Yesterday I learned a very valuable lesson about the consequences of overeating. Because I had overeaten the day before I not only woke up at 4am nauseous, but spent the majority of that day feeling quite sick and nauseous. Fun. Then, once I felt better I overate again at dinner and spent the rest of the night nauseous. Double fun. I felt so sick that I ended up sleeping sitting up on the couch because I knew (from past experience) that if I laid down feeling that sick it could easily lead to a GB attack and possible vomiting. Not exactly how I enjoy spending my evenings.
Here is the really sad thing, I overate healthy food. It's not like I dove in to the cookie jar and downed 18 Oreo's in a single sitting, or ate a pint of Ben & Jerry's. I simply overate. After dinner I decided to make a dessert of cucumber and watermelon juice (which has a weird green color with pink foam, but tastes very refreshing) and that was what put me over the edge.
After years of being able to overeat with only mild consequences, I didn't realize how truly grueling it is on your system until my experience yesterday. My body was so overwhelmed trying to digest all of the food I put in to it, albeit whole and natural foods, that I had a quite severe reaction to it. I could feel my pulse racing, my head felt almost dizzy, and I was so sick that even having my husband come near me to soothe me made me want to vomit. It was bad.
Funny thing is that as I write this blog entry, my husband has just finished off a bowl of cereal (at 10:45pm) and is laying down to go to sleep... yet, I know he will sleep the majority of the night with no discomfort except for maybe some mild heartburn. In some ways, my system might be more sensitive than others, but then I think back to when I first starting experiencing heartburn about eight or so years ago while I was in college and eating lots of heavy "fourth" meals late at night right before bed. My body was trying to tell me something, and I ignored it. So, here I sit, eight years later, with some serious digestive and health issues as a result. Our bodies try to tell us when something isn't right, but I am finding more and more that you have to always have your ears wide open to listen to it fully.
For example, I spent all morning yesterday blaming my nausea on eating rice milk. It wasn't until I got seriously nauseous again after dinner that I realized that my body was yelling at me not for what I put in to my body but for how much I put in to it. There was simply too much in my stomach for proper digestion, especially with my sluggish, weakened GB not being able to do it's job fully yet.
So I spent today focusing on eating appropriately sized meals and listening to my body when it says "that's enough food for now, thank you." And guess what, I feel good and haven't had any nausea! This overeating thing is hard not to do right now, but I know it's going to get easier the more I retrain my brain and stomach to communicate with each other 100%.
As a side note, I wanted to share what my tongue looks like when I am having stagnation/digestive issues such as I was having last night. My acupuncturist pointed this out to me, and I really wish I had taken a photo about 4 weeks ago so you can see how bad it used to be. When my body is stagnated the side of my tongue gets this wavy ripply looking things in it. My camera is not the best, but you can see a little bit of the wave edge that forms on the sides of my tongue. The day before, there were no waves in my tongue at all. Before I started working on my GB and seeing my acupuncturist the side of my tongue was so wavy that the edges were very defined and white. Now, it's getting much closer to a normal tongue. Chinese medicine uses the tongue to diagnose ailments in the body, but I will explain all that another time... Until then, check out my wavy tongue.
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