matcha mondays: ☕🍵: a weekly, monday morning check-in for entrepreneurs. start your week like a leader. build your business from the inside out.
grab your fav beverage (matcha optional) and lets start the week together.
last week i shared that i’d been sick.
but what i didn’t realize at the time was that i wasn’t actually getting better.
the infection itself had mostly passed, but my stomach never really came back online.
every time i tried to eat, i’d immediately get nauseous. i kept assuming it would resolve itself in another day or two, so i didn’t think much of it.
i was feeling better in other ways, so i started easing back into normal life. i even went to dance class because i was so ready to get out of the house after being cooped up for a week.
looking back, it seems so obvious.
but at the time, i didn’t realize that i had gone almost a week without eating much of anything. and to be more specific- i had been eating no more than 500 calories a day for 8 days in a row. i’m talking: crackers. broth. rice.
it wasn’t until my monday morning dance class that i noticed something was off. it wasn’t that my body couldn’t do the choreography—it was that my brain couldn’t process it. i couldn’t remember combinations or pick up movements the way i normally would. over the next few days i just felt... floaty. lightheaded. like my brain wasn’t fully online.
in some ways it was kind of fun. i felt high on life. but also i knew this wasn’t normal or sustainable.
i kept trying to feed myself.
i’d take a few bites of something, immediately feel nauseous, take medication, lie down for hours, feel a little better, and then avoid eating again because i didn’t want to repeat the experience.
by wednesday night, my body hit a breaking point.
the nausea became unbearable. i had intense reflux that gave me a burning sensation. i felt like my whole digestive system was on fire.
plus after a week+ of being undernourished i was so weak. i could barely muster the energy to kick the kickstand on my motorbike.
that night i had to cancel a client call because i knew i couldn’t hold a proper coaching space.
at that point it was 10:30 pm. i knew it wasn’t urgent enough to seek emergent medical care. i would wait until morning. but i didn’t realize just how long that night would feel.
for hours I laid in my bed. too weak to move. too uncomfortable to fall asleep.
how did i get here? my mind ran a post game analysis of the past week.
turns out i had been overriding my body without even realizing i was doing it. it’s something the culture of medicine taught me very well.
in 1000 implicit ways. but also explicitly too.
my very first week of intern year, one of my 4th years said something to the effect of
” you don’t get sick days. you’re either in the hospital. or you are in the hospital”
translation: you are either in the hospital working your shift + pushing through. or you get so sick you need to be hospitalized.
as a shining example of this ethos one of our MIS fellows was performing a surgery, when she started noticing drops of blood on the floor in the OR.
the blood was coming from a concerning looking lesion on her back. one that she kept meaning to get checked out at the dermatologist. but when you’re in medical training working 80+ hrs a week who has the time?
from what i remember the lesion turned out to be some kind of skin cancer. maybe even a melanoma? I just remember the cautionary email she sent out to the list-serv as a reminder to take care of ourselves.
but the problem is, without a culture that reinforces and rewards caring for yourself, all reminders to do so are just lip service.
and the other problem is, that apparently even when you leave the culture, it still lingers in your internal operating system.
whether you’ve done medical training or not, the way most of us have learned to be successful is by pressing the OVERRIDE button.
keep pushing through. keep negotiating with your body’s signals.
keep squeezing every last ounce of resource out of yourself.
because if you aren’t on EMPTY…. you haven’t given enough yet.
the floaty heady feeling. override.
the full body weakness. override.
the inability to feed yourself for days. override.
there’s a part of me that is SO practiced at overriding my own needs, i don’t always recognize when i’m doing it.
and here’s the hard part.
this approach works.
you can drink some coffee and make up for a lack of sleep.
you can grind out a 14hr work day when you’ve got a deadline.
you can take some ibuprofen to erase your headache and get back in the game.
you can go for a few days without food and pretend like you are just fasting.
the override button works.
