I Survived a Week-Long Broth Diet (I Am So Brave)
I like my assets to be liquid. My diet? Not so much
Have you ever forgotten how to chew?
I know that sounds like an incredibly stupid question, but by Day 6 of following an all clear liquids diet I was seriously wondering if I was even capable of figuring it out. This irrational worry was pushed even further by a dream wherein I bit off the tip of my tongue, because if there’s one constant in my life, it’s that my brain will find ways to push my anxiety levels in the red between 4:15 and 6:21 am. Yes, that’s a very specific window of time, but I’m a well-oiled machine when it comes to introducing hurdles to my well-being.
One of the joys of having diverticulitis (or Divy Dicky Ditus, as my mom would say) is that when it starts to come on, you need to radically alter your diet unless you want to spend a couple nights in the hospital (no thank you) or end up in surgery (a much more adamant, and possibly vulgar, no thank you). The recommendation is that once you feel some pain you should go on bowel rest, which is a scientific way of saying that you’re stuck drinking broth, chugging water, and “eating” Jello for a week.
The double dammit of diverticulitis is that once you have it to begin with, you need to adopt a very high-fiber diet. It took a little getting used to when I switched to this diet, but it wasn’t all that hard to follow. I already like a lot of high-fiber foods like granola bars, avocados, whole wheat bread, and peanut butter, so this didn’t make me super grumpy. Avoiding red meat is a little irritating, but I never ate too much of it to begin with, and I also instituted a rule that if I can’t see inside the dumpling, then whatever it’s stuffed with is fine. No word as to whether that’s a doctor-approved hack or not, but I’m certainly not asking. This is a lot of preamble to say that after a month, I felt great and managing my diet was pretty easy.
Then, with a couple of cramps that felt as if I was being disemboweled like William Wallace, it was time to abandon all that healthy eating and go straight to the broth. Great.
The first couple of days were the hardest, both physically and mentally. The pain was pretty intense, so I didn’t have much of an appetite, but my prime coping mechanism with adversity is to grab something to eat. Being stripped of that comfort blanket made me feel even more vulnerable.
The real killer was that I didn’t set myself up for success. It’s probably the generations of Irish Catholic guilt baked into my DNA, but I tend not to do nice things for myself if there’s a cheaper, easier way. So I was just drinking plain old chicken broth, maybe with a pinch of salt. When the prospect of getting any joy from a meal had already been removed, I doubled down on the torture by depriving myself of anything with flavor. Combined with the litany of health issues I’ve had lately, by the third day of no food things had gotten pretty dark inside my skull. I was sort of sleepwalking through life at the time, just trying to manage the pain and get to the next day. I could feel my breaking point coming up pretty quickly.
I likely would have gone on being miserable in this fashion if it wasn’t for my wife stepping in to save the day. Again. Most likely she was acting in my best interest, or perhaps she was motivated by getting me to stop complaining every 45 seconds, but regardless of her intent, she shook me out of my woe-is-me martyrdom. She bought a bunch of fancy bone broth at a price I thought was reserved for Prime cuts of beef. We stocked up on Jello, popsicles, fruit juice, and hard candies.
From that point on it honestly wasn’t that bad. My guts were feeling pretty OK after four days, but I still eased through the next three to ensure the scourge of diverticulitis wouldn’t immediately come back. The Brodo broths (sponsor us! I know you have the money!) were delicious. I want to reiterate, at no point in my life did I ever expect to sing the praises of broth. It’s just soup that the chef forgot to put any ingredients in. But their Tom Yum was amazing and I’ll happily slurp it when I’m not going through a medical crisis.
Finding ways to enjoy the liquid diet reignited the spark inside me, removing the dark cloud from hanging over my head. With this optimism, it was time to turn my thoughts to the only thing that truly mattered — what was my first meal going to be?
Mashed potatoes. Yeah, pretty boring, but I can’t believe any potatoes in the glorious history of potatoes have tasted any better than these did. I’m pretty sure my eyes rolled into the back of my head. Kim (the real hero) even removed the skins beforehand, something she never does, so it would be easier to digest. I was back!
That night I had linguine with butter and parmesan cheese, and it made those potatoes taste like hot garbage by comparison. This morning’s bagel was even better than the previous two meals combined. If you’ll allow me to be a little melodramatic, I felt like I was the first person to discover food and marveling at the experience.
Now that I’m back on the solids, I look back at the whole endeavor with a bit of pride. I was able to go an entire week without eating any solid food; I did not know I was capable of controlling my impulses that well. It’s pretty cool that I accomplished that, and I better never have to do it again.
Which brings us back to the top — have you ever forgotten how to chew? I’m happy to report that I did not forget how to chew. Actually, I think I’m pretty good at it. I’m at least an A- chewer. Guess we can toss that fear off of the stress pile.
I’d love to hear about how you’ve managed to keep your sanity when doing juice cleanses, fasts, or extreme short-term diets like this one. Let us know in the comments.
Boy, do I love your writing, Charlie, and the way you just go there. Thanks for that!
One particularly insightful concept for me here is the idea of forgetting how to chew. I'm the type of person who, if I think about something, even something involuntary (this has happened to me before with breathing), I get worried that I won't remember how or be able to do it again. So a big sarcastic thank you for giving me another thing like that to worry about with chewing (I'm right there with you in those early morning hours!).
Second, I am the biggest baby when told not to eat solid food. Before a colonoscopy once, I went deep diving in Reddit until I found a bunch of people saying that it was OK to eat gummy bears before the procedure and that they would not affect the test. So two bags of gummy bears later and that information, it turns out, was not accurate. Sorry, Gastro doc! So you're braver than I am, Charlie!
Charlie, your broth-based misery and mashed potato redemption hit me right in the gut (pun intended). I once survived 8 days of the Master Cleanse (basically spicy lemonade mixed with regret). By Day 4, the dog's kibble looked gourmet, but I held strong. I did, however, successfully exorcise Diet Coke from my life. Pretty sure I saw a 12-pack levitate! It was like hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL on my taste buds. Reboot successful.