Need Advice On Bland Foods Easy To Digest

[Christiana]

I've been existing off of liquid nutrion, ritz crackers with a little peanut butter, and graham crackers. Up until a few days ago, I was eating small protein bars too, but since they're chocolate, I've since given them up, thinking they may be contributing to my anxiety.

Tonight, I tried eating some plain oatmeal with just a tad of butter and sugar. So far, so good. I hope and pray I can keep it down and it doesn't lead to me having more nausea, as nausea has been one of my biggest withdrawal issues. It's been 6 months since my last dose of lexapro, which I cold turkeyed, due to what my doctor says is an adverse reaction.

Given that, can anyone here recommend some very bland foods, which are very easy to digest?

I don't know if any or all of them will work or not, but I'm sure willing to try.

Thanks for your help, in advance.

Christiana

[Songbird]

Foods that I found I could eat (during severe w/d): toasted English muffins, porridge, boiled eggs.

[nickels]

x2 on the english muffins and oatmeal or farina

steamed white rice, plain grilled chicken, plain pasta, baked potatoes, saltine crackers, pretzels, jello, bananas, chicken broth....can you do fruit? I like peeled apples with a little peanut butter as a snack.

Also for the nausea, have you tried anything with ginger? gingerale, ginger snaps or even ginger tea is good. Having an empty stomach makes nausea worse, so even if you can just nibble at some dry crackers, it should help a bit.

[Songbird]

Wow, you could eat chicken? I couldn't manage any 'normal' meat and veg for a long time. Bananas were okay, though. At times I could manage tinned spaghetti or baked beans or soup, as I began to improve.

[Ezin]

You've found the oats!

I don't know what kind of oats you've got, but the less processed they are, the more goodies they'll still have in them - I stumbled across steel-cut/pinhead oats by accident, and now use these to make the porridge. It's just the whole oat, chopped into a few pieces. If you decide to try this variety out, then one porridge recipe is (per person): 40g pinhead oats + 120ml water + 120ml milk; optional salt, sugar 10mls olive oil.... plonk in pan at bedtime, bring to boil stirring, switch off once at boil (no need to cook any further), take pan off heat, put lid on and go to bed. In morning, like magic, your pan will contain porridge - just heat and eat. Add your choice of syrup, should you wish. It's got a lovely nutty flavour. If you can't take milk, just add all water; if you like sugar, salt add them in, I've read that 10mls olive oil added to the recipe makes a lovely change - it would certainly get more good stuff into the system.

If you can manage oatmeal, then other grains may also be helpful. I've tried a few porridges not made with oats: quinoa flakes, millet flakes, buckwheat flakes - all very nice, but the buckwheat flavour may be too strong for you at the moment. Try the other two first if you head down that aisle....Just bung some in a pan, add water/milk (maybe soya milk if dairy is not good for your innards?), touch ginger (for nausea), and cook for few minutes. Mix with oatmeal too, for a mixed up porridge. If you can cope with banana, try a little chopped on top.

Whole millet can be cooked like rice, is mild, bland and full of nutrition. Budgies have been keeping it a secret. Add water, simmer for 15-20 minutes, drain and eat. If you want to test-try more flavour, simmer millet in: chicken stock, vegetable stock, water plus chopped onion (you may find the boiled onion is digestible), water plus a little tumeric... etc. A few raw cashew nuts sprinkled over the cooked millet will provide a lot of goodness - hopefully if you can manage peanuts, cashews may be okay.

Brown rice is a better option than white.

Plain chicken. Barley. Barley broth.

If you can handle a little citrus - lemon barley water (3 lemons,75-100g sugar, 3 tablespoons white pearled barley 1.25 litres water - simmer barley + water for 20mins, then pour the lot over the pared lemon zest and sugar, leave to cool; squeeze lemon juice into jug, strain/sieve the cooled barley water into the jug). Best chilled.

Green tea. Boiling water with a little fresh sliced ginger in it.

Pasta. Good quality noodles, like the 'Clearspring' brand.

I chanced upon a semi-macrobiotic book, had no idea what macrobiotic meant - and tried out some of their recipes, they tend to be very simple, bland and digestible... brown rice, beans. You cook the beans well & long, and for me they were okay. The book I have is Keith Michell's Practically Macrobiotic Cookbook. The home-made jellies (jellos) in the book were very digestible, just apple juice, some agar-agar (natural setting agent from seaweed), and a little fruit.

I found that food with strong smells could make me feel sick before it came near the mouth, so stuff like the noodles, green tea, brown rice, apple jello, and porridge were better.

[SareBare]

Im with you at the moment. nausea and diarrhoea have been terrible for 6 weeks now. I have lost 6 kilograms.

i can eat jelly. its plain. and wrap bread. uno that real thin mountain bread.
i can only maybe eat a few bites for a meal.
i try to eat 2 meals a day if i can minimum even though its hard and it does not sit well i.
also if you boil white rice and drink the water that the rice is boiled in that is ment to help an upset stomach. i have tried sipping on it. not sure if its working for me.

if you are tolerating more than that then rice, pasta, bread and plain crakers are your best bet. plain but got lots of carbs for energy.

i found this awesome homeopathic spray at a health food shop called nausea relief and i think its working quite well and the naturopath said it was ok to take. i spray it under the tongue and although i have diarrhoea i dont have the nausea i was having. i dont know if you could get anything like that maybe

[nickels]

Originally Posted by Songbird

Wow, you could eat chicken? I couldn't manage any 'normal' meat and veg for a long time. Bananas were okay, though. At times I could manage tinned spaghetti or baked beans or soup, as I began to improve.

LOL, actually no...the only protein I could eat was eggs, but I just listed it b/c its a really plain protein source and wanted to throw it out there as an option for her.

Actually, I never had nausea with withdrawal just very horrible IBS, I was going off what I'd eat with my morning sickness nausea once I was able to eat again. I was actually vomitting though, not sure if this is the case here, so she may be able to tolerate different foods.

[eileen]

I found that I could eat mashed potatoes or baked potato with some Becel margarine mashed in it. Eggs were hard on me unless they were soft poached or soft boiled. Ginger tea, made from ginger root was very helpful.

Crystallized ginger, if you can get it, is excellent to take away nausea and make you feel better. This will pass over for you but you should make sure that you rule out other things as I was sick late in my withdrawal and it was from a blood pressure med.

Eileen

[nicole55]

Try some peppermint candies throughout the day. Peppermint can really help with nausea etc, and upset stomach.

Cereal is really bland, don't get the super sugary kind. Try like cheerios, or rice krispies or Kix. When I was really bad, I just ate the cheerios dry as a snack.

And as everyone else has mentioned potato, crackers, toast with a small amount of jelly.

Rice and pasta. I couldn't do the pasta with tomato sauce or heavy cream sauce. I just made the sauce with a little bit of butter melted on top with just one shake of oregano for flavor.

Sometimes I could tolerate a little chicken noodle soup with lots of noodles and lots of crackers.

[Christiana]

Thank you all sooooo much!!! You're the greatest!!!

My stomach is still a mess ,with the nausea, but I know I have to force myself to eat, so I'm at least trying your suggestions one at a time. There doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason, but sometimes they agree with me a little better than others, but I'll keep trying. Surely, it will let up before long, as I'm now entering the beginning of my 7th month of withdrawal from an adverse reaction to lexapro, thus I had to cold turkey, which I know is making it a lot harder on me.

Thanks again for your care and concern to try to help me get some needed nutrition into my body!!!

Christiana