The story of my gut is a long one: let’s start at the very beginning…
As an 80s’ kid, I grew up on freezer food. I don’t blame my parents for this – I genuinely don’t think there was an awareness of what healthy eating was back then. We had a snack cupboard full of crisps and chocolate that we could dip into at any time and the only reason I remember any fruit in my childhood at all was because eating an entire apple (core and all) was my party trick. Veg was another story. On a Sunday my mum insisted on cooking a roast dinner with rock hard vegetables that I wasn’t allowed to leave the table until I’d eaten. I used to fill my mouth with water and swallow peas like pills so I wouldn’t have to taste them; thus began my hatred of peas, and all veg to be fair.
When I was a teen and started to do a bit of cooking myself, the theme was beige. I used to spend hours baking cakes and making pancakes for the family and my savoury dish of choice was pasta with melted cheese and bacon. Yum.
Despite, or perhaps because of, my lack of nutrients, I was a skinny kid. In sixth form I used to wear jeans so low they were almost indecent with belly tops showing off my wash-board tum. I used to eat burgers and cookies from the college canteen and when I got home I used to binge on Special K: I literally used to have three bowls a day.
Three years at uni and I was exposed to a bit more variety. My boyfriend at the time introduced me to smoked salmon and fajitas; the rest of my flatmates introduced me to takeaways. For three years I drank to excess and mopped it up with fried food at least four times a week. On the other days I’d have beans on toast or pasta with a Dolmio stir-in. I genuinely don’t remember eating a single piece of fruit or veg the whole time I was there. There was a time when I went to the doctor for the contraceptive pill and she took one look at me and diagnosed anaemia on the spot. Turns out I was on the verge of needing a blood transfusion. She sent me away with a prescription for iron tablets and I never went back.
Back home and in the workforce I discovered my love of eating out. I used to go out for three-course dinners a few times a week, usually consisting of fried cheese, pizza and cheesecake.
I carried on like this for the next three years, still without an ounce of fat on me and feeling absolutely fine.
This all changed on 7th January 2008.
I vividly remember being out at Frankie and Benny’s for my sister’s birthday meal in my black skinny jeans and tucking into a calzone. One minute I was fine and the next minute my stomach blew up like a balloon and I was in absolute agony.
The next morning I did not feel good, but, as I’d just started a new job I dragged myself into work. Between 8.30am and 9am I was sick eight times. Thankfully, my dad was able to pick me up as for the next 48 hours I could not stop puking. I remember being in bed for four days in so much pain that the weight of my body on the bed was absolute torture. Upon reflection, I definitely should have gone to the doctors or at least phoned them. I’m sure I could have got thousands from Frankie and Benny’s and it was probably my duty to report them but at the time it never occurred to me.
A week later I went back to work as if nothing had happened. Unfortunately, my stomach hadn’t forgotten.
Shortly after, I moved in with my mum to complete my teacher training. Her partner’s speciality was a pasta and pesto dish which I devoured. To my surprise, within half an hour it came back up to say hello. For the next year I couldn’t eat pasta without being violently sick. I remember spending nights on the bathroom floor in my mum’s flat and falling asleep there.
A couple of years into teaching and my stomach started rearing her ugly head again. I still had a flat stomach but students would often ask me if I was pregnant due to the baby-bump I’d be donning after lunch each day.
It got to the point where I was having crippling stomach pains by lunch time daily. I remember having to spend an open evening horizontal after eating lentils for lunch.
At this point vanity prompted my first trip to the doctors. I loved wearing my high-waisted pencil skirts but I was having to undo them every afternoon. The doctor diagnosed IBS, gave me a leaflet on FODMAPs and sent me on my way.
I realised that my morning routine was basically FODMAP-central. I’d have a bowl of Special K for breakfast and then a cereal bar and apple at break time (I was a little more health-conscious by then). When I replaced this with porridge, rice cakes and a satsuma, the problem was solved.
It was also around this time that I first heard about Coeliac Disease. A girl in my Year 10 class had it; she was also very pale and emotional and once told me she hated me before storming out of my class.
For the next couple of years my gut only bothered me now and again. The bread diet in Italy certainly didn’t agree with me – I didn’t poo for a week. I also remember the school fish and chips ruining a hen do weekend for me, but, on the whole, it wasn’t really an issue. My partner and I are massive foodies and we’d binge on pizza, bread and cheesecake most weekends. Our holidays were always basically pastry-fests and at Christmas we’d go absolutely wild.
It’s actually since I got with my partner that my weight started fluctuating. I’d go on binges for two months and put on a stone and then spend six months losing it. My partner is the same; he’s been known to eat an entire pack of biscuits on the way home from the shop. I’m ashamed to say that there have been times in the past when I’ve eaten so much that I have made myself sick to deal with the discomfort.
I’ve always loved food but it’s probably been the last decade that my obsession has grown and become much more emotional. I eat when I’m happy, sad, excited, bored, walking the dog, watching TV. The only thing that really stops me eating is teaching. When I’m in the office at work, I snack constantly.
Surprisingly, the more I eat and the more unhealthy it is, the better my stomach often seems to be.
In fact, I didn’t even mention my stomach when I made my next trip to the doctor that prompted my diagnosis.
By this point I’d had my daughter and my excessive thirst during pregnancy hadn’t diminished two years later. I was downing four litres of water a day. I’d also noticed around that time that I’d started feeling overwhelmed with tiredness whenever I stopped for a moment. Blood tests revealed that I was severely anaemic and that I also had an under-active thyroid and was immediately put on medication for life.
