Now Sickle Cell Anaemia should have impacted positively on my feeding habits but I found it to be the entire opposite whilst growing up. Instead of making me crave to eat healthier it didn’t. I found myself disliking many of the meals that were recommended to be good for me. Soups and vegetables were never my thing. Fruits in addition. It took so much effort from me to long for those things or to indulge in them when they were close by.

During my early childhood years, I overheard my mum frequently complaining to her friends that she doesn’t really understand why every time she makes a lovely soup I would refuse to eat, Don’t get me wrong, I was never a junk foods eater but I had the foods I loved and soups were never part of it. I only seemed to enjoy eating when I was hungry, for me eating was to live and never the other way round. My dad on the other hand enjoyed teasing me that I hated food.

So when I ventured out to live by myself, you’ll expect that I would use the freedom I had to indulge in the things I loved but I found out that they were very few. Top of my list of foods was plantain. I could eat plantain with any vegetable soup and I could eat it steadily for weeks on end and not grow tired. Since I found no reason to eat vegetables, I decided to stew my vegetables for eating plantains. I sometimes added sweet potatoes and I could never pass off spaghetti from the list. These three things, I could eat with vegetable soups or stews.

In terms of fruits, banana was my favorite. But I got to understand at early age that there were two predominant varieties in my country of origin. The very sweet ones and the somewhat sour/sweet ones. My love for the sour/sweet ones stemmed from the fact that during my childhood whenever we would travel to my state of origin for the holidays, my folks would stop to buy the sweet variety which we all would indulge in on our road trip.

On arriving at our point of destination I constantly had regular belly aches. This was happening frequently until one day it dawned on me that the reason for me belly aches was stemming from the sweetness of the banana. I thus decided to avoid it as it wan’t worth the pain and cramps I went through. Years after, during my secondary school I stumbled on the sour/sweet variety and since then its become my favorite fruit. Eating banana’s for me requires less effort compared to eating other fruits which most times I find to be a chore.

That said, I’m sure most of you would like to know how I got over most of these unhealthy eating habits? Well, sadly my health started to suffer because I wasn’t eating right. It was either I boost my immunity against sickness OR face the pain of the intravenous needles /catheters and I chose the former. So what then do I do differently? Well, I make sure that I always add soups / sauces with loads of vegetables to my diet. Sometimes if I’ve deprived myself of veggies, I make a smoothie using kale and any citrus fruit and I drink it without straining the roughage (the purpose of eating the veggies is to improve the quality of my red blood cells from the chlorophyll contained in it).

I eat cereals too from time to time. Oat meal cereals. I try also to abstain from bread but sometimes I crave it so much that I indulge in a bit of it. Legumes, yes I eat lots of those. I like beans, and of course you can’t go wrong with my plantain and other tubers and roots like yam and sweet potatoes. It’s not so much, but I try to rotate the list and it works for me.
The funny thing was that I noticed that I started to enjoy most of the meals I had avoided whilst growing up, and it left me wondering what the initial fear was all along. An example is oat. I disliked oat while growing up – yuck! Little did I know it was the way it was being prepared that was putting me off until I was shown how to make it without cooking it until it becomes all soft. Just add it into boiled water and milk and cover for a minute or more. Add some fruits like raisins and there you go. Its been one of the tastiest cereals I’ve enjoyed having.

Hence, the reason behind my statement in last week’s post about understanding your body as a warrior and retracing your steps when it gives you signs.