Food Guilt

     Something that I have been struggling with a lot lately is food guilt. I mean this in the terms of eating things that I know will cause me pain, but doing it anyway because it seems like a good idea at the time. The two foods the cause me the worst pain are dairy and sugar. They are both extremely inflammatory foods and cause me a lot of pain almost instantly after eating them. Over the summer, I tried my best to cut out dairy. I don't like a lot of dairy products so I thought this would be easy for me. I haven't had real milk in years, I don't like yogurt, and I'm not obsessed with cheese. This was going well until I realized that all my favorite foods happen to have dairy in them: clam chowder, fettuccine alfredo, and caesar salad. This became a predicament because I didn't want to give up my favorite foods. So, a friend recommended Lactaid pills to me. If you have never heard of them, you basically take the pill with your first bite of food with dairy in it and it helps break down the dairy enzymes better in your stomach. I decided I would get these and take them on occasion when I would eat dairy. This seemed to have worked for me up until now when I have been having some crazy bad pain and I don't know why. I feel so guilty every time I eat something with dairy, but at the same time, I still want to enjoy my favorite foods and not feel guilty about it. 

    Like I said earlier, sugar causes me the most amount of pain which is very difficult because sugar is everywhere. I feel like I don't eat a lot of sugar because I know it will cause me pain, but sometimes I want and deserve to treat myself to a cookie or a piece of Halloween candy my parents got me. However, I feel SO guilty after I eat something with sugar in it. Like with dairy, I can almost immediately feel pain after I eat anything with sugar and I instantly regret my decision. It is my fault that I'm in pain. Why did I let myself have that cookie? That was so stupid of you. I find myself telling myself these things a lot. Food guilt is very real and it is very present in my life right now. Since I've been having increased pain lately, I have decided to completely cut out dairy and sugar (as in desserts, it's very hard to completely cut out sugar) for the time being to see if that helps at all. 

    I recently read Vagina Problems by Lara Parker and she wrote on this topic. She said she too felt very guilty every time she ate something she knew would make her pain worse, but she has learned to allow herself to indulge and not feel guilty about it. That is something I want for myself, but I don't know if I'll get there anytime soon. This disease is so out of our control that you want to control the things you can, like what you put in your body. Well, I know first hand that that isn't easy and it's not supposed to be. So maybe when you're having a good pain day, then you can eat that Twix bar you've been craving all day, but when you are having a bad pain day, maybe hold off on that chocolate until you start feeling better. It's the baby steps that count toward not feeling food guilt anymore and everything in moderation is okay.