Now that I’m back to my former familiar life on TPN, I am revisiting many familiar struggles with social eating. A few years ago I gave a talk at the Oley Annual Meeting. I spent a lot of time organizing my thoughts and got real with all of the struggles anyone with a restricted diet or a finicky digestive system encounters when living in this food centered world. I recently found a video of this talk. Some parts made me laugh at how casual I was and all of the silly things I said, but it was actually really helpful! I had some good advice and I needed to hear it again.
I had lived 8 years with chronic vomiting and struggled daily with to eat or not to eat. I avoided eating at professional or work related events. I had times where I didn’t eat at all and times where I ate a lot and would just vomit. Now things are a bit different and I would actually prefer not to eat much at all because of the pain and bloating that unpredictably ensues after eating. Although the situations are different, the struggle on how to navigate life like this is very much the same and it was nice to get a refresher on how to handle it. If intrigued, the link to the video is below.