Narrow View of Food

First off, this is a very personal story and if you can relate, I would love to hear your story.

Food is the Enemy of me

I feel for every single person out there who is dealing with diet and food restrictions. I understand what its like to be told your favorite food is killing you. I always seem to bounce in and out of different diets (medical reasons) and they do and don't help with the weight loss. 

For example, in my childhood, I was twelve when I was diagnosed with well, every food allergy imaginable. 

Gluten	Corn	Tomato's	Zucchini
Mushrooms	Blueberries	Yeast	Coffee
Tree Nuts	Dairy	Sunflower

Did that list make your head spin? It did for me at the age of 12 when they said, oh Pizza, Spaghetti, and most things you eat are what is making you sick. This list was also longer, I just don't remember everything on the list. 

Just after, my parents were given this huge list of things I couldn't eat and what I actually could. After the doctors appointment, my parents tried to take me out to eat. (Harder than you would think) Subway didn't have any gluten free options or salad options. So They wrapped my veggies and meat without bread in paper. I felt like crying, It felt like my life had stopped. 

The next few days my parents kept me home from school to get all the paperwork in order and help me learn what I can and can't eat. It took a while of sitting on the floor with google learning everything that is on the back of the label and what all is in it.

If you never looked at the back of a label recently, do you know what half of it is?

Here is what a standard label looks like on the back of the package. The nutrition facts are clear easy to read and to most people, they don't know what it all means. I know I didn't.

Then we come to the ingredients list.

White Corn, what is the difference between white and yellow corn?

The we come to vegetable oil, and the have four possible ingredients it may or may not have come from! I couldn't have corn or sunflower, so my parents would nix anything with vegetable oil, That was quite frustrating. Maltodextrin, well nine, ten years ago when I was full of allergies, Maltodextrin didn't come with an explanation. it was just written on a package called maltodextrin.

Lactose, isn't that something in milk?    Whey? What Whey? Monosodium glutamate, If you haven't gotten the point yet I could go on, but for my sake I wont.


I still felt like the world had ended, and my friends didn't understand how I could "all of a sudden" be allergic to everything. But in reality, I just felt so bad all the time I had gotten used to it. Bad Asthma, hives, and stomach pains were just apart of every day life.

I have a few stories that at the time, were horrible, scary and made me love life.

1. First, right after my allergies were properly diagnosed, my doctor had the bright idea to give me these grass drops to try and desensitize me to grass. At first, the goal was to take one drop in 16 ounces of water. thankfully my father though this to be a bit much, and gave me half a drop in 32 ounces of water. 
It took about two minutes for my hives to develop and to start to feel wheezy, light headed and just all around ill. My dad gave me some Zyrtec and made me lie down. Those drops when away quickly after and they switched me to shots. 

This short quick story is one of many experiments by the doctors to try and help me. Unfortunately there was not a lot of research done at the time about such things and nobody really knew where to turn in the case of childhood allergies.

2. My next story is about a year later in 7th grade P.E where my teacher was a huge jerk. I had asthma and allergies, all documented with the school from a doctor, with the note that I had an inhaler with me. (which I did) While doing the two mile during class one day, maintenance was mowing the lawn next to the track, and not to mention it was march, one of my worst months. I began to have an asthma attack where it hurt to breath, my throat felt tight, my chest hurt and I was getting dizzy. My friends noticed and tried to take me to the office so they could call my mom, and the teacher ever so nicely told me to, and I quote. "Stop faking it and continue running." My friends yelled at him and took me to the office anyways. Where they gave me my inhaler and tried to call 911. I made them call my mom first. Mom gets there to receive a lecture on how I should keep my inhaler in my shorts (school issued shorts had no pockets) and that I needed to manage better in the future.  The school told me after I complained about my teachers response that its "not his job to care and I need to be more proactive." First off, I am 12, Its not my job to be so on top of my medical issues that I don't cause a disruption to my teacher. If I need help, I want them to help! But, no, that was not the case. 

