I’m still air fryer-less, but I also have these questions.

That is a huge win! Anytime you listen to your body and respond with love and care, it’s a major victory over that fear and punishment mindset. The food sounds delicious, too. 😋

Over the last two days I have watched so many episodes of Young Sheldon that Netflix is asking if I’m still alive. It is genuinely funny. Great characters, great actors, 80s nostalgia, very enjoyable. 9-year old genius, Sheldon, goes to high school, and then at 11, college. So much social awkwardness and geekery. My favorite character is Annie Potts (from Ghostbusters) as Sheldon’s smoking, drinking Meemaw. I have somehow never seen an episode of The Big Bang Theory, but I may have to watch it now.

For me, I choose plant protein powder (pea protein isolate) because the grocery store brand I buy is cheap, tastes amazing, and my muscles like it. I switched to grass fed whey for awhile. It cost more, tasted worse, and didn’t make any difference in performance, so I’m back to Hy-Vee Energy Edge plant protein. I love the stevia/monk fruit sweetener. Stevia alone has a bitter aftertaste. I switched to Designer Whey awhile back because it was whey with similar sweeteners, but it didn’t taste nearly as good as my grocery store protein powder.

I weigh the same as I have for years. I am still lean and fit, but I’m basically never hungry. I am not hungry every time I eat. In hindsight, the “eat only when hungry” diet is incredibly counterproductive, especially for a pregnant woman, an athlete, a busy person, a social person, or someone wanting to maintain muscle, energy, mood, or brain power. I’m not sure that approach is good for anyone, especially if it’s based in fear. So, feel free to question and discard that whole notion and come back to nourishment and gratitude. It will make life better. Underfed people are often impatient and mean. This negatively impacts work, relationships, parenting, self-care, all of it. You deserve to be happy and to feel fantastic.

For me, when coming off of the vegan years and the associated health issues, I started eating one organic skinless chicken breast and one serving of grass fed ground beef per week. I also had fish a couple times a month. This while keeping plant intake quite high, taking fish oil, and including some eggs and cheese. The majority of my meals do not include meat. I use plant protein powder, throw tofu in my smoothies, drink soy milk, and love peanut butter. I eat beans and lentils several times per week. Those initial changes dramatically improved my health. Now, as I'm deliberately increasing muscle mass and strength, all of the above still applies, but I include some kind of meat or fish at lunch most days. Breakfast and dinner are vegan or vegetarian basically every day. On days when I don't eat meat or fish for lunch, I'll have something like bean soup, scrambled eggs, a plant protein shake, or cheese pizza. Still keeping fruit and veggie, nut and seed, grain, bean, and sweet potato intake up there. I consider chocolate covered almonds an important food group. 😃 I don't deny myself any foods. If I have that foundation of good nutrition, I'm able to eat whatever else I want without any rules or fears.

I’ve been meditating and doing yoga daily for awhile. I love those because they help me to be fully present in the moment instead of off in my thoughts. When I was able to get a little perspective on my own thinking, I could see that in the moment, everything was fine. Then I would spin some story about future events going wrong, or about what I imagined someone else was thinking. Suddenly, I was angry, or scared, or feeling judged, but I was literally reacting to my own imagination. Like a puppy fighting itself in a mirror. It was like, oh, shit. My own thinking is the cause of all this drama. 😜 🐶 So, think about the activities and interactions that help you to feel happy and present, that get you out of your own head for a bit. Maybe it’s Pilates class, or going for a walk. Maybe listening to an audiobook or learning something new. It can be volunteering, or feeling connected to friends and family. You want to add things to your life that boost your joy and confidence. I’ve found some crazily soul-nourishing content on YouTube and also in books that has helped me to shift my perspective so I feel more connected to everyone and everything and less isolated and freaked out. When I catch my mind making up problems and things to worry about, I notice it now. I don’t just go down that rabbit hole for hours or days. I’ll be like, oops, I don’t do that anymore. I swear, just taking a deep breath and slowly letting it out can unclench a stress response or dissolve a disordered thought. Then, you choose how you would rather react to the situation. Also, every time I eat anything, I have the thought, “Thank you for the nourishment.” I say it for lettuce as well as candy or fast food. I’ve reframed eating to be about nourishment and gratitude. Always. This has diffused the high-drama that used to come with every bite of food. Lunch is not about self-worth. It doesn’t bestow any kind of meaning or seal any kind of fate. It doesn’t say anything about me as a person. These are revolutionary notions. I struggled with all of that for so long and it seemed so real. See if any of that helps at all, or if it gives you some ideas about other steps you could take. It’s what worked for me, but we are all on our own path.

