EatNote: Soft Diet Survival

Who wants to know why September was such a slow month?  WELL!  I think the title says a lot already.  A split filling led to the worst sinus infection I've ever had.  That was a little bit back, couple weeks ago, and I've been generally well in most recent weeks, there's just so much to catch up on! I broke the fast with a beet-stuffed chicken (which I'll show you later) I'd been on a soft diet for nearly two weeks due to pain.

I only lost 7 pounds, which is VERY good, because most weight loss is muscle mass loss for me.  When I lose size, I stay the same weight, or end up heavier.  I have an interesting metabolism.  So minimizing weight loss during a period of abnormal eating is important; I am smaller, but didn't suffer drastic weight loss and I can still lift the same weights I could before I was ill.  Hooray!

Managing a soft diet while maintaining gluten free is a little different than the average.  Doing it while taking good care of your body requires an extra special touch.

Part of the key is to watch out for too much sugar in whatever you are eating, since much of the misery of existing on soft foods can be found in the effect of the sugar high/crash cycle.  It's also a very good idea to avoid chemically processed ingredients (fake sugar and other fake stuff) with more care than usual since you won't be eating the substantial items that usually serve to dilute the effects of those, they'll quickly lead to a rather blah feeling.

If you're ill enough that you can't eat solid food, the most important thing is to look after your muscles.  Your muscles need protein, and you can't over-do it.  Simply be aware that you should never exceed 75% protein in your diet.  You can supplement the protein with either fat or carbs, and many progressive dieticians are starting to advocate that fat is the healthier choice, since it seems the body more readily converts carbs into fat, and science argues the body may actually be converting fat into beneficial acids and vitamins.  This is what the Palean noise is all about, but you can take your pick on that.  Everyone's metabolism is unique, just like I was saying about my need for cows.  Human dietary needs are much more complex than we generally give credit.

So what proteins are truly soft?  For two weeks I lived primarily off of yogurt, gelatin, bananas, and those crazy baby tomatoes.

Yogurt from whole milk contains 10 grams of protein per 8 oz, and just 6 grams fat.  Knox gelatin contains 8 grams protein and basically nothing else!  Bananas are good fiber and vitamins and are easily squishable.   The baby tomatoes are just always there.  And spiced dark chocolate cocoa, too.

All of these things are ridiculously easy.  I live alone, and the cats can't prepare food for me.  The first couple days I was fussing with making grits, too, but with as bad as I was feeling, even that was effort.  Effort I didn't necessarily want to expend.  Are you getting the idea that I felt horrid, from all this?  Because I definitely did.

The yogurt was all basically lego yogurt style.  I ate a ton of yogurt due to the antibiotics being horse pills.  Sometimes I smooshed bananas into the yogurt.

Knox Gelatin is the only not-obvious bit of all this.  I warmed fruit juice and dissolved the gelatin packet straight into that!  45 seconds warming of a mug of juice in the microwave on high gets cold (straight out of refrigerator) juice to a nice dissolving temperature.  And then just drink it warm, toss an ice cube in it to make it a cold drink, or heat it up another minute to make it hot like a tea.  I used a generic equivalent of juicy juice because I didn't want the extra sugars that are so inherent to most commercial juices.

There are plenty of foods out there, this was just my approach to getting through a very unpleasant time.  Considering most suggested soft food diets focus heavily on bread, and since I had such success as far as not wasting away even with having to maintain it for nearly two weeks, I wanted to let you all know.

That new "greek" yogurt that is so readily available would be a good idea, it has about 12 grams protein  which is impressive.  Cottage cheese, and just about anything you can throw in a food processor, peanut butter (or any nut butter, really) hot cereals like grits or oatmeal, sliced overly ripe peaches, grapes, deviled eggs, cream cheese on tomato slices (oh gosh that's so good), egg salad and lots of other things are also good options.

Hey, STAY HEALTHY!  This isn't any fun.  Glad to be back in action here and back at posting things for you.