Ooey gooey cinnamon rolls. Cheesy thick crust pizza. Fried chicken. Toothpaste. Salad dressings. Licorice. What do all of these have in common?
The little devil I like to call gluten. (didn't even know what gluten was! It is the protein found in wheat, aka, it is in everything that flour is in, and is even added as a thickener in random stuff)
I can't have gluten, or dairy, or eggs, or sesame, or mushrooms, or cranberry, or I can't remember what else at the moment. But pretty much anything yummy I can't have it. I was talking to the hubs and we were discussing how I have been cheating way too much lately and have been feeling kind of really horrible. Go figure. Who knew eating something you shouldn't eat makes you feel sick? You would think I would have gotten that memo sooner. Work brain work.
So anyways, we also discussed how I am a very motivated person, when I want to be. And when I don't want to be, I'm not. at all. Well needless to say, I can't seem to motivate myself to eat like I should so I can feel pleasant. I decided to come up with a plan. Maybe I would be motivated if I had to "air my dirty laundy" so to speak. Everyone always asks me with wide googly eyes, "What do you even eat?!" after I tell them my dietary restrictions, so it might be interesting to see what a gluten/dairy free lady eats? Maybe not, but I am going to do it anyways. I thought I would start off with the story though.
As I look back on my life, I can totally see how I have had a gluten/dairy problem for AWHILE but I just had no idea. For example, when I was going to highschool, my "healthy" meals and snacks consisted of honey-wheat pretzels, whole wheat bagel sandwiches with cream cheese, cottage cheese, whole wheat toast...you get my gist. I never felt great, or even good at all, but always just chalked it up to my spina bifida. Actually, in 9th grade I brought up this brilliant idea to my doctor to just drink juice and slim fasts to maybe ease my body of some of the pain. He looked at me and in a very stern voice said "Don't you EVER do that. You have spina bifida. It doesn't matter if you have a slice of pizza or a slice fruit because your problems come from spina bifida". Looking back at that comment, he was probably scared I would develop an eating disorder, but I still kind of feel like going back to him and punching him in the face and taking back all the money my parents spent on his stupid advice. But he was right, BARELY. There are certain issues spina bifida kids have to face for their whole lives because of the defect, and I definitely deal with all that, on top of all this food craziness. Most spina bifida people don't have gluten or dairy intolerances. Unfortunately I am the exception.
Fast forward to March 2010, my freshman year of college. I was gradually feeling worse and worse as my freshman year went on but I was used to not feeling well and dealing with it. Then in the beginning of March, I started throwing up, and it didn't stop. Literally. I ate pizza, didn't stay down. I drank water, didn't stay down. I ate a grape, didn't stay down. I started keeping a tally to give to the doctors and I would throw up on average 15 times a day, up to 20 times a day. If I drove, I had to have a couple cups in the car for when I wasn't at a stop light and could just open my door. If I sat and watched TV I had to have a bowl next to me. One time I wasn't driving so they had to pull over for me, and a cop stopped and came up to me thinking I was drunk as I was puking on the side of the road. That was definitely a low point. So pretty much, I was a mess. a disaster more like it. I had no idea what was going on, and the doctors didn't either. I didn't have any accompanying nausea so naturally they thought I had an eating disorder. They tested me for a brain tumor on a certain part of my brain that would control gag reflexes, they scoped me a couple times, they tested my gallbladder, they tested I don't even know what else. But pretty much everything. And all my tests came up completely normal. They really thought I had an eating disorder then so they put me on some anti-depressant because they thought it was all in my mind or some mumbo jumbo like that? All the anti-depressant did was make me sleep for 12+ hours a day. oh and make me even more not happy. Why do they call it an anti-depressant when it actually makes a lot of people more depressed? That was a tangent, so anyways, while all these tests were showing nothing, I became desperate. I took the anti-depressant crap in the first place because I got to the point where I didn't care what was wrong with me, I just wanted to be fixed. I would have totally been "happy" (way too strong of a word) if I truly had an eating disorder because then we could work on fixing it. I was probably on the road to creating an eating disorder for myself because I would go from the extreme of not eating if I had to be somewhere to the extreme of eating whatever I wanted because I knew I would throw up anyways. I was getting stuck in a rut. But luckily, I was told about a naturopathic doctor and started that route. Hallelujah for that! I would get IV's of nutrients every week so I could even get out of my bed, and they did a blood test for any food allergies. Ding ding ding that was the winner. I went from one day eating whatever I wanted to the next day having a whole list of foods I couldn't and probably never eat again (well unless of course I cheated haha). It may sound silly, and it really is because food should just be fuel, but that was probably one of the hardest days of my life. I am a "foodie" and LOVE food and all the different flavors combining in my mouth, and all of a sudden I couldn't have any of it. It was a slow, agonizing road that I am not and will not ever be done with (because I love food so much and will always be tempted) but I have been able to find some things that I do enjoy, and are kosher! (kosher for me, I have been known to have pork every once in a while)
Next post will be some recipes and for anyone curious, what a gluten/dairy free person eats every day :) Hopefully this will motivate me to stick to my dietary plan! Let's see how this goes...