This is not the only time a teacher basically tried to punish me for not being healthy. It happened over and over. I think my absolute favorite story was in my freshman year of high school

3. While taking the required 9th grade health class, I was given the assignment of the food journal. To write what and how much you ate for a week. I asked my parents to help with this and my dad and I spent a few hours making the assignment look good before we printed it, and I took it and turned it in. The goal was to get us to reflect on what we were eating and to be aware of the foods we put in our body. I was 14, couldn't have corn syrup (no candy, cookies, anything sweet or processed really) or anything else on the list above. My diet was salads and meat with some fruits, but I cant eat most fruit skins because they contain Latex. (Oh yes, High School was Great!) After a week, our teacher finally gave back the assignments and mine was a D-. D-, that may have been an F. I asked her after class, and so did my friends who would and could attest that my diet really was that strict. She, my teacher told me that "It doesn't seem realistic for a high schooler to eat this healthy and strict." well...teach...It IS POSSIBLE!!! Its called childhood allergies and again, documentation with the school, the lunchroom, and the district. Like all she had to do was open my file and see 'oh yeah, she does have to eat like this' instead, I had to have my parents talk to the principle and teacher to get my grade raised to where it should be. She also wanted me to do another food journal "this time with my parents help." to record what I ate... to her surprise, it was VERY SIMILAR!!! Even better part of this story is that this teacher hated and I mean Loathed my until after I graduated and my sister began to play Tennis for her. Then magically I was one of her great students and she gets excited to see me. This makes sense right? Yeah, no, it didn't to me either. 

I really felt defeated during middle and high school when I had to worry about if my health would effect my grade, and in all honesty, it did. To make things worse or better, depending on how you look at it, I didn't know anyone else with allergies like me, Watching your friends eat pizza, and nachos and basically anything you can think of that is good, I couldn't have it. I did however, get to the point where sugar wasn't even appealing to me anymore. Still isn't.

4. When I was 14 and got pneumonia for the first time in my life. (actually, about a month after story #3) I was so sick, that my doctor was trying to control my asthma to even have a chance at fighting the pneumonia. I couldn't sleep or breath very well. I was coughing all the time which made my asthma worse. My allergist gave me a chest x-ray and told me to stop coughing. After nearly a week of him not calling with results, my parents took me to the pediatrician. (I saw that doctor until I was about 17) and he, a great guy said, its more than just a bad asthma episode, she is ill. He asked to take a chest x-ray and I said I didn't want another, I just had one. Naturally he got curious and had the nurse call the doctor while he talked with my parents about different options to help relieve my pain and cough. When the nurse entered saying my allergist himself was on the phone wanting to speak with the doctor. (Doctors rarely actually get on the phone with each other unless 1. there is great need or 2. the doctor made a mistake) in my case, it was the latter of the offenses. He had my results for over a week and had not looked at them!
Once I was diagnosed with pneumonia my pediatrician gave me some extremely powerful cough syrup meant to knock me out (on top of different allergy and asthma medicines). I hadn't slept in a few days, and needed the sleep. and thankfully, it did the tick. I slept for something like 15 hours and while I wasn't perfect when I work up. I felt so much better! 

One great thing that did come of all my allergy problems. I was able to really learn to cook and eat healthy because I had to. I also kept my weight down by being gluten free, and well, free of most things. By the time I was a senior in high school, I was able to eat more, because gluten free was becoming more popular. Ha, my 16th birthday, we had a big cake from our local grocery store bakery for all my friends, and I had this small little gluten, corn, dairy, and basically life free cake on my own. It was an extremely unique party to say the least.

Because of my allergist not catching my pneumonia, my parents began to search yet again, for an allergist to help me, who wouldn't make a mistake as grand as mine did. They found this great doctor from the turkey who, while her accent was thick. She was extremely smart. She helped me get on new medicine that would control me better and help me overall beat asthma.

Under her care, she also moved me off of steroid asthma medicines, and that helped me loose weight. I was always on the thicker side of kids. It wasn't that I wasn't fit, I was just thick, and strong. A lot like a man. when I was 16 I could bench 100 pounds without even trying, and my legs could press about 400, easily. My friends used to sit on the sleigh where weighs were and I could press all of them.

While I didn't try to worry about my weight, I got told (By lovely P.E teachers and other administrators that I should loose weight) and yes, I was in a great "great" school district. I was always self conscious about how I looked and my weight, I played sports, was in marching band and was generally athletic all around. Just not in body.

Weight is a real struggle for so many people. Its not just you, and if you have different health problems. You are not alone!! Don't feel bad about anything. I was also lucky and that my friend, while they didn't remember all of them, the did know most of my allergies. It was hard to always say no, and to this day, while most of my allergies are gone or so low that I can eat them without feeling problems. I still get asked if I can eat this.

Be Thankful for what you do have, and remember there is always someone worse off than you.