If we’re being honest, I was the real culprit behind the culprit. Fewer and fewer smart choices had been made the past few days leading up to this moment. I thought about the meals I had skipped and other erratic food choices.
The pain was like a ten on the pain scale. Worse still, I did not have any medication to ease the pain.
After ten long years, it was finally 6 am, so I called the building caretaker and asked him to see whether any chemists were open. He got the medication about an hour later. It would work for some time, and then I would be right back to the peak of the pain scale. I resolved to go to the hospital.
Despite the clinic being a few meters from the house, getting there was a struggle. At about 2 pm, I walked there, hunched over and stopping a few times to rest.
Many tests later showed I had gastritis and wasn’t pregnant, leaving me with odd questions about pregnancies. I mean, if the medics thought to test that, well…pregnant peeps must be going through a lot.
Getting a prescription started with a talk about the foods I had to abandon altogether. At least until the inflammation had ended. Another additive I had to give up was sugar. In all its forms. So no juices or cakes. And another thing, flour goods- chapati, biscuits, etc. and absolutely no spices.
The medic also advised me to get apple cider vinegar (with mother) and take a few drops in my water. I would still have to watch what I eat after getting better because you slip once, skip a meal here and there, and the matrix gets you sooner than you think. I asked the doc to make notes of all these things because, by God, I was going to stick to the narrow path.
My meals those following days always included cabbage. I had cabbage for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I kid you not.
The part where I had to like cabbage was easy. That was the start of stomaching a lot of bland foods.
The hard part was giving up tea, chapati, cake, Afia, fries, and all these other tasty foodstuffs. As soon as I was feeling a little better, I’d have a cheat day. I almost always paid heavily for that.
A friend knew I was struggling with the change. She mentioned that I had to change my mindset about it. Otherwise, I risked exacerbating it into a chronic condition.
That’s how I created amateur meal plans using foods that were favorable for my body. Necessity is the mother of invention. I remember looking for milk options and gasping after seeing the price of almond milk. Ewooo!
I only write this because that pain came back with a vengeance two weeks ago. Okay. I might have fallen off the wagon a ways before that.
But I am lucky to have the TFCfoodies challenge going on now, and we can eat healthier together. You are what you eat, after all.
Join the challenge. Have fun with it. Document your healthy eating adventure on instagram stories using the #TFCfoodies and tag @thefellowscafe to let us know.