Since then, my health got worse and worse. After a couple of weeks of carrying on as normal, the fatigue finally engulfed me and I didn’t work a full week for almost a year. The crippling brain fog meant that I had to stop studying for my masters that I was two thirds of the way through as I couldn’t string a sentence together.
My thyroid levels have yoyoed for the past year along with my symptoms. Yesterday, after twelve months of adjusting my medication, my readings are finally ‘optimal’.
This is somewhat ironic as it seems like as soon as my thyroid stops playing up, my gut steps in to take the limelight.
A month after being diagnosed as severely anaemic a conscientious doctor decided to find out why. She asked if I ever had any gut symptoms and when I relayed the decade of problems she immediately booked me in for a blood test for Coeliac Disease. The test was positive and confirmed by an endoscopy so for the past ten months I’ve been gluten-free.
The problem is that during that time my stomach issues have gotten much worse.
This has coincided with me completely changing my diet. After being so unwell with my thyroid, I consulted a private practitioner who recommended a range of supplements and told me to increase my consumption of fruit, veg, nuts, seeds and basically all of the healthy stuff that I rarely ate.
When my bloating came back with a vengeance she then turned around and said I had Hydrogen Sulphide SIBO and that I should stop eating all of the healthy stuff she had insisted I start eating, along with carbs, protein and sugar.
She put me on a two week protocol that involved eating chicken, rice and butternut squash, oh and macadamia nuts. It made me absolutely miserable. To make matters worse, the advice she had given me was so conflicted that my anxiety went through the roof. After two weeks I was desperate to get off of the diet and promptly went on a weekend away binge-eating. Suffice to say, any improvements that had been made were promptly erased.
My trust in her had completely gone and I’d spent an absolute fortune in the meantime so I stopped seeing her. The problem was I had no idea what to eat. She’d told me I had a problem with sulphur and oxalates but that practically ruled out all food. My anxiety around food grew.
A few weeks later, I finally had an appointment with the hospital dietician after being referred seven months earlier.
After listening to my story, she suggested a low-fibre diet as it seemed like high-fibre foods were triggering my symptoms. The problem is that low-fibre generally means unhealthy. The NHS booklet recommended sweet biscuits and crackers as a snack, and, as all ‘free from’ crackers contain sugar, I started binging on sugar and fat and anything that had no nutritional value. It’s fair to say that my bloating improved, but instead I had the shits and felt like utter crap. I actually started craving vegetables.
At this point I decided to get a second opinion. I started seeing another nutritionist who agreed that the gut-panel I’d had seemed to indicate Hydrogen Sulphide SIBO but recommended that I have a breath test to confirm. In the meantime, she suggested I try a low-FODMAP diet and see if that helped.
This brings me to the current day. In the past four months, I’ve changed my diet fortnightly. I’ve lost weight rapidly; I’ve fluctuated from being constipated and rarely going to the toilet to having to rush to the toilet for a bowel explosion; most days I look six months pregnant by lunch time. I have no idea what to eat. The low sulphur diet is the exact opposite of the low FODMAP diet and both are high-fibre. I haven’t been able to wear jeans or trousers for a year; not without having to undo the flies by lunch time that it. I’ve gone from eating constantly to leaving four hours between meals but nothing seems to help. The restrictive diets have also meant that, as soon as they’re over, I go into binge-mode to compensate.
It’s a vicious cycle. Two days ago, for the first time in weeks, my stomach felt fairly flat for most of the day. The next day, I ate exactly the same food and my stomach was massive by 9am and I was in agony for the rest of the day. There’s no consistency. I’m so fed up with it. What is the point in being thin?
I spoke to the doctor to try and speed up my gastroenterology appointment and she’s referred me for a flexible sigmoidoscopy, which has put the fear of God into me.
It’s got to the point where my gut is making me miserable: I need to sort it out. If I’m honest with myself, I think a lot of my issues are self-inflicted. Even though I try to eat healthily, when I still get symptoms, I think ‘fuck it’ and console myself by binging on rubbish. Also, when I discover a healthy meal that I actually like I eat it again and again so there’s little variety. Reflecting on the story of my gut has made me realise that I’ve always had poor eating habits and my mind-set around food is all wrong – I don’t think of it as nourishment; to me, eating is something I take pleasure in doing, especially when it’s sugar and fat that I’m consuming. If I want to heal my gut, I need to change my whole relationship with food and get rid of all my bad habits but I have no idea where to start. I genuinely can’t think of a single thing that brings me anywhere near as much joy as eating!
This doesn’t seem to be particularly realistic but at the moment I don’t really think I’ve got a choice. I used to be able to get away with unhealthy eating – yes I’d get bloated, but I’d just undo my jeans. Recently it’s like my gut has finally had enough. Over the past six weeks I’ve lost half a stone without even trying and I’ve had two episodes of severe diarrhea that has absolutely traumatised me. Aside from that I’m bloated and uncomfortable every day and my energy has also started to plummet.
Once Christmas is over, I need to start healing my gut (and also not go completely wild at Christmas unless I want to spend the week in bed or on the toilet). I’ve got an appointment with my new nutritionist in the New Year, so whatever she suggests I do to get rid of this bloody SIBO I need to do it! It’s going to be utterly miserable but I need to try and look at the bigger picture.
Writing is therapy for me so I’m going to blog my way through this process. Please let me know if you have any helpful suggestions!
Thank you for reading the story of my gut: let’s hope it has a happy ending.
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