It's complicated

 Hello, and welcome to my complicated journey with food.  It's probably not complicated the way yours is, it's just complicated.

I am not an expert at anything.  I'm not a nutritionist, or a doctor, or even a professional foodie.  I'm just a girl. Trying to eat.  And not be sorry later.  To that point, everything I say on this blog is my own opinion  based on my own experiences, and never to be construed as advice on how you should eat.  

My complicated journey started when I was small.  Real small.  My mom was super careful about what she fed me.  Sugars, such as fructose (corn syrup), preservatives in packaged foods, and food dyes sent me into manic episodes.  My mom tells me that I started talking half an hour before I woke up, and stopped talking a half an hour after I went to sleep.  I thought maybe my middle name was Maintain, since my mom was always hollering. "Gina! Maintain!"  These days, I'm sure that I would be on a high dose of ADHD meds.  I was hyperactive, but not attention deficient.  As I grew, I learned how to actually maintain myself and my actions so that I wasn't constantly on someone's nerves.

When I was about 16, I spent the summer as a camp counselor.  One day I was out in a field playing a tag game with my cabin.  I was running and stumbled.  In order to stay on my feet, I put my head down and ran in the direction I was falling.  Unfortunately, with my head down, I ran right into the stomach of one of my campers.  And we both ended up on the ground anyway.  When I hit her, I heard and felt everything between my ears and my shoulders crunch.  Within a couple of minutes I had a migraine, and my co-counselor and my campers were tucking me into bed and turning out all the lights, whispering and tiptoeing through the cabin.  

When I didn't feel better the next morning, I arranged to get to the chiropractor.  This involved a ride from my sister who was on staff at the camp, and a ferry ride, and pretty much took all day.  By the time we got back to the camp, I felt like a million bucks!  I mean, it was a 180 degree change from the morning.  We got back just as the campers were going to dinner, so I joined all of my campers in the dining hall. 

I clearly remember that dinner was spaghetti, salad and garlic bread. I also clearly remember how glad everyone was to see that I was ok.  And... Then I remember breaking out in hives abut 20 minutes after dinner.  And I remember wanting to crawl out of my skin. I did not, however connect the dinner and the hives.  I was young.  And I ate spaghetti all the time.

My symptoms continued throughout the summer, and it wasn't until the fall that I began to notice the pattern of eat/hives.  Also, it was at this point that I began having migraines on a regular basis.  Crippling migraines.  Dark, silence, barf, feel better migraines.  I was missing school one or two days a month just from migraines. My mom and I began to look at all the ingredients of everything I was putting in my mouth, and noting when I was breaking out in hives.  We narrowed the culprit down to wheat. So, we cut the wheat out.  This was 1991.  Before everyone was gluten free.  Before every store shelf was loaded with wheat free options.  I was the weirdo with sandwiches on rice cakes. And I wasn't even trying to lose weight like all the other rice cake weirdos.

And the migraines persisted.

For years.

I got married in 1997 and my babies began to make their appearances. Jesse was born in 1997.  Caleb was born in 1999, Elizabeth graced us in 2001, followed closely by Abigail in 2002. Jonah closed up the clan in 2004.  If you're counting, I was pregnant or nursing a baby for nearly a decade. At some point in all of that, I stopped getting hives, and I started eating wheat. But I was never without headaches. By the way, we also adopted a small human that we named Levi in 2012.  He is 10 now.

And my kids were never without belly aches.  Caleb has been diagnosed with leaky gut syndrome.  That means that he doesn't fully digest his food before it passes through the intestinal walls.  His body sees these food particles as invaders and he has histamine reactions to just about everything he eats.  He's a grown man now, and finally listening to my advice on how he should be eating, but that's a different story for a different blog.  Abigail has been diagnosed with the inability to digest animal products.  The only exception to this is eggs and fats.  She is 98% vegan out of medical necessity. 

Sometime in the 20teens, I realized that I just didn't feel good most of the time.  You know, even without being tied to a human parasite.  My joints hurt, my skin crawled, and I was FAT! So, once again I began eliminating things from my diet.  At first, being gluten free again was enough.  I was even headache free for the first time in a couple of decades.  That worked for me for a few years. Sorta.

And then I developed asthma.  It wasn't so bad for the first few years. I had an inhaler tucked away in my first aid kit for emergencies.  I used it about once a year and just concentrated on slowing my breathing and calming myself down about 90% of the times that I had an attack.  

In the midst of this, I have gone grain free and have done a couple of diets where you order the shiny packets of "food" and eat one real meal a day.  They work.  I lose weight...while I'm on the diet.  And I gain weight like it's my job when I'm not on the diet. Being grain free really helps with the joint pain and the itching I have been experiencing, and it really cuts down on my gas and bloating.

In the last two years my asthma has gotten bad enough that I am under strict orders from my doctor to have an inhaler on me at all times.  It is pretty scary to my family to watch an attack from the outside.  It's less scary for me because I can feel that I still have the situation under control, and I can feel when the symptoms start to subside.  Fall of 2020, though, was pretty horrendous for my symptoms.  I was using my inhaler almost daily, and sometimes more than once a day.  December 2020 found me in 2 different ER's because I was not able to control my symptoms.  ER visits are followed up by another visit to my regular doctor. 

I felt like I was on a carousel, and I couldn't get off.  I wanted off so badly, so I made the decision to go see a naturopathic doctor instead of an allopathic doctor. The difference is that one treats the problem as an issue in a closed system, where one portion of the body could be affecting any other portion of the body, and the other treats symptoms as separate issues. While I am still waiting for a full allergy panel (pandemics, you know) to be done, I have stopped using dairy at my naturopath's suggestion, in addition to all of my other food modifications.  With just that little change, I am down to using my inhaler once or twice a week.  So I know that even though dairy is not "it", it has definitely been a contributing factor.  No more shiny packets of  "food" for me, since they are loaded with whey protein.

I really like food. But it seems to hate me.  I am on a journey here.  It's my journey.  While I definitely have not arrived, I wanted to document my trip.

Since I definitely do not have Celiac Disease, you are going to see pictures like this:

That's my slice next to the kids' pizza. Don't send me emails.  I know.

Have fun reading about my crazy journey. Because I like food, but it's complicated.