It sounds like things are going pretty well. Very cool that your appetite and weight are adjusting. How are you feeling in terms of energy? With chicken and ham, and I guess any food, tofu, LOL, it really matters how it’s seasoned and prepared. I’ve had some terrible, dry chicken and some absurdly salty and tough ham, but when it’s good, it’s very good. I agree, you can’t go wrong with fried chicken and grass-fed beef. 😃

You are always welcome here, Letizia! I’m quite a few years down the road from my worst food and body image struggles. What I can see in hindsight is that my eating disorder had nothing to do with food. It was a reflection of my inner state. Change your way of thinking and being, and everything around you changes. There is love and there is fear. Love is everything - connection, kindness, joy, wonder, empathy, humor. It’s our natural state. Fear is an illusion based on a story about the absence of love. It gives rise to anger, judgment, punishment, scarcity, insecurity, all that fun stuff. So, with an eating disorder, we create all these monsters in our heads about not being worthy of love. On some subconscious level, we’ve decided that controlling what we eat and how we look will make everything ok. All addiction is an attempt to medicate fear on some level. We don’t feel ok with ourselves, but maybe if we engage in some behavior (disordered eating, gambling, shopping, over exercising, drugs) it will alleviate the fear and allow us to feel happy and safe, even if that experience is fleeting, which it always is when we go after it in some destructive way. Begin to shift your beliefs and daily experiences in a way that allows you to feel loved, safe, appreciated, and grateful. Then, starving yourself in order to feel ok isn’t a thing that comes up anymore. It’s nuts!

Yes, that seems like a conservative calorie recommendation. Perfect for a small, reasonably active person. If you were doing more intense or longer duration workouts, that wouldn’t be enough food. It’s a good starting point. Once you get the health issues resolved, you’ll be better able to judge portions based on how you’re feeling. It won’t always be a math problem, or feel like you’re ignoring fullness. Your body will put the additional food to good use as your metabolism wakes up.

That sounds like a solid strategy from the new dietitian. What I have learned from years of underfeeding and overexercising myself is that there is a colossal health and quality-of-life difference between maintaining a weight in an exhausted semi-starved state, and maintaining the same weight with plenty of food, adequate rest, and a healthy metabolism. It's like night and day. So, I was just nodding along with what you have written. I was also chuckling at the dietitan telling you to use my exact strategies - drink milk with protein and fat (almond milk is just water), put cheese on everything, add (a lot of) peanut butter to your oats and shakes, full fat Greek yogurt is yummy. Some other ones I like are: putting avocado in smoothies, adding avocado to sandwiches or toast, or making guacamole and eating it on crackers or tortilla chips. I also drain and freeze chunks of extra-firm tofu and put a cube or two in my protein shakes or smoothies. I eat lots of nuts. I've been getting this macadamia, pistachio, almond, pecan mix from Aldi that is so good. I feel like grass-fed ground beef was some kind of miracle cure when I was coming off of lower fat vegan eating. I only eat a small serving once a week or so, but it made a big difference in my energy level and wellbeing. Salmon helped a lot too as a quality protein with good fat. I hope the shift in your eating style and the new iron supplement have you feeling better quickly. It sucks to be tired and have your hair fall out. That low blood pressure feeling is awful too. In the past, I've had to deliberately put salt on things or eat some canned/processed food in order to avoid that. Good luck with the changes you're making. Let us know how it goes.

That’s totally normal. Very bendy and squishable, some space in the package. No worries. It will be delicious and you will not die. The pouches are so much nicer than draining cans of fish liquid. They can go right into a recipe.

It took me probably a year to fully recover from the two years of veering too far into low-fat vegan. I felt better pretty quickly, but growing new hair and fingernails takes a minute. I can relate to the snack situation. It will be time to eat something with protein, I'm not hungry for it in the moment, but if I skip it, I find myself ravenous and low on energy later. I'm totally used to eating enough food and enough protein now. I look forward to those snacks when it was weird as hell at first. Eating adequately feels different from undereating, for sure, but it absolutely will feel normal and second nature in time. I like tuna and salmon pouches much better than the cans. There is no oil or water to drain. If you want to go in a weird but delicious direction, try tuna, mayo, half a diced apple, and dried fruit (cherries, blueberries, or raisins) stirred together. I put peanut butter on the other half of the apple and eat it on the side. Anyone who has seen me eat the tuna/apple/mayo combo usually looks like they're going to throw up, but it's great! It's like chicken salad. Sliced grapes would be good in it too, maybe walnuts.

