And the fried food and sweets? Three donuts. Strawberry cream, vanilla cream, and chocolate cream.
You might wonder why I’m even telling you this.
Well, here’s the thing.
For over a year now, I’ve quit eating all kinds of sweets. And by sweets, I mean all sweet-flavored snacks, all sweet-flavored drinks, and all sweet-flavored treats (except water and foods that naturally contain sugar, like vegetables or fruits, stuff like that).
I’ve also quit eating flour-based foods that don’t come from rice or naturally starchy vegetables and fruits, especially ultra-processed foods, bread, bakery items, pastries, and flour-based noodles. I try to avoid eating them too, unless there’s really no other choice or I eat them once in a blue moon.
As for fried food… I can eat some, but if I have a choice, I try to avoid it as well.
You might think, wow, this woman is ridiculously strict about health. What’s with all that? Is she competing for some Outstanding Health Advocate of the Year award or something?
The truth is, 99% of the main reason comes from me having multiple cavities. Some were so bad that one tooth needed a root canal and a crown. And we’re not talking about a short period here. It took months of treatment. Especially the root canal and crown for that one tooth.
When I finished all my dental work and saw the total bill, tears practically flowed from my eyes down to my toes. I also felt dizzy and nearly passed out (and no, it wasn’t from crying too much).
From that moment on, I made a vow to become enemies with any food that’s an enemy of my teeth.
And the number one enemy of teeth is none other than ‘sugar.’ So I cut it out of my life immediately after walking out of the dental clinic.
Goodbye… forever. (I mean goodbye to sugar, not the dental clinic).
Followed by flour-based foods, especially highly processed flour that eventually turns into sugar, because if it sits in my mouth for too long, it can hurt my teeth just the same.
Which means I basically had to rebuild my entire lifestyle.
From eating countless meals a day and snacking on treats all day long, I had to quit all of that. I can only eat two main meals a day because I have to brush my teeth after every meal to prevent any more cavities. Combined with brushing before bed, that’s at least three times a day (any more than that and my teeth would probably wear out before they could decay).
So besides those two meals a day, I can’t eat anything outside of mealtimes except plain water.
Everything started with quitting sugar, followed by refined flour and highly processed flour.
Once I managed to quit these two types of food, combined with eating only two meals a day and not being able to snack or eat treats outside mealtimes, that constant urge to nibble on this and that all the time like before just disappeared.
My tongue started adjusting to less intensely flavored food. That is, I got used to food without sweetness, and gradually moved on to food without saltiness (because as I get older, my kidneys slowly deteriorate over time, so I had to start taking care of my kidneys too). Eventually, I got used to bland-tasting food.
As for fried food, I eat less of it too, because many of my teeth aren’t strong enough to chew crunchy and hard foods. The dentist who did my crown told me not to eat hard, crunchy, and sticky foods to preserve my teeth (the crown, the filled teeth, and all my remaining real teeth) so they’ll stay in good condition longer.
One time I ate crispy fried chicken from that famous brand… you know, the one everyone knows and loves to eat because it’s delicious… and their chicken is seriously crispy, lives up to its name. After eating it just once, my teeth were sore and throbbing for two whole days. I thought I’d have to go back and pay the dental clinic another round.
Since then, I quit eating fried food too.
So now I don’t eat sweets, don’t eat salty stuff, and don’t eat fried food.
So I accidentally turned into a health-conscious eater.
Now, back to my dream last night. In the dream, someone handed me three big donuts, and they looked really good. You could tell they’d be delicious because they were topped with vanilla cream, chocolate cream, and strawberry cream that I used to love eating in the past.
But even in the dream, the dentist’s warning and my fear of cavities still managed to creep in.
So I picked them up and took one bite of each, then told the dentist in my dream, “Just three bites. After eating, I’ll go brush my teeth right away. It’ll be fine.”
And then I woke up…
If you ask me, “So, were the donuts in the dream good?”
I’d say the taste was alright, pretty sweet. But there wasn’t much fried dough flavor. Not sure if whoever made them skimped on the oil or what.
I once watched a video of a famous doctor. He explained that the reason he was always a good student and got high scores throughout his life was because he studied by reading books in his dreams. That’s when I learned people can actually read in their dreams.
And today I found out people can eat in their dreams too.
If I’d known from the start it was a dream, I would’ve eaten the whole shop, not just three bites. What a waste, really.