Like much of the population (up to 18% of Canadians, up to 51 million Americans), I was diagnosed with IBS (irritable bowel syndrome).
No, wait–don’t leave!! It’s a funny story, I swear!
Well, maybe not so funny at the time. Diagnosed in my 20s, I was suddenly beset with classic IBS symptoms, which include all manner of digestive distress: “cramping, abdominal pain, bloating, gas, diarrhea or constipation (or both).” It’s considered a chronic condition for which there’s no cure. (I know, chortle, chortle! That’s a real laugh right there.).
Now here’s the good part: I haven’t experienced any IBS symptoms for the past 25 years. Prior to that, I’d been on medication and suffered daily from the condition (loads of fun, as you can imagine, for an insecure college student bent on attracting a boyfriend).
How did I turn things around?
One word: Vegetables. No, seriously.
You see, I was raised in the 1960s, right around the time that Betty Friedan published her seminal Feminine Mystique and women championed going out to work like the big boys did.
At the same time, “convenience” foods popped up everywhere, and those newly-employed mums were desperate for something quick and easy to serve the family after a long day at the office (because, of course, they still had to do all of the cooking, cleaning, shopping, et cetera—even though they, too, worked long hours away from home).
Though my mother continued to cook homemade meals more than most (perhaps because she only worked part-time), we were treated to delights like TV Dinners, Chef Boy-R-Dee canned ravioli or pasta, Kraft Dinner (aka Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in the US), Betty Crocker or Duncan Hines cake mixes, and the like.
In other words, not what you’d call a veggie-heavy menu.
In fact, the typical “vegetable” dish at the table was a nightly salad consisting of anemic iceberg lettuce, pasty cucumber and questionable tomato. (To be honest, the only one who ate it was my dad).
My sisters and I, on the other hand, fully embraced the baking heritage in our house. By age six, I knew how to bake chocolate chip cookies from scratch (the recipe on the back of the Nestle chips bag, natch), as well as how to consume half the raw batter before it hit the oven.
As you might have guessed, I loved anything sweet. Anything starchy. Anything white, beige, tan or chocolate. But not, as it turned out, anything vegetable.
By the time I was living on my own in university, a typical day’s menu might go like this. Breakfast: chocolate chip muffin slathered in “lite” peanut butter. Lunch: Bagel with cheese and maybe a few cookies. Dinner: ramen noodles and a piece of cake. This is not an exaggeration. It wasn’t unusual for me to go several days without vegetables.
The trouble was, as a result, I couldn’t go. Sometimes for several days.
After subsisting on a doctor-prescribed regimen of antacids, wheat bran (sort of like eating cement studded with glass shards) and a daily stool softener (to help those shards travel more freely through my digestive tract), my microbiome was decimated–which only made things worse. (Hilarious, right? This story gets funnier by the minute!).
And then–hallelujah!--one day I came across a website for a school of holistic nutrition. I signed up on the spot.
In contrast to regular university students, holistic nutrition students mill about before class and discuss topics such as their diagnosis, how many doctors they’d seen (who couldn’t help them), what they ate for dinner, what’s in that container for lunch, or whether spirulina or chlorella are better detoxifiers.
I couldn’t believe how many kindred spirits were in that class. We all had chronic conditions that weren’t helped by conventional medicine. And we were all raring to learn what we could do about it.
And this is where the veggies came in.
As I learned more and (radically) changed my diet, I saw all of my symptoms resolve. Over the course of that year, my chronic low-grade depression and anxiety virtually disappeared. My IBS retreated and things began to move naturally. I stopped taking my IBS medication. I lost weight without dieting and went a year without a cold or flu. I made new friends who, like me, became believers in real, whole, natural foods. It was magical, and I loved every second of it.
What’s more, I embraced vegetables! Vegetables of all colors, shapes, textures and sizes. Raw vegetables, steamed vegetables, sauteed vegetables, baked vegetables, roasted vegetables. Vegetables in salads, vegetables in soups, vegetables on their own, vegetables chopped up in sauces, vegetables in smoothies.
I made the acquaintance of vegetables I’d never even heard of before. Kohlrabi, nice to meet you. Hey there, frilly kale! And wow, okra, how could I have misjudged you that way? Not only are you cute, you’re also delicious!
