Eating enough on a bad week when cooking is impossible

Started 14 May 2025 · 20 replies · 214 hearts · read 3.2k times

GroverPortland, ME · 14 May 2025

about a year ago

Starting a thread on this because it keeps coming up in ones and twos: Eating enough on a bad week when cooking is impossible

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

My prescriber has been fine, genuinely. The problem is that I get nine minutes twice a year and there is no version of nine minutes that covers this.

I have written down what has actually happened, in order, because I find that more useful than my summary of it.

What I keep tripping on is not the physical bit. It is the not knowing whether what I am experiencing is normal, and having nobody to ask who is not either selling something or frightened for me.

Thanks all. Genuinely.

TamGlasgow, UK

Practical, boring answer: write the three questions down before you go in. I have never once remembered them otherwise.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

Gently disagreeing with the opening post, or rather adding the other half of it.

Thank you for writing this. I am not going to add information to it. I am going to say that what you have described is very common and very rarely said out loud.

15me too 7

BrunoMilan, IT

The thing that changed it for me was going slower, agreed with my prescriber. I am not suggesting you do that. I am saying the conversation exists.

SolomonManchester, UK

Have you got anyone who can be with you when you do it? It made an enormous difference to me and I felt silly asking.

TychoLeiden, NL

What helped was lowering my own expectations of the week rather than trying to hold the week together.

HuwWrexham, UK

My experience was very boring, which I offer as data. Some of us just get a dull time of it.

BunnyWeston-super-Mare, UK

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I am the person who had the frightening version of this. I went in, it was investigated, and it was not what anyone feared. Going in is the whole of my advice.

HarriSwansea, UK

Coming back to this a fortnight later to say it settled. Leaving the update because I hate reading threads that stop.

HarlanDenver, CO

What the reply above described happened to me too, in a slightly different order.

I have been in this circle a year and this question comes round every few months. It is not a silly question. It is the question.

TemSouthend, UK

#10

Similar here, and mine turned out to be a completely unrelated deficiency picked up on bloods.

AshSunderland, UK

#11

the reply above said something I want to sit with for a second.

I am about four months behind you and I have been dreading exactly this, so thank you for writing it down before I got there.

HollyBath, UK

#12

Yes to the burping. It is real, it is unbeautiful, and it does settle.

MaisieScarborough, UK

#13

Can I gently push back on one thing? Not the substance, just the framing — you have written twice that you should be coping better. Who told you that?

TeganNewport, UK

#14

Reading the reply above, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

My pharmacist was more use than anyone. Ten minutes at the counter, no appointment, no charge.

5me too 2

WystanCheltenham, UK

#15

No advice, just recognition. That sounds exhausting and I am sorry you are in it.

FitzLimerick, IE

#16

I keep a two-line diary and it is the only reason I could answer this question about myself. Worth starting even now.

NorahDerry, NI

#17

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

Different experience here, for balance. Mine did not improve and in the end I stopped, and that was the right call for me. Both outcomes exist.

9me too 7

MaritGroningen, NL

#18

The phrase that unlocked my appointment was asking what specifically she wanted me to watch for. It moved us from reassurance to a plan in about thirty seconds.

KikiFacilitatorGlasgow, UK

#19

Gently: you have apologised three times in a post where you have done nothing that requires an apology.

CassWakefield, UK

#20

Please do not read the comments under news articles about this. I lost a fortnight to that.