Due to recovering from gastritis straight into a cluster headache episode, I’ve learnt (again) that tracking my food is absolutely necessary for me. People love to say order comes from chaos, just go full chaos and magically you end up eating three meals a day! The universe managed to turn chaos into galaxies and solar systems, so surely everything just sorts itself out eventually.
Not in my body.
For me – and most bodies – it’s closer to the second law of thermodynamics: chaos increases. The arrow of time moves forward. Unless energy is put in, everything drifts toward maximum entropy. Tracking is me deliberately expending energy to restore order to the closed system of my body before it turns into Biscoff biscuits, everywhere, all at once.
It hasn’t been smooth. There have been burnt fingers, broken suitcases, and a fair amount of shouting at the universe for making galaxy formation look easier than organising my own food.
I’M HEALED
The gastritis has mostly gone now. The only evidence it was ever there is a bit of painful bloating after meals. My loud hunger is back, and I’m back to having no fullness cues, which, for me, is normal. I didn’t track while I had gastritis. There was no point. I often couldn’t finish meals and was just eating what I could – so long as I was eating, it “didn’t matter.”
The problem is, I carried that on after I got better. With my hunger back at full volume and no fullness cues, things got out of hand almost immediately. Constant grazing. Snacking. Meals all over the place. No routine. No idea how much I was eating.
At first, I let it happen. I told myself it made sense – I’d eaten less during gastritis, so this was probably just my body balancing out. Except it didn’t stop, it got WORSE. Everything just kept spiralling toward entropy. Chaotic eating is not good for me. It makes me more chaotic and bingey and when you add my blood sugar issues on top, things quickly turn into a complete mess.
My body’s cues are also completely unreliable. It only ever asks for carbs – not protein, not fat. So without tracking, I can easily undereat both. Then my body goes, “something is missing,” and responds by turning up the food noise to maximum. Specifically: eat every carb in the kitchen.
I become a Biscoff-flavoured carb goblin.
Bodies do not function properly without enough fat and protein – especially if you’re 42, have blood sugar issues, and are in perimenopause. One of the things I’ve had to learn in this recovery is not to take my cravings at face value.
Just because I crave carbs doesn’t mean I need carbs. Sometimes it means I need protein or fat.
Without tracking macros, I have no way of knowing. So I just keep grazing on carbs, trying to fix a problem that carbs can’t fix. The actual issue – usually not eating enough fat – never gets solved, so the cravings never go away.
My body is giving me a wrong answer to the question, “What is missing?”.
In my last post, I also talked about having that Starbucks drink even though I knew it would spike my blood sugar – because I was mad at my body. This cluster episode has been particularly horrific. It’s limited what I can do. But since I wrote that post I’ve tried really hard to treat myself more softly, with a bit more care, and I’ve started getting back on track.
Back to structured meals, back to not grazing constantly, back to eating in a way that actually supports my body. It’s not as harsh as it sounds.
But it did come with some very Rhio-flavoured drama.
The Snack Plate Fiasco
I have three meals a day which are basically the same: protein for breakfast, a balanced high-fibre dinner with protein, and a quark bowl with fruit. That gets me to around 130g of protein, so meal four – between dinner and quark – just needs fat and some carbs.
This is the beauty of macro tracking: everything fits. Sometimes it’s sourdough toast with pistachio spread and pistachios. Sometimes cereal with nuts. And sometimes, if I’m missing snacks, an entire snack plate meal.
I was feeling snacky and missing them from cutting out grazing, so I decided I should make more Welsh cakes. They brought me so much joy and nostalgia last time, and I felt this sense of connection making them. This time, I wanted to perfect the recipe, so I bought lard to mix with the butter.
I had very high, completely misplaced confidence in my ability to do this. My first batch had somehow come out amazing, so naturally I assumed I was now ready for The Great British Bake Off, despite also knowing I have a tendency to burn water and it might have been a fluke.
I was also very proud of myself for making them anyway, even with horrendous cluster shadows. Getting comfort from wherever possible.
Joy in food is not something I’ve ever really experienced until this recovery – through tracking, through eating in a way that actually makes my body feel stable. I was doing the thing I talked about in my last post: accepting my body is the way it is, and finding joy anyway.
Unfortunately, the lard had other plans.
It completely changed the cooking. Some of them burnt (which, sadly, does not count as “burning carbs”), they cooked unevenly, and they were much stodgier. At one point, while trying to rescue a burnt Welsh cake like it was a fallen soldier, I managed to burn two fingertips and my thumb quite badly. Total chaos.
My fingertips went purple and hurt like hell. My son told me to put my hand under cold water. He was, understandably, concerned. I, however, was much more concerned about finishing the Welsh cakes.
He seemed deeply unimpressed as I continued cooking, periodically running to the tap because it hurt too much to be near the pan. At one point, he stepped in and rolled out Welsh cakes for me while I stood there experiencing the bliss of cold water on burnt fingertips.
In my attempt to be kinder to my body, I, burnt myself, continued cooking with said burns, and refused to stop. I’ve only been able to type properly since yesterday. They’re still purple.
It is funny in hindsight. I’m also very glad I didn’t actually sign up to Bake Off, because it would have been like going on Britain’s Got Talent when I can’t sing a single note in key. I’d have been an embarrassment to Wales. Especially considering even the unburnt ones weren’t that good.
Turns out I prefer them with just butter – even if they’re not the exact Welsh cakes I remember. The lard version was too dense, too stodgy. The original batch – the one I thought needed improving – was already perfect. I still had a Welsh cake on my snack plate. But between the burnt fingers and the blow to my pride, it didn’t quite deliver the comforting joy I had planned.