… until it doesn’t
there’s a point where you’ve gone SO far outside your capacity that it feels like the button got jammed.
you can’t switch yourself back on. no matter how hard you try.
and when you hit that point, it’s usually pretty dire.
sooo…
that’s exactly where i found myself on wednesday night. it was the moment where my override button was malfunctioning.
by that point, i’d gone more than eight days with super minimal calories and i was essentially decompensating.
i fully realized i couldn’t keep trying to handle this on my own. i needed someone else to take over because i couldn’t take care of myself anymore.
at 6am, i reached out to my friend and former client (who also happens to be a GI doctor!) and sent her this message.
she called me at 7am and we made a plan. my housekeeper would take me to the clinic and she would meet me there.
even in my state of complete depletion and exhaustion: asking someone point blank “can you help me”
felt terrifying and uncomfortable. no wonder i waited until i was absolutely desperate to make the call.
and actually- when i go back to that moment, the word that. comes to me is “embarrassing”.
i felt embarrassed to ask for help.
which means somewhere underneath that is shame.
shame for not being able to figure it out on my own.
shame for failing to take care of myself.
shame for needing someone.
but here’s the thing about shame: its a scam. the moment it meets the light of day it has nothing to hold onto.
as soon as i asked for help. and experienced people showing up for me. the shame disappeared.
i was left with.
relief
gratitude
connectedness.
after fluids, medication, and finally getting some food into my body, things slowly started moving in the right direction.
medically speaking I have post infectious gastroparesis. which means my stomach essentially stopped working after my GI bug last week.
i’m still recovering and honestly just taking it one day at a time.
my main focus right now is getting enough calories into my body so that i stop losing weight (i’ve lost at least 5kgs since this started)
my days revolve around a few simple questions:
how do i get calories in?
the struggle to feed myself is real as i figure out what to eat that won’t trigger immediate nausea.
right now i’m rocking a blands diet of papaya. watermelon. bone broth. rice.
sometimes i can add in a poached egg if i’m feeling crazy.
and then i’ll also try to subsidize my calories by drinking gatorade and snacking on crackers.
i’ve been getting around 1200 calories a day for the past few days. still not ideal, but significant improvement.
2. is this worth spending my calories on?
with so few calories in, i have to be super careful about energy expenditure. every social event, every work task, every physical action has to justify itself as “worth the cost”.
i can’t just go to a meetup to check it out- because i’ll be depleted for other things that really matter.
i can’t spend 5 or 6 hrs a day working- because i don’t have that bandwidth right now.
i have to be diabolically precise with where i choose to spend my calories.
(so the fact that i’m writing this substack means- it has made it through the energy filter!)
and as i was preparing for my “energy conservation era", I remembered there’s an animal with a similar approach to life.
sloths.
have you ever wondered why sloths move so slow? they are chronically undernourished because of their diet.
so they’ve adapted by becoming absolute masters of energy conservation. they lower their metabolic rate. they move slowly. and they don’t waste energy on things that aren’t essential.
so lately they have become my mentor and my muse.
what would a sloth do? has been my constant mantra and refrain over the past few days.
and living in a calorie deficit is teaching me about the power of constraint. it forces us to become more intentional
there’s a quote that i believe leila hormozi said:
“frugality drives innovation.”
usually she’s talking about money. but it also applies with energy.
what happens when energy becomes your most limited resource? you have to get creative and find a way to work within that constraint.
you stop doing things that don’t matter.
you look for simpler ways to work.
you delegate more.
you become incredibly intentional with every ounce of effort you spend.
and as much as i’m learning and growing during this time I also don’t want to gaslight myself for having my human experience.
because it has been really difficult.
there are moments where i feel sad that my world has shrunk to calories in and calories out. i miss walking, dancing, and moving my body the way i normally do. those things are such a big part of how i take care of my mental health.
i cry. i video chat friends. i journal. i let myself feel all of that without bypassing it.
and then i come back to the question that’s been guiding me lately:
how is this good?
not because i want to pretend this experience isn’t difficult.
it is difficult.
but i can also see how it’s teaching me things i probably wouldn’t have learned any other way.
for now, i’m slowing things down. simplifying. getting rid of everything not essential.
i’m learning how to listen to my body, ask for help, and let myself be taken care of.
and in this moment. that’s all i can do.
(but also… if anyone knows how i can get some caffeine in my body without destroying my GI tract, send recs my way. 2 weeks without coffee is not a good look for me.)
Wow... thanks for sharing. This is so well-written (as usual), but in particular, I love this thought - "what would a sloth do?"
Please continue to listen to your body (and not the override button).