Moderation

Like with most things in life moderation is definitely key and it is even more important in my mind after ostomy surgery. Not just in the healing period but for the rest of your life with an ostomy. I’m not trying to be preachy when I say don’t gorge yourself on certain food or drink but more from experience!

When I started to feel myself again after my surgery and for the first time in a really long time I wasn’t in pain any more and food were no longer triggers I literally ate everything I could and as much of it as I could stomach. This wasn’t the best idea in hindsight but allowed me to pinpoint some very specific areas I needed to learn to moderate.

For example if I eat too much potato during the day and I mean even 2 potions of chips – even at separate meals with plenty to drink I’m 98% of the time going to have a leak through pancaking as the starch in the potato thickens my output up.

But it even transfers to fluids if I drink too much plain water it flushes out the electrolytes in my system as there isn’t anything in the water for my body to hold on too.

However other people find:

• eating too much fibre sends their output loopy
• obviously alcohol is one regardless of having an ostomy we all can struggle with remembering to moderate
• being able to eat fatty/sugary foods that one mainly because although it is tasty it isn’t always the best choice to eat (all the time anyway!)
• fish, asparagus (for our urostomate friends) or garlic tend to be big issues for odour so ostomates have been known to limit or give these a miss
• trigger foods tend to be kept to a minimum I’ve noticed possibly due to the psychological factor

Have you noticed you have had to moderate things more than before even if that means in the time before you were sick? Are there specific foods rather than just things that were trigger foods? Or are you one of the lucky few who nothing affects them enough to be noticed?