The Girl Who Didn't Get Along With Food

My relationship with food has been a rocky one. We started out just fine, except for that one time when I was a baby and I choked on a cucumber, but it ended ok, I’m still here. I loved food as a kid, and food seemed to love me right back.
I have always had a big appetite. This seems to surprise people. I get this a lot “You must eat like a bird, I wish I had a small appetite and only craved healthy things!”. Umm, are you talking to me? I certainly don’t eat like a bird and I certainly do not only crave healthy things. The reason people seem to think this is because quite often, I don’t eat food at other people’s homes or out at restaurants. It has nothing to do with not being hungry or not finding the selection healthy enough for me. It’s because food and I don’t get along.
Let me explain. Back many moons ago when I was in high school, I suffered a few back to back injuries on my ankle that left me needing surgery. I had surgery to fix it (which didn’t work, even after another surgery and two broken bones but that’s a story for another day!). While I was recovering (and on crutches no less) I had a severe allergic reaction to nuts.
My face swelled up, my eyes swelled shut, my tongue swelled and my throat started to close. This super fun allergic reaction happened over about 5 hours and I was desperately trying to stick it out and be tough at my mom’s birthday party so I didn’t ruin it. My mom realized something must be super wrong because I wasn’t eating and there were mashed potatoes in front of me. No lie, that is the god’s honest truth! You can ask her! I tried to pretend I could breathe but my lack of enjoying my plate of food gave me away.
After some tests they found out I was allergic to nuts, more specifically hazelnuts and pistachios. I was instructed to avoid all nuts and told that my allergy was extra dangerous because, get this, I didn’t even eat any nuts when I had the reaction. I ate a granola bar that was processed on equipment that also processes food with nuts in it. The other weird thing, I had always enjoyed nuts and was never allergic to them before. Coincidence that I had just had surgery and suddenly I have a food allergy, I think not! Doctors will tell you that there is nothing proven on this but about 90 percent of the people I have spoken to who gained a sudden food allergy as an adult, did so not long after they had surgery. (Just saying!)
My next food difficulty was when I was in college. I was a dance major who had some serious body image issues. Because I was being encouraged to lose weight (I’m 5 ft and at the time weighed 120 pounds) and because I had never really had a good body image growing up I started seeing food as my enemy. How dare my body crave food or feel hungry!! What a jerk! How dare it need fuel! I was only dancing 100 hours a day (or it felt like that anyways), why should I have to give it food! All this stupid food was doing was making my curves stand out and they were “less then ideal for a dancer’s body”. (Yep, someone actually said that to me, more than once.)
When I graduated I worked on healing my relationship with my own body, and part of that was eating better and not getting mad at myself for being hungry. I also used to work out to punish myself for what I ate. I had to shift my thinking to knowing that I was working out as a way of doing something nice for my body, whether I was 100% happy with the way it looked or not. I started making an effort to learn more about healthy, organic foods and how to still eat the food I loved and craved but with less calories. That combined with working out regularly made me love my body! Yay!! Looking good, feeling good, I got this all figured out guys!!! Woohoo! Smooth sailing from here!
Not so much. Life, as it likes to do, threw me a curve ball. Pregnancy. Now, most women struggle a little with the idea of gaining weight during pregnancy. Women like me who have struggled with a poor body image and an unhealthy outlook on food struggle a little more. For me, I was ok with gaining the weight because it was the right thing for the baby, I put the baby first but I did worry a lot about getting it off. I also shuttered when I saw myself in the mirror. I tried hard not to let it get it to me, but when you see cellulite creeping in and your thighs start rubbing together when you walk, let me tell you, it’s kind of scary!
I had 9 months of nausea with both my pregnancies. That’s 18 months of feeling sick, and with only a year in between! Food did not want to stay down when I was pregnant. Even still, I managed to gain 30 pounds with my first pregnancy, lose the weight then gained 40 pounds with my second.
Sitting there in my 40 pound overweight body after the baby was born was painful. The more I thought about trying to lose weight, the more I wanted to eat. I felt those old, unhealthy thoughts floating back. I fought through and lost the weight. I got back to my old self after struggling for about a year. It was no easy fight but I did it. Ok, now it should be smooth sailing right?!?!
Nope. My youngest son Riley turned one and BAM, he started acting fussy and not himself. He was never a good sleeper either. He rarely ever slept more than two hours in a row. Something was wrong and I would not rest until I found out what. I suspected a food intolerance or allergy and I was right, but let me tell you, I had to fight hard to find out what it was and be taken seriously. Food intolerances are really difficult to accurately test for in a medical sense. I’d suggest not wasting your time, see a nutritionist instead! Riley did not test positive for any food intolerance or allergy nor did he have the classic medical symptoms. I was told he was probably just a fussy kid. Um, what?!
In my frustratio
I asked God for a favor. I asked him to give me the same issue that Riley had so I could feel it in my body and figure it out. A one year old can not communicate to you how he feels so I knew I needed to feel it myself. Now, if you don’t know this about me, I should disclaim here that I have some god given psychic gifts that I believe made it possible for God to answer my prayer, and boy did he.
Within a week I was dealing with a very bloated belly, headaches, fatigue and skin that kept breaking out. Now, I was so happy and felt lucky to be able to have this prayer answered, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to deal with. I tried some medical tests myself and also got no where. I decided it was time for a different approach so I hired a holistic nutritionist.
With her help I found out that I have a condition called Candida (Candida Albicans is the official name). Candida is a form of yeast that lives in your gut. We all have this, people with this condition just have an overgrowth of it. It causes lots of beautiful and special things in your body like: gas, bloating, fatigue, weight gain, headaches, joint pain, acne, etc etc.
I would also like to stand on my soap box for a minute and say that I believe that MANY, COUNTLESS women walk around with this condition or a food intolerance of some kind and have no idea. They just suffer with all these symptoms or are misdiagnosed as having IBS. In my opinion, IBS is a symptom of something not a condition on it’s own. Please email me if you feel like you are one of them! You don’t have to feel like that all the time I promise!!! I’d love to help point you in the right direction. Ok, stepping off soap box…