My fingertips are still a bit purple even now, days later, but I think they’re mostly just bruised, and I can finally use them properly again – which was lucky, because I had to go to Asda yesterday for my next attempt at finding joy in food.
Which, of course, also caused its own drama. It’s starting to feel a bit like Murphy’s Law: every attempt to find joy and comfort in food comes with a side of chaos.
The Suitcase and the Sausage Roll Catastrophe
My son is home from uni, which meant we could do a proper big shop at Lidl and Asda. I grabbed the suitcase – with my now semi-functional fingertips – to carry everything home, and off we went.
I used to eat burrito bowls every day, and I’ve really missed them. They gave me so much joy. They were comforting, and my body absolutely loved them. I stopped eating them because I simply can’t afford to eat like that every day – but I figured I could probably manage twice a week.
The soup, kale, and sourdough I’ve been eating instead are the same calories, but more than half the price. When you’re eating something every day, that difference adds up fast. I was constantly spending more than I had coming in when I was eating burrito bowls daily.
So when people say it’s “cheaper” to eat healthy whole foods? It is not. I REALLY wish it was.
I was genuinely excited to buy the ingredients. I can’t even explain how much I’ve missed red onion, of all things. After buying all our shopping, we loaded the suitcase full of salad things and stopped at Greggs on the way back. I was VERY happy to see the caramelised biscuit latte had returned. I drank that all last year without any blood sugar chaos like I get from Starbucks.
It felt like a sign. Like the glowing altar of Greggs was offering me a replacement iced coffee so I didn’t collapse from hyperglycaemia followed by hypoglycaemia. I was thrilled. My son was thrilled for me. Everything was going well.
And then the wheel snapped off.
We’d overloaded the suitcase, so when my son tried to lift it onto the curb, one of the wheels snapped clean off and rolled into the middle of the road. He somehow retrieved it without getting run over, handed it back to me, and we carried on.
A fully loaded suitcase with three wheels is possibly the most awkward physics problem I’ve ever encountered. We eventually made it back to the flat where we noticed the lift wasn’t working.
“You have got to be KIDDING me.”
So we had to drag a broken suitcase full of shopping up multiple flights of stairs. We somehow managed it, but my hip has not felt the same since. After finally getting home and inspecting the suitcase, it was clearly unfixable. The plastic had completely snapped – there’s now just a hole where the wheel used to be. So not only had I just spent more on burrito ingredients, I now also needed to buy a new shopping trolley. Which was… not ideal.
Still, the iced biscuit latte was excellent. It didn’t affect my blood sugar at all, which felt like a small miracle. But the peace didn’t last long. I had a massive early cluster attack.
Possibly from the exertion of dragging a weeks worth of shopping up the stairs. Possibly from the sausage roll (which I know can be a trigger, but conveniently forget every time because my body craves pork during cluster episodes like it’s trying to sabotage me). My body’s cravings are honestly as self-destructive as I am.
I saved the burrito for the next night. I’d already written that day off anyway and I’m glad I did, because I think I’ve landed somewhere in the middle of the cluster episode now. I had some of the worst attacks of my life last night. I was writhing in agony. My son bought me white peach Red Bull and i was so grateful because it tastes less like battery acid than the original Red Bull, so I downed one of those hoping to abort the attack but unfortunately it only lessened it.
I barely slept. I was exhausted. Between my attacks I thought, “What a day. But at least there was an iced biscuit latte and white peach Red Bull”.
Chaos Because of the Order
I wasn’t expecting to expend quite so much energy in my quest to turn chaos into order. I certainly didn’t think it would result in burnt fingertips and a broken suitcase.
But through grit (and questionable decision-making), some order has returned anyway.
This evening I finally ate my burrito bowl, and it really was everything I’d hoped – delicious, comforting, and it actually made me smile. I’ve been absolutely exhausted all day after the night I had, and it felt like an internal hug my body desperately needed.
Cluster headaches are still horrific, but at least I’ve got back on track with my food. The fight against entropy is ongoing but I’m somehow succeeding despite my head exploding every few hours.
It’s still difficult not to graze, but what I get in return is better, more satisfying meals. Enough that I’ve already gained back the weight I lost during gastritis, which tells me my body is, once again, being looked after. Given the alternative was chaos and carb goblin behaviour, in the words of Commander Shepard, “I’LL TAKE IT”.
I’m also now eagerly awaiting my new shopping trolley. It’s four-wheel drive, with two swivel wheels at the front, and you push it like a pushchair – which already makes it infinitely more advanced than the suitcase that sacrificed itself in the name of groceries.
It’s also rated for actual shopping weight, which feels like a luxury.
Between baking my own Welsh cakes (even if slightly catastrophic this time) and investing in a proper shopping trolley, I am very clearly entering my Welsh nan era.
I still have a lot to learn from Welsh nan, though – who really should have warned me that lard takes far more skill in the kitchen. She’s down there, exactly where she always said she’d be, looking up at me and laughing, probably telling me to get back in the kitchen and try again.
No point crying over burnt Welsh cakes, bach. Pick yourself up and do it properly this time.
For the song, it’s from Muse’s 2nd Law album since I related my body cues to the second law of thermodynamics. I also love this track and Isolated System, I listen to them a lot when outside.
“In all energy exchanges, if no energy enters or leaves an isolated system
The entropy of that system increases”
Absurd Universe 