Aim for 85%, well unless you have IBD (inflammatory bowel disease). I have learned that sometimes 85% is not enough for IBD.
You don’t have to make 100% healthy choices all the time. It’s what you do most of the time — day in, day out — that counts. The healthier you get, the easier and more automatic healthy choices will become.
Day 20 of 101 days of blogging tells us to aim for 85%.
Not going to lie, I just can’t wrap my hands, or rather my thoughts, around 85%.
Not Enough for IBD
I posted this story via Giddy Up Gluten Free yesterday, but here it goes again:
I was “glutenized.” I never use pan spray, except for when I make my turkey-meatloaf muffins. I ran out of my Trader Joe’s Olive Oil spray. My mixture was all made up, so I quick grabbed my husband’s Pam. I ate a couple muffins. Shortly after I ate the muffins, I felt a canker sore on my lip, and a couple other mouth blemishes on the insides of my cheeks. I racked my brain. Why? I didn’t use any new ingredients. But then I remembered the Pam. I read the label and sure enough, I found the dreaded ingredient….wheat.
That was Thursday. By late yesterday afternoon, I was miserable. I struggled through my workout, fatigue set in and my worst – always telling symptom – stomach internally shredded.
I wanted to cry.
Coincidentally, “aim for 85%” was the day this came to a climax.
I have an addictive personality by trait, so I’m the kind of person that probably isn’t going to be satisfied with an 85/15 in any part of my life. I need to work on that, at least for some parts of my life.
But when you have IBD or IBS, 85% on diet simply will not do much of the time.
I just can’t accept any ifs, and’s or buts on this one. I have lived and breathed colitis and IBD for several years now. You either are the person who will accept feeling horrendous day in and day out; living, eating and breathing however you wish or you are driven insane by these awful feelings and simply will never accept it. I am clearly the latter. (Please make note: no judging if you are the former. We all make decisions; those decisions make us.)
Period.
Having that pan spray made me 99%. That was an “F” on my scale for these past couple of days.
Living with a less-than-optimal gut requires a 100% lifestyle practice. It is hard. It is frustrating. But it is fact. If I was simply doing this as a foo-foo diet, little slip-ups like this would have me perfectly fine with 85%. Hell, I’d even go 80/20 on diet likely.
The face of colitis, Crohn’s, celiac, IBS and IBD in general simply don’t thrive on what their owners do most of the time. They thrive on what their owners do day in, day out, 100% of the time.
I’m thinking of a 110% (<– there you go, that addictive personality!) stress-free weekend. Other than getting back to 100% “diet,” my body needs to know there are no other stressors in its life right now in order to detox this mess out.
100% never looked so gutsy.
Question: What do you think about 85%? If you are a gutsy, too, does your IBD or IBS flare out of control with little slip ups?
Xox,
SKH
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