Been a rough past week. I did loose weight and am still well on track towards my first goal. However, I did have some crushing developments in my diet that has bummed me out.
Diverticulitis is a nasty ailment that about 200,000 new people get diagnosis with every year. I’ve known I had it since 2016. It’s when certain foods you eat can cause inflammations in your lower digestive track (colon). Sometimes the inflammation can even put you in the hospital if it gets so bad that it caused you to have a perforated colon.
That actually happened to me back in October 2016. Yep, blew a small hole in my colon due to it. That sucked. And it hurt bad.
Anyway, doctors used to think that certain foods caused these flareups, such as popcorn, anything with small seeds, etc… Now they are not so sure those foods have anything to do with it, in fact many doctors believe they don’t. There are certain foods however that can trigger these flare ups in people, and it can vary from person to person to some degree.
You increase your chances of developing diverticulitis by being overweight (which I am), by not being active (which I haven’t been the past several years), and having a poor diet (which I had).
My Trigger Food For Diverticulitis
As I mentioned above people have trigger foods. Since my 2016 perforated colon I have had a couple small flareups. I never was able to figure out what my trigger food or foods might be. I was eating poorly and not really paying attention to what I was eating.
However, since I have been dieting the past month I have been watching and recording what I eat. And my recent flare up a week ago occurred after I ate a delicious New York Strip steak.
It was later at night, I ate the steak and didn’t drink a lot of water with it. The next day… BAM… flare up. The other foods I had eaten that day was light fare, and routine items on my diet. I don’t eat a lot of read meat in the way of steaks. Maybe once a month. And I usually drink a lot of liquids when I eat, which helps with digestion, but mostly for me I drink a lot of liquids when I eat because I am just very thirsty.
Looking back at my major flare up in 2016 I recall eating out the night before at a German restaurant and eating rich fatty meats and drinking little water. I recall not drinking much then because it was busy and the waitress couldn’t keep up with all the tables she had to cover.
The Harvard Study
A few days ago I went online and did some research on Diverticulitis and read meat. Sure enough there was a Harvard study done earlier in 2017 that showed unprocessed red meat can be a trigger food for many people, as a high as a 57% increase of having a flare up.
As it turns out I don’t eat a lot of read meat to begin with. Most red meat is harvested by me; venison. And that’s what I eat most of the time. Sure, I’ll have beef steak every now and then, and ribs, and brisket – usually when I would eat out.
Anyway, I highly suspect what may have caused my flare ups is red meat, and not drinking enough water when I ate it to digest it properly as it passed into my lower digestive track. I can pin point two flare ups having occurred just after eating read meat with little water being consumed during those meals.
I’ll be keeping a close eye on my red meat intake and seeing if it does indeed cause flareups. I don’t get a flare up every time I eat red meat. I am going to be more cautious when eating red meat, eating smaller portions, and making darn sure I can drink a lot of water to help digest it when I do eat it.
The Overweight Outdoorsman – Week Five!
Starting Weight as of 12/7/17: 325 lbs.
Weigh in on 1/11/17: 304.00 lbs.
Weight loss so far over four weeks: 21 lbs.
My weight is down 1.6 lbs from last week. I knew the first few weeks of my new diet was going to see some quick losses from water weight leaving my body. I think I got past that stage and am settling into more routine numbers this past week.
I was going to check out gym’s this past week, but that didn’t happen with my diverticulitis flare up. Luckily I am feeling better this week, and will be checking out gyms within the next few days. Getting on a cardio program will help me shed pounds.
Catching up? Check out my first Overweight Outdoorsman post here.
TD