This magical Candida condition can be controlled by changing your diet. I would like to disclaim that everyone with this condition does not follow the exact same diet, you have to find what works for you. This is what works for me: No dairy of any kind (not even a trace), no fruit, as little gluten as possible (trace amounts don’t seem to bother me) and not too much sugar or yeast. My most recent and new intolerance is to eggs.
I changed my son’s diet to mimic what worked for me and within a week he was sleeping through the night and a happy little man! It was incredible!
As happy as I was/am to have helped my son, it’s still no walk in the park to feel like there are very few foods you can eat. It also is very difficult psychologically to have your stomach be bloated all the time. When I do well and eat the right things my stomach is flat and toned (not bragging, just saying! I do help people get in shape for a living!). When I eat something that bothers me, bloat city. I look like I’m 3 months pregnant and my skin breaks out like a pubescent teenager’s. Two times in my life I don’t really need a constant reminder of, and interestingly enough, the two times that my body image struggled the most

Now do you understand why I don’t eat at other people’s homes or why I stick to a salad when I go out to eat? This is how it usually goes at a party or get together:
Person Hosting Party: “Heather, why aren’t you eating? Is it not healthy enough for you? Come on, don’t be ridiculous, eat something!”.
Me: Oh no, that’s not it! It all looks great!
Person Hosting Party: “Then here have some.” (hands me plate)
Me: “I actually have a lot of food intolerance’s so I ate before I came just to be safe. I have to be careful what I eat.”

Person Hosting Party: “What can’t you eat? This is healthy!”

Me: “Dairy, Gluten, Fruit, Eggs, Large Amounts of Sugar and Yeast.” Oh and I’m allergic to nuts”.
Person Hosting Party: ……..Just sits there with their mouth open for a whole minute….”Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know or I would have tried to make you something”.
Me: “Please don’t apologize, I’m ok with it and wouldn’t want to inconvenience anybody”.
The other tough thing is having a child who has to be careful of what he is. Riley is now almost 3 and although he understands a little bit and is really good about it, it’s still hard. I always bring something he can eat with me but it’s a lot of work. I really have to always bring an appetizer, a main dish and dessert with me wherever we go so he can eat. I imagine that the older he gets, the harder on him this will be. I spend a lot of time researching and trying different recipes and substitutions for things so that he doesn’t feel like he is missing out. If you need some, email me! I’m more than happy to share what works for us.
For 30 years I have struggled to along with food. I still struggle. Some days I feel ok with it and am able to just be grateful that this is the only real health issue I deal with. However, some days I feel frustrated, fat, angry, bitter, self-conscious and either decide to hate food all together or just hate my body for not being able to tolerate food. It’s a struggle but it’s worth it. Your health and the health of your family is one of the most important things in the world. So I keep fighting the good fight. I keep trying different recipes, I drive to two different grocery stores (one of which is a half an hour a way) every week, I spend a lot of time preparing and cooking food to bring places, and I get mad at myself when I screw up and let my son have something that gives him a belly ache.
It’s worth it though. It has opened my eyes and educated me so much more about food and what we ingest and how it effects our bodies and our health. If I do nothing else right, at least I know I put a lot of time and effort into having a healthy happy family.
If you or someone in your family doesn’t get along with food either, please feel free to comment below or email me. I’d love to hear your story and I’m happy to share my knowledge with you or point your towards someone who can help you more tha
I can.
Here’ one of my favorite quotes:
"The Food You Eat Can Be Either The Safest & Most Powerful Form of Medicine OR The Slowest Form Of Poison." A

Wigmore
Thanks For Reading!!!
Lots of LOVE,

Heather