I watched a docuseries on Netflix called “Living to 100 - Secrets of the Blue Zones.” I remember reading the book years ago and getting a lot out of it. So, it was nice to watch a documentary and actually see the people and places. I love that so many of them do no formal workouts and don’t diet or take supplements. It’s more like wellness is baked into their environment. They aren’t going to a gym, but the village is steep, or they walk everywhere, or they garden. So much of what these long-lived residents have in common is community, purpose, faith, and joy. They also eat a variety of traditional whole foods. I had several favorites, but I loved the 100-year old Costa Rican cowboy who is still saddling up his horse and working every day. I was also amazed by the Greek man who moved to the US, was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer at age 66 and given a few months to live. He went home to the Greek islands to die. After like 40 years of laughing, dancing, and drinking wine he was still vibrant and healthy.

I researched so much about plant protein and was so confident that I was getting plenty, that deficiency was unheard of if you eat enough food overall. It just wasn’t true for me though. There has to be something to the absorption issues. Some people, especially younger ones, seem to have bodies that effectively utilize those essential amino acids no matter where they’re coming from. My body was like, nah. Keep moving toward feeling good, whatever that looks like for you.

You describe your previous feelings of being ravenous enough to eat shoes at lunch time and having a lifelong strong desire to keep eating more after dinner. This points to chronic underfeeding as much as or in addition to the issue of protein quality or absorption. So, yeah, normal every day satisfaction feels a whole lot like “meh, I could eat” but not particularly caring one way or the other. In my strong, healthy, well-nourished state, I am basically never stomach-growling hungry, never experiencing cravings or obsessive food thoughts. Part of that newfound satisfaction is meeting protein needs effectively, but an even bigger part of it is eating enough food overall. Being underfed over long periods of time will cause problems regardless. You’re doing great getting more food. You have many options for how to do it. The important thing is that you’re feeling the benefits, and that you like the changes enough for them to be sustainable. I’ve used nuts and nut butter as a protein source, lentils, bean soup, veggie burgers. They are more calorie-dense and often more volume, which can make it challenging to consume enough of these foods to meet your nutrition needs, but you can always combine them with your smaller animal/dairy proteins, like putting a blop of Greek yogurt on lentils as a sour cream alternative. Making Mexican food with beans and rice but including a little beef or fish. I love tuna melts with cheese, or you can roll a veggie dog in a flour tortilla with a little cheese. You can put nuts or seeds in yogurt or cottage cheese. You can hardboil eggs to make portable protein, or make protein bites with nut butter, protein powder, and other ingredients. There are ways to round out your proteins for more satisfaction and still get all the health benefits from plenty of plant proteins. But yeah, liking what you eat and physically feeling good are top priority.

I watched season one of Only Murders in the Building. It had its moments, but I didn’t love it enough to keep going.

The struggle is real! I went through hair hell with similar issues when my ultra lightweight leave-in air dry cream got discontinued. Anything else I was using for moisture made my curls look dirty and weighed down, not shiny and bouncy. I finally found this stuff, which is not even for curly hair, or air drying. A tiny pea sized amount combed through wet hair, then gel, scrunching, air drying and breaking the cast leaves my curls clean and shiny again instead of all bleh. I have no idea if it will work for anyone else. This curly hair stuff is so random.

That could be with the fermentation. You may have some degree of lactose intolerance, which isn’t always permanent. I think there is some kind of digestive enzyme that you can take before eating dairy, or maybe introduce it in very small doses to adjust to eating it again. I stick mostly to cheese and yogurt myself. My digestion of dairy is fine, but drinking milk or eating sour cream tend to wreck my ability to breathe through my nose, whatever that is.

By bloating, do you mean stomach discomfort? Like gas or indigestion? Or just feeling puffy? Or full? I am basically never hungry anymore. No empty hollow feelings, no growling. Sometimes I’m still a little full from the last meal when I’m eating my next snack, but that’s what I need to do to get enough protein, enough food, and to feel healthy and strong. I think there is always an adjustment period when we change the way we eat, especially adding new foods. It can take a little time to develop the right digestive enzymes, and for hunger/fullness hormones to catch on to the new normal. I used whey protein for about the last four months as an experiment. There may be a slight advantage in terms of absorption and muscle recovery, but I like the taste of the plant protein better and it’s cheaper, so I’m using that now. As long as there are plenty of other quality protein sources in my day, I feel great using either kind.