how egg freezing accidentally made me better at feeding myself
notes on bloating, broth, and building a new kind of nourishment
I didn’t expect egg freezing to change the way I eat…
I was expecting the bloating, the hormone swings (whatever that means), but what I didn’t expect was how loud my body would get. How certain foods, once comforting, suddenly felt like too much. How full I’d feel after just a few bites and how quickly my appetite would vanish. All the usual ways I fed myself — with speed, convenience, driven by my love for food — just didn’t cut it anymore.
Then after all was said and done, when the 2 weeks of hormone injections, and egg retrieval process was finished, I was rolled out of the operating room in a daze where the doctor recommended I recover with high protein water-based meals.
What followed wasn’t some optimized eating plan or a glow-up moment. It was messier, quieter, where I listened to my body and went back to my cultural cuisine that’s rich with water based cooking methods of braising, soups, and steaming, without sacrificing any flavor and packed with protein. And my body responded in full — where things went down easy and gave back energy instead of taking it for digesting and processing. Meals that respected what my body was actually going through and what it had just went through (growing double the amount of eggs it’s used to in such a short time span!!).
This recipe — a Chinese braised beef shank noodle soup with bok choy — was one of the first meals that felt right again. It's rich in protein, easy to digest, and grounded in the kind of slow simmered, deeply flavorful cooking I grew up with. It’s also forgiving: cook a whole shank, freeze what you don’t finish (meat & stock), then reheat it when your energy’s low and your belly’s feeling picky.
It was never meant to be anything special — just a bowl of something warm that didn’t fight back. But over time, these kinds of meals started forming a quiet rhythm in my kitchen. Food that felt like care. Food that fed my future self, even when the present one wasn’t sure what she needed.
So this is the first in a small, soft series: recipes from my egg freezing era — high-protein, water-based, and easy on a sensitive gut. Whether you're navigating your own fertility path, healing your digestion, or just craving something deeply nourishing, I hope it brings you comfort too.
Let’s start with the broth.