Progress

Looking back over the different stages in particular the charts for the last few months it seems clear that beneficial progress can be made with a little effort. Unfortunately, someone whose ailments are linked to what food they consume (from experience) seem to become almost afraid of eating 'normal' foods. Let alone trying anything new or untested and food itself becomes the enemy.

The chart for last November, for instance, was 63. Instead of a bad august number of 181 and the average of 117. That November month was heavy with discipline, home cooked foods and experimentation.

Sadly, someone of poor health and worried, tends to leap at anything that could be 'the' cause of the ailment in the vain hope of finding a reason for the problem and therefore even a meal that has previously been beneficial (for the most part) is suddenly turned upon as the 'cause' of the problem. 5,6,7 times in a row of positive results from eating.. say hotpot, followed by an 8th meal of hotpot which, for some reason, didn't have a positive result, is targeted as the main culprit for the entire illness (even if hotpot had never been eaten in the previous years).

Therefore, the hotpot is 'bad' and never touched again. The fact that the previous 7 meals of hotpot didn't have bad effects are completely wiped from the unhealthy and worried persons memory and hotpot is never touched after that single bad episode.

This makes persuading the sufferer to try new things very difficult and after a while that person, through fear of food itself, sticks to what they know like egg on toast or a sandwich of fatty ham.. day in day out with no alternative and alteration. Despite the fact that those meals offer no relief as did previous experimental meals, those familiar foods are 'safe' and reassuring.

I can't say that i have found a way to combat this 'fear of food' yet although the only possible route could be a professional medical person (whose authority is listened to) stating that new foods or 'this diet plan' will (could) help. The only problem there is finding a professional medical person that A: knows what they are talking about. And B: cares enough to even bother trying.