so far being in lisbon has involved wildly vacillating between feeling sort of okay about myself vs. feeling enormous spikes of anxiety, paralysis, shame depending on whether i am with people or not, what i ate that day, the temperature, how well i slept, hours of screentime
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i can't do several of the things i was depending on for grounding back in the states (very specific magnesium supplement, access to a car to go somewhere to process) and others my habits have been disrupted (stretching, walking) and that's been quite bad it turns out
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i sincerely have no idea what's going on. it feels like death by a thousand cuts but i could believe it's mostly the food. people say switching from US to european food makes you lose weight and i think losing weight sometimes causes spikes of anxiety and depression?
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also it's been much harder for me to avoid some of my food triggers here. gluten is common, garlic and onion are common, i think i taste seed oils in some stuff, it's a mess. i haven't found a single nearby restaurant that's definitely safe except the acai bowl place
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i really really do not like this, it makes me feel weak and fragile and sick. i don't at all enjoy having to be so careful around food, it's just a constant source of stress and i literally do not ever get a break from it, i literally have to think about food every day
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the nutrition guy i was talking to recommended some stuff to me but all of it seems to involve 1-2 weeks of adjusting to what he thinks is bacterial die-off and i stopped doing it because it was literally making me feel suicidal which is apparently a thing that can do
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plus i don't understand the extent to which negative feelings towards food could itself be exacerbating this whole thing so i'm not even sure it's *safe to be upset about this* which is a whole other level of insanity
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would appreciate your thoughts on what might be going on here actually, i could really use the help
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idk if it'd be useful for you but my approach to food in those circumstances is to find a supermarket and get very basic ingredients (meat yogurt dairy etc) and make my own food; idk if you do milk but UHT lactose free milk in Europe tends to be a lot better for me than US milk
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also it might be partially related or exacerbated by the water youre drinking or some other environmental factor in the air or something
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Sorry to hear that QC, that sounds tough. You've probably thought of this already, but: Sounds like you've got a pretty clear idea on what to avoid. Have you tried making a list of ingredients you are confident is fine, and then looking for something that fits that?
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I also have food allergies, mainly to gluten, and while I've become pretty good at interrogating restaurant staff, I mostly like to shop at little markets and have picnic-style meals when traveling. Makes it easier to control ingredients. I went to Italy 3x w/o getting glutened.
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