I have an unusual problem with food

[ThePigandPear]

And would love to get some advice that the Dr hasn't been able to offer.

I don't have any disordered thoughts or body image issues regarding food.
But ever since I was young (I am 51 now), I don't feel good if I eat much of a plate. I love so many foods, and particularly vegetables, but if I load more than two on a plate, in any amount, I feel uncomfortable for a good while after eating.

I don't eat fast food and have a decent diet, well balanced, because I make sure of it. I am a healthy weight (8st 4) and am active and happy enough, but mealtimes are a pain in the arse. This is getting old and I just wish I could eat how I want to.

So my preferred way of eating would be : small breakfast with either oats or toast and peanut butter. Fruit for lunch or something equally small (if I am honest I would skip lunch altogether, but don't because I need the calories).
For dinner I would like around 4 wholewheat crackers with olives, a bit of cheese, pickles, nuts and some scattered berries.
Or a bit of sushi rice with two veg and tuna, etc.

So I feel like a small rodent, and deliberately eat more to keep healthy.
When I have let myself eat how I want to, I have lost too much weight.

What I would love to know is, is there a way to enjoy my preferred meal sizes but pack in enough nutrition? To get all that I need per day?
I employ peanut butter, eggs, cheese and decent proteins to keep on top of it, but i struggle with a pile of veg. Tonight we had roast chicken with 4 veg and felt like shit. I do this because I know it is healthy.

I don't like the idea of protein / food shakes at all as I need some crunch and mouthfeel. I think this is just who I always was, and I have spent my life forcing stuff down me that I don't really want just to keep on top.

Any tips or advice welcome.

If you consistently undereat for long periods of time, your body's natural hunger cues will get messed up, which makes you think you're not hungry even though your body really needs food.

Undereating over time also slows down your digestion and can even lead to constipation. Your body has gotten used to only dealing with small amounts of food at a time. This is probably why you're struggling so much with digestive issues and bloating when you do try and eat a bigger meal. A lot of people in eating disorder recivery struggle to eat bigger meals because their stomach has shrunk and their system struggles to adjust to normal amounts of food.

It sounds like you would benefit from a dietician or specialist helping you with food. You don't need to have a full blown, on-the-brink-of-death eating disorder to ask for help. It sounds like you need help meal planning and gradually upping your food intake. Fuelling your body properly will have you feeling so much more energetic and healthy.

I'm not saying you need to eat big plates of chips or biscuits. You need balanced meals with enough calories to support your body.

I think you're looking for problems where there aren't any. You don't NEED 5 veg a day. If you have 2 a day (or even one type a day in a good quantity) it's fine. I rarely eat fruit, because I prefer veg. I eat a lot of vegetables, leaves, legumes. Why would I force myself to have an apple every day if I don't like it that much?
Listen to what your body is telling you. (I find "eat colourful" a much better rule of thumb).

Just add a few crisps chocolate buttons nuts and dried fruit to your diet. That will give you a few more calories!
It feels as though you are almost relishing your food problem and kindly I think you need to talk to your GP and ask for help.

How do you get on with beans? Adding beans/pulses to meals ticks a lot of your boxes and is an easy way to add calories, nutrients and protein to most meals if you like them? My pantry staples are green lentils, chickpeas, cannellini beans, black beans etc. A mix of dried and tinned depending on what I’m making.

I think you might benefit from seeing a nutritionist, they will be able to give better and more practical advice than a pharmacist as it’s their area of expertise. There was little point the pharmacist telling you it would “compromise” you as it’s not just that you don’t like veg. Something like Huel will help you up your calories while also providing lots of vitamins and nutrients, I personally feel it’s better to get vits and mins from fortified foods or supplements than not get them at all. I know you said you had a colonoscopy but have you had an endoscopy or tests for delayed gastric emptying/gastroparesis? It sounds like some of your symptoms might fit

Vitamins and supplements are not a bad thing. I have osteoporosis and am prescribed vitamin D and calcium tablets by my GP.

Have you tried making gazpacho? It’s delicious and full of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers.

But if drinking something will stop you being ill then surely you'd consider that? Even those athletic greens powder things, not needed if you can eat the veg but you can't so why not do something that solves the problem.

How you describe it does sound really obsessive, like it's constantly on your mind which is understandable but that won't be helping.

@ThePigandPear I think you need to look into private allergy testing to see if you have gut sensitivities. Some food will always cause wind like cabbages and onions because that is their nature, but if you are finding this across the board then you need to see if you have particular sensitivities. If you don’t have private medical insurance it’s still not super expensive and definitely with while. I have certain foods now I only eat one occasion due to their bloating effects. Also mixing certain kinds of veg in one meal can cause bloating or side effects - Google this online, you’ll be surprised.

Add butter to veg, use oil, eat nuts, cream, pastry to boost calories ! Wish I had this problem.

OP I have a potential challenge and you can maybe document how you feel. For one whole week, eat your normal breakfast, lunch but then for dinner replace some of your veg with chips or something you class as bad foods. High calorie, high dense foods. Bread / chips etc. Can you drink fizzy drink / milk / wine…higher calorie drinks?

It doesn’t matter if you don’t hit your 5 a day, I want to challenge your thinking and only eat 4 a day?

OP you are very sure you don’t have an eating disorder however your reply’s have massive red flags (read it all back). You constantly talk about getting more nutrients in, eating 12 a day and it’s screaming disordered eating to me.

Part of eating disorder recovery is pushing yourself and beliefs to have bad food, eat a bite of cake or include 1 bad thing a day or push yourself to only eat 4 a day if your controlling behaviour is needs 5 a day.

Can you sit and write down what you make you feel anxious? If you ate chocolate for every meal could you? If not why? Could you eat a slice of cake for dinner. If not why? Could you eat fish and chips for dinner with no veg? If not why? If it’s once a month why is it an issue?