I can honestly say I never met a vegetable I didn’t like. I tried them all–and huzzah! There was healing!
These days, vegetables make the bulk of my diet, and as long as I eat enough of them, I have no problems with that old IBS. The bonus is that I truly do love them, and miss them if I don’t consume them frequently enough (kind of like the laughs in this story).
Zoey enjoys a whole host of vegetables.
What’s amazing to me is that, even without any digestive issues, our little Zoey is quite the veggie-hound.
She seems to know instinctively that consuming fiber, antioxidants, phytonutrients and low-fat, low-glycemic foods are good for you. (They work to, respectively, improve digestion and increase vitamin/mineral levels; combat and prevent cancers; reduce the risk of many chronic diseases, from cardiovascular disease to diabetes to arthritis; and keep your blood sugar levels stable).
Right from puppyhood, Zoey recognized that a vegetable is a good thing, and she grabbed them whenever she could get them.
Unlike Chaser (who wouldn’t go near a piece of kale if you wrapped it in bacon), Zoey relishes raw cauliflower, broccoli stems, kale salad, cucumber . . . pretty much anything from the vegetable kingdom. She never met a Brussels sprout, green bean or beet she didn’t like. She’s even keen on spirulina (which I still consume regularly, mixed with some ground flax and oat milk. The HH has christened this mixture “green slime.” And I love it. Bring on the slime!).
One of our girl’s favorite veggies is Brussels sprouts.
So, have I convinced you to increase your vegetable intake yet? What, noooo?!
Okay, I’ll pull out the big guns. Maybe pretty pictures will sway you. Here are a few of my favorites recipes, taken from my previous food blog, where I shared yummy veggies. Easy–AND healthy!
I hope you give some of these veggies a try over the next week. Even if they don’t make you laugh, they might just make you feel good.
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Follow up to last week’s challenge: Stay focused despite distractions
One of the best parts of life is that you can Always Be Learning, right?
Confession: I got me some learning to do.
Okay, so I failed miserably at this past week’s task. Focus–concentrating on one thing at a time to the exclusion of all else–eluded me. Sure, I spent four (very) focused hours with my client during our VIP session, because, well, it was important and I love the work (plus, it’s *so* much easier to focus on behalf of someone else, isn’t it?).
But when it came to writing my content for the week, or reading that new book I am so keen to dig into, or even chatting undistracted with the HH–well, folks, I’m afraid I missed the mark.
Toward the end of the week, it was clear I still allowed the external world to “get” to me (damn you, Internet!). Even though I’ve adopted the habit of not looking at my phone until after I’ve completed some critical morning tasks (such as writing this very newsletter), I found myself sucked in fairly quickly later in the day.
My solution was to plan activities that were not amenable to looking at the phone, such as grocery shopping, walking the dog, or driving (if I could have managed it, I would have just driven around the neighborhood for 30 minutes at a time. But–heck, have you seen gas prices lately?!).
That seemed to work fairly well. I never check my phone when I walk Zoey (she’s just too demanding). Shopping worked pretty well, too. By the end of the week, I sat myself down and read my book for a full 30 minutes before taking a break–something I haven’t done since undergraduate days.
OK, so maybe it wasn’t so bad after all. But not the transformation I’d hoped for.
I’d love your tips–what do you do to ensure you’re not pulled into the chaos of the world? How do you manage to focus on something fully? Please share!
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Now, over to you. Let me know your thoughts, or answer one of the following questions. I love to hear from you!
Are you a veggie lover? If so, what’s your favorite?
Has there been a food you disliked as a child and now love, or vice versa? (I can’t believe I hated cheesecake as a child. What? Weirdo.).
What are your tips to stay focused? I’d love to know!
As always, thank you for reading. If you enjoy Be the Dog, please consider recommending it to someone else–or becoming a paid subscriber to support me and my writing. I’d be eternally grateful either way!
Are you a veggie lover? If so, what’s your favorite?
Cabbage, beets and swiss chard
Has there been a food you disliked as a child and now love, or vice versa? (I can’t believe I hated cheesecake as a child. What? Weirdo.).
Brussels sprouts. Love them now.
What are your tips to stay focused? I’d love to know!
Focused? Joke right?