To eat or not to eat....

Eating is turning into an adventure.

Firstly, I never quite know for sure if what I'm about to ingest will nail me, prompting me into a fetal position and begging for morphine. Oh sure, there are a few safe bets on what won't anger the Intestine Gods, but a lot of times, I am risking it. Many a healthy edible have laid waste to my insides (ok... extreme, but that's what it feels like), so the sage advise that everyone I know offers me - "Don't eat junkfood" - can tend to be not so helpful.

Doctors and dietitians have filled my brain with yes's and no's, but do admit that in many ways, it's trial & error. I'm on my own for meal-planning. If I need tests or prescriptions, they have my back, but otherwise...

Breakfast has quite literally turned into a free-for-all. As a girl who spent her teenage years (and then some) skipping breakfast entirely, having to now make that the "Big Meal" of the day really just gives me chest pain. I know it wasn't healthy to skip breakfast, but I love to sleep. So much so, that I got up at the very last possible second for school (now for work), leaving myself time only for hygiene. Also, I found that eating breakfast only succeeded in making me ravenously hungry all bloody day. Now I know that was because I wasn't eating ENOUGH.

What? I know... when the dietitian told me that based on my answers to her detailed questions about my eating habits I was floored. *I* don't eat enough? Well... it appears that I don't.

Who knew that dry cereal wasn't "enough"? (Not a big milk fan, you know, unless there's chocolate/strawberry powder in it). Toast isn't a breakfast? Who knew what while a bagel is good, it's nowhere near complete? Who knew that skipping it altogether in favor of sleeping in was probably why I needed so much freaking sleeping in?

No really, I am not as stupid as I must sound. Promise.

I am certainly one of those women who worries constantly about over-eating. I always think that I am. I have ALWAYS felt very tired and run down. Fifteen years (or more) of skipping meals does that to a girl, I suppose.

Secondly, I AM LAZY. I do not like to cook. This limits my options. But for breakfast, cooking isn't real necessary.

Now breakfast takes me about 2 hours to eat. Hah! Not always, but close because I bring it to work and eating & working all at once doesn't really ever go well. The eating always gets pushed aside for a bit.

I still do the toast or bagel thing some days, but there's fruit. There's still dry cereal. There's orange juice. There's milk (powder, too... so there's even sugar... woot!). There's yogurt. There can be eggs, but those are more of a weekend thing. There's lots of water so there's also lots of exercise because I'm running up and downstairs to the can every 20 minutes. Once in awhile there are muffins or banana bread (I don't bake them, FYI). Once or twice a week, there is even cream of wheat because this girl needs iron BAD.

Sometimes there's even jell-o.

Lunch and supper are way smaller and generally less time-consuming & guilt-inducing.

I think I'm finally eating properly and I think it will help, but... of course, I still think I'm eating too much. I mean read all that. To me, still... though I only have about 4 or 5 of any of the above in one sitting, I'm still plagued by this paranoia that I'm over-doing it.

I wonder if that'll ever go away or if breakfast will always be this way?