Once you have the done that it give you a picture of your ordered eating and beliefs you have. Which you can if you wanted then try to challenge

you want ideas for small nutritious meals and to eat 12 veg/fruit a day? you are a healthy weight and eat enough calories
do you have time to have small and often?
do you take calcium
whole milk?
brazil nuts are good

So this plate and the salad having a few pine nuts or walnuts, thinly sliced avocado and an oil based dressing would be a great dinner and the salad would add healthy fats, calories and a variety of vitamins.

i was in sainsburys the other day and they have a whole new summer ready meal range that’s made up of tapas dishes, why not take a look at a range like that for inspiration and see if anything appeals that you could add to your repertoire.

So the impression I get from your post is that you enjoy food and want to eat more of it, but when you do eat you feel uncomfortably full early in the meal and that feeling can last for a long time. You need to eat calorie dense food because these physical feelings are stopping you from eating much food volume wise. And you're concerned about the amount of fibre and variety of nutrients in your food at the moment. If I've got it wrong let me know. It sounds to me like slow gastric emptying. Have you or your doctor considered this? There are medications to help it. Its also helpful to view your diet over a longer time, don't think in terms of 12 a day think longer term like a week and that might reduce the stress you're feeling.

I tried for 10 fruit/veg a day for a bit. I found i couldn't keep it up as I couldn't seem to consume enough calories if trying to eat that amount of veg.

I was a similar weight late teens to early twenties and looked amazing. Put on weight over the years and like you lost it again and I’m so shocked and sad as I thought I’d look like 7 stone me of the past - slim, healthy but no I look withered dehydrated and a lot older 😭😭😭

@ThePigandPear when DD1 had an eating disorder, her Consultant described a cycle of 'won't eat, don't eat, can't eat'. I'm not suggesting that you have an eating disorder, but what I'm saying is that when we eat less than we need, our bodies do adapt to the lower volume of food and lower calories, then it's hard to eat more normally. That can happen because of stress, illness, etc., and not deliberately.

The key is make your food count. So, if you like pancakes, making them with a duck egg instead of chicken egg doubles the calories and increases the protein, doubles the omega-3, and doubles the fat. You can use double cream instead of milk in your batter, and add some sugar directly into the batter. Then, you can put a knob of butter on the pancake with your syrup. I used to be able to get 1500 calories into a very innocuous looking batch of pancakes.

If you like veg, use small quantities of a variety of veg and cook them in butter.

Fry your food rather than grilling it. Use full fat cheese.

You can get a lot of calories in to a small volume, just make sure every mouthful counts.

I think you maybe need to decide what your priority is - eating enough calories OR eating what you consider enough fruit & veg, and then make that the conscious decision for your meals.
So if you decide that calories are your priority, work out 3 meals a day that add up to the desired amount of calories, calories rich foods, extra fats. As it's not a problem feeling full, then don't worry too much about protein intake either, concentrate on calorie dense foods. From there, add in snacks of fruit and veg. Making a pot of vegetable soup each week may help with intake without being too filling. That way, if you are too full, and don't eat the snacks, you're still reaching your calorie goal.

If vegetable intake is your priority, then do it the other way (but it sounds like calorie intake should be the priority to me).

10- 12 a day seems extreme though.

I would keep your meals the same for now but add in a smoothie every day. It's not "drinking your fucking meals".....it would be having something additional on top of your usual meals.

You could put in things like full fat greek yoghurt, flax seed, protein powder, peanut butter, banana, frozen avocado chunks (you can't taste them in smoothies), full fat milk etc and drink one of them a day even if you have half in the morning and half in the afternoon and keep it in the fridge in the meantime. That will add calories, vitamins, protein, calcium etc without being too much hassle.

I'd also forget the 12 portion of veg a day thing and focus on 30 plants a week which is about variety rather than quantity of plants. So a teaspoon of flaxseed, some apple slices, a couple of cherry tomatoes, herbs and spices in cooking, half a banana, a spoonful of peas etc all add up.

I agree. You sound just like my mother who has a similarly disordered relationship with food.

This is exactly what I was thinking.

OP, if you want to maximise calories AND nutrients AND veg while having a very low total volume of food you feel able to eat in a day, the maths makes that impossible.
especially when you also say no to suggestions of smoothies/milkshakes and vitamin supplementation which are straightforward low volume ways to get in more calories and nutrients.

I do wonder, like others, about emotional issues playing a part. The thing about not being able to eat more than 2 types of vegetables in one sitting has to be psychological doesn’t it? And the way you describe food in terms of “piles” and “scattering” also remind me of people I have known with emotional difficulties with food. I think chatting to a therapist could help. Gp no help because as you say you are physically healthy.

PS aiming to eat 12 veg a day seems a real challenge even for people who can eat bigger volumes than you! I would definitely ditch that goal.

What are your cortisol levels like? I would associate low appetite and feelings of discomfort (or nausea) after eating with periods of high stress and anxiety.

Its also possible you've trained your stomach over years to be full on a smaller amount of food.

As for calories, I'd go for softer full fat dairy, nut butters etc but you already do that and fats tend to produce satiety quickly anyway so may not be helpful in your case.

Edited to add - I also think worth exploring your underlying thoughts/feelings about food. Personally I think it's almost impossible to not have some disordered thinking around food due to the food cultures of the west.

The strength of your reactions against suggestions of disordered eating suggests this is something at least worth considering.

i think vegetable soup would be a beneficial meal

I would ask the GP specifically about the speed of your digestion. I damaged my stomach having norovirus and felt as you do regarding fullness and difficulties with eating vegetables until I got over it. They can test the speed of your digestion and there are some treatments that can help. (There are a variety of causes, not only norovirus.)