I was very much inspired by Kelvin's rabbit post that I needed to do a food post of my own, just for a very different reason.

Up until recently, I've dealt with crippling gut issues (among many other health problems, but we'll get to those). These were problems that affected my ability to intake and digest food, which led to an ulcer in my esophagus (from GERD), severe erosion in my intestines (also from GERD), prediabetes, diverticulosis, an enlarged liver, and CKD Stage 2 among many other issues.

For several years I was forced to live a very spartan lifestyle in what I ate. As you can see from the title picture, the food that I was forced to have was as bland as you could possibly imagine.

In order to avoid the endless amount of problems that came with severe gut issues, anything I ate had to be steamed, and the only seasoning I could add was salt. This awful diet has been on and off for almost half a decade.

It certainly hasn't been easy, especially when living in a culture where the local food is a source of pride and at such a high emphasis for socialization. When you're a foreigner and you tell Thais that you can't have something because of whatever issue you might have, then it's fine, they'll accept it. When you look like one of them, they take it as pure blasphemy, they call you weak and tell you that your parents didn't raise you correctly, so on and so forth.

To make this short, I've recently managed to begin healing from a lot of the aforementioned issues. All of the problems that I used to deal with are slowly beginning to fade after finally getting the correct treatment. Recently I've splurged on a lot of foods that I've missed out on over the past four or five years. Being able to eat out again has been a luxury, but strangely one that has gotten very old very quickly.

Is all of this really necessary?

As awful as that bland food is, it's pretty much the best thing you could be putting into your body. Vegetables of different colors so you know you're getting the right variety of nutrients, chicken breast for protein, and kabocha squash to add a small amount of carbs for energy. Everything is steamed so all of it is easy for the gut to process and digest.

It's been an epiphany of sorts. As nice as all of the tom yum, butter chicken, borscht, hummus, tom saap, chicken rice, tom kha gai, blueberry cheesecake have been, I find myself back to just steaming my food, and eating bland.

This isn't a holier than thou post, this is one of acceptance. Even with the right treatment, I'm very much aware that these issues can come back if I'm not careful. If you've never had these problems, and can eat and drink whatever you want, then don't take it for granted. I consider myself blessed that I wasn't born with something out of my control like Type I Diabetes. But the weak gut is something well within my control and I no longer choose to make myself sick, as tempting as it is,