I’m very into pasta salad these past two weeks, next week I’m going to mix it up and have something else but right now this has been a good lunch.

This one I made with tortellini, with some peppers and strawberries, some matcha alligators from Squish for a little sweet treat, my life’s blood - double bergamot, and a banana.

Yesterday was a really tough day emotionally. I couldn’t find myself invested in anything that went on, and I couldn’t really bring my energy levels up.

Today I’m running our Curse of Strahd D&D campaign for the first time in a couple months. I’ve been emotionally seperated from it for a while so it’s intimidating to start up again, but all I can do is my best.

Instagram: Toadwitch

If your curious about my life and my work outside of this blog, more Goth and less Health you can check out my Instagram!

Feeling Sick

Chronic nausea is something I have suffered from for about 11 years.

When I stopped being able to breathe, about 6 years ago, I was living in an apartment with two roommates. Over time my ability to…. well breathe was compromised so often that I ended up in the emergency room. Thinking I had developed some sort of lung issue or asthma of some sort I went in thinking I would find out and be cured- only to discover that the truth was I was having such intense panic at all times that my body had gone sort of into shock and wasn’t allowing me to breathe without other (usual) physical or emotional symptoms. The other thing they guessed was some sort of chronic heartburn causing me to be nauseous all the time, yet exacerbated by the stress of the panic.

After a while I got the breathing under control, a symptom that still comes in week or month long waves when my stress and anxiety levels reach their peak, but the nausea and heartburn is something that has always truly escaped me. When I started feeling this way I never thought it would go on for so long, yet looking back, obviously it has.

Being ill is never easy. It took me so long to understand how my body was reacting to my moods, emotions, and especially what I ate.

I do believe for myself everything is such a delicate balance- I walk a tightrope of medication, therapy, and diet to try to keep myself from falling off, but I fall often, and often hard.

Today I feel so incredibly sick. The nausea and bodily discomfort is so horribly intense that I will without a doubt have to sit propped up against a wall of pillows to sleep. I’ll have to make sure I stay far away from trigger foods for quite some time, and really put more work into reminding myself that I don’t like to feel this way.

Tomorrow I go back to work, to work on my art, my apprenticeship, and my career.

One like = one “good luck” for my work week

2:00 brunch!

Yogurt, berries, bran and granola with a homegrown toasted tomato sandwich!

I slept super well last night which was nice, I can’t remember the last time I slept that well. The cool breeze through my windows and the smell of damp fall leaves was so comforting it was almost hypnotizing.

I love fall, I love Halloween, I can’t wait for more fall things in my life!

On weightloss

That was never my goal. It currently isn’t my goal. I am a fat woman, and I am working on suppressing own internalized fatphobia, overcoming it, and becoming someone with more of a capacity for self love over all.

The goals of this blog are:

• work on self love, body love, destroying my own fatphobia and loving myself, as myself, without implementing weight loss as a goal.
• feel better physically. have more energy and combat my GERD/IBS symptoms at the start as opposed to finding solutions to work through them once they’ve already started.
• Eat better = Feel better.
• share food pics, put more work into my meals, and be proud of the progress I’ve made.
• become the girl Pete Steele sang songs about.

Men keep telling me I “look good” because I’ve lost weight. I keep telling men I don’t feel good, but that isn’t as important to society as looking slimmer.

The only woman to pay me this compliment was my grandmother, who is in her late 80’s and still has extremely disordered eating (60+ years of anorexia and conditioning from my grandfather will do that to someone) - so hearing that from her, I know she meant well, but it still bothers me that telling someone they’ve lost weight is seemingly the highest compliment someone can recieve.

What are your opinions on self love? body love? fat acceptance?

I haven’t been feeling well the past few days.

Barely sleeping, barely eating, general unwellness.

I made this lunch for myself yesterday and didn’t end up touching much of it due to feeling so unwell so that is both yesterday’s lunch and today’s.

Please note this is not a good example of proper eating and this is not a frequent pattern for me, but being honest about food here is important to me. People should be eating everyday and I stand behind that, but illness and sickness will impact that for sure.

Grocery Day!

Tuesdays are my last day off before my work week, being a piercer means my hours and weeks are a bit strange, but it’s nice to not have to get up before 9am!

I’ve never been a morning person, I find it very easy most days to intermediately fast between 9pm and noon, is a 14 hour fast enough? Maybe I should google it

I hate spending money but I do love grocery shopping. I find a lot of fun and comfort, especially doing it on a weekday afternoon when things are quieter, in picking foods for my next week or two, trying to mix and match fruits and veggies for my lunchboxes and explore new recipes.

All the cucumbers and tomatoes are home grown by my mother, and the squash are from the local farmers market, I even decided to pick up some kiwi, which I basically never eat. Here’s to trying new things

For breakfast/lunch yesterday I had yogurt,granola, and bran buds, along with some double bergamot Earl Grey and a toasted tomato sandwich. I really love fall for all the apples and tomatoes I get to enjoy from our yard.

What are you eating this week?

My inbox is always open

I’m no longer counting days, it’s getting weird and confusing and hard but September is Health Goth’s 3rd month.

Today I was sick and running a fever so I consumed a lot of water, as you should when you don’t feel well! I also had a nice fried egg sandwich with ham for breakfast and made some fajita pasta with pork for dinner.

I plan on meal prepping for my upcoming work week tomorrow so stay tuned for that!

Health Goth Update:

i’m going to work on getting back into daily posts starting tomorrow (with today’s meals).

Yes i have been struggling a great deal mentally, and yes that has translated into my eating- but i feel ready to get back on top of things:

why? because of your messages.

Some of your fellow Health Goths have sent me some incredibly kind, meaningful messages about how this blog has helped or inspired them- so if that’s the case, i better step up and keep up, right?

I am so grateful to all of you for participating in this blog and coming along for this ride with me.

Like Dracula, over and over, Heath Goth will be revived.

ps this is pumpkin pie icecream and it’s insane.