The Beginning of My Relationship with Food

Imagine that you are a waitress and you walk up to one of your customers to take their order. They say to you, “I am allergic to gluten, dairy, oats, peanut butter, and meat. Can you help me figure out what I can eat on your menu?” For most people that would blow their mind! All of those items figure highly on the Standard American Diet (SAD) and are recommended by the USDA for a balanced daily diet!

I found out a few months ago that I was unable to digest all of those things for now. I have something akin to a leaky gut which means I might be able to eat some foods again sometime, but for now I am discovering the joys of a gluten free, vegan diet, without oats or peanut butter. This blog is my story of some of the steps I took to discover my allergies and we’ll also discover together what in the world people with multiple food allergies/intolerances eat!

I have always had a good relationship with food. I have never been a picky eater and would try most anything. I always thought that I enjoyed vegetables and ate a good amount of them. However, when I entered my teen years I developed some junk food habits that were not even remotely healthy. We lived right next door to not one but two convenience stores and frozen soda, candy bars, ice cream, and the like were extremely available. This was the beginning of some bad habits that were hard to break down the road.

Fast forward to my community college time and I realized that I needed to do something different. I embarked on a low carbohydrate diet with my mom and sister and it was an exciting journey. We all lost weight, but the diet was so complicated and different from the way we were used to eating that we soon lost steam and were not able to follow it properly. One of the main reasons was that we liked bread so much!

Right after we started falling off the low carbohydrate bandwagon I got a new job and met my future husband. He asked me out in November, by February we were engaged, and at the end of June we were married! I had perpetual butterflies in my stomach, plus the stress of planning a wedding and I really can’t remember what I ate during that exciting time. I was able to keep some of the good habits I learned from the low carbohydrate diet including little to no sugar.

Of course once we were married all the diet stuff went out the window. My hubby wasn’t a terribly healthy eater and joining him with food a lot of the time seemed like the easiest course that first year. Right around our first anniversary I started to feel uncomfortable and look around for the next answer which ended up being Weight Watchers. My sister had just gotten started and since we are best buddies and do a lot of stuff together of course I joined her!

I loved Weight Watchers because I love plans and checking stuff off. I was thrilled that if I rode my bike before I left for work in the morning then I would likely to be able to have a sugary treat (usually ice cream!) when I got home. What I didn’t like about Weight Watchers was at that time they encouraged you to eat a lot of processed foods. In spite of that, I did really well on Weight Watchers for about six months and I could see my target weight goal in the near distance when another life event surprised me: I was pregnant with my first baby!