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Nausea and eating

Eating enough protein while feeling sick

Started 10 May 2025 · 20 replies · 195 hearts · read 4k times

GwynethAberdare, UK · 10 May 2025
about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Eating enough protein while feeling sick

I have avoided asking about this for six weeks out of pure embarrassment.

I have written down when it happens and how long it lasts, because I could not answer either of those questions when my GP asked and I felt foolish.

Squeamish subject, so I am going to be plain about it and get it over with. It has been going on for long enough now that I would like to know whether it is ordinary.

I want to describe this accurately rather than politely, because the polite version is what I said at my last appointment and it got me nowhere.

Thanks in advance. Even a one-line "yes, me too" would help more than you would think.

65

RenataKraków, PL
#1

Toast. Endless toast. Six weeks of toast and I was fine, and my bloods at the end of it were unremarkable.

9

IlseMaastricht, NL
#2

Picking up Renata’s point rather than starting a new one.

I raised it at my review having tracked it for three weeks and we changed one thing. It was a much shorter conversation than I had rehearsed.

8me too 4

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal
#3

Facilitator note: pharmacists are the most underused people in this whole business and several of the questions on this page are ones they answer in ten minutes at a counter.

21

RayBarnsley, UK
#4

Agreed, and I have nothing to add to it.

9

WilfStoke, UK
#5

Ilse, thank you for that. It gives me somewhere to start from.

Cold food was the thing that worked for me. Anything hot and aromatic was impossible for about six weeks and cold worked when nothing else did.

8me too 8

PerlaManila, PH
#6

Coming back to say it lifted. Five weeks of genuinely difficult and then it went, and I have eaten normally for eighteen months since.

12

NoleneDurban, ZA
#7

Ginger did nothing for me and mint did a surprising amount, and I have watched other people here report exactly the opposite. It seems genuinely individual.

6

Bell ANorwich, UK
#8

Coming back to what Wilf wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

What got me through was very small amounts, very often, and not caring at all what they were. Nutrition can wait a fortnight; not eating anything cannot.

9

CasperOdense, DK
#9

Building on what Perla wrote rather than answering the original question.

I had to stop treating a day of not managing much as a failure. My body was doing something and I was busy grading it.

8

BryonyMalvern, UK
#10

The pattern for mine was days two and three, every time, reliably. Once I knew that, I planned around it and it stopped being an ambush.

12

VivLuton, UK
#11

I lived on the same four things for about six weeks and felt guilty about it, and my dietitian said, in effect, good, keep going, we will widen it later.

10me too 9

TemSouthend, UK
#12

Fizzy water helped me and flat water did not, which makes no sense and was consistently true for about two months.

11

BramleyBath, UK
#13

Tem — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Please do not push through a whole day of nothing on principle. I did that twice and both times it made the following day considerably worse.

8

BrynAberystwyth, UK
#14

The texture thing surprised me. Anything with more than one texture in it was difficult and simple, uniform food was fine.

10

OrvalWinnipeg, CA
#15

Coming back to what Tem wrote further up, because it is the bit I keep thinking about.

Protein was completely impossible for me during the worst of it and I stopped trying. It came back and it came back quickly once the nausea lifted.

11

GabePhoenix, AZ
#16

Something practical: I kept a bag of what I could actually manage in my work locker, so a bad afternoon did not turn into a bad evening.

5me too 4

DaraAthlone, IE
#17

The thing that changed it for me was a slower schedule agreed with my prescriber. Within a fortnight the eating side was manageable again.

11

MimiHong Kong
#18

Picking up Dara’s point rather than starting a new one.

I want to say gently that if the difficulty eating has started to feel like relief rather than a symptom, that is worth mentioning to somebody. It crept up on me and a member here noticed before I did.

8

TomásFacilitatorLisbon, Portugal
#19

Holding for a second on a habit rather than on anybody: people in this circle call their own symptoms trivial, and they are usually not. If you have done it on this page, I would rather name it than let it go by.

12

RenataKraków, PL
#20

Mine came in waves of about twenty minutes and if I could sit still through the wave it passed. Trying to do anything during it always made it worse.

7