How I Learned to Listen to My Body... The Hard Way
/Today’s blog post is inspired by a video I saw this morning where a mom was told that her kid had to eat the “regulation” lunch of a white bread sandwich and jam when she sent him to kindergarten.
After sending him to school with quinoa pancakes (with no sugar, preservatives, or chemicals, etc) the kindergarten teacher wouldn’t let him eat AT ALL because he “couldn’t eat pancakes for lunch” but could eat white bread and jam. The school even sent home a written letter to this mom to tell her what to feed her kid.
I was outraged seeing this video, because I grew up eating sugar for lunch most of my school career.
It wasn’t my parents’ fault, or my gram’s since she made my lunch every day. They didn’t know any better, and not only have the guidelines around nutrition changed repeatedly over time, but my gram literally grew up during the Great Depression so nutrition wasn’t the main focus - feeling full was.
For years, my lunch most days was a thermos of ramen noodles, a white bread and mayo cheese sandwich, and some snacks like cookies to go with my apple juice or chocolate milk. Not exactly healthy.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I gave up gluten on a whim.
I was working as an assistant at a bank and one of my friends was this chronic dieter, always trying new diets to lose the “last 15lbs” as she prepped for her wedding.
She gave up gluten, and within a week she was reporting all the benefits to me. At the time, I thought she was crazy. Even though I've struggled with food and my weight my whole life, I was never the type to try out a fad diet. If I was going to try a new diet, it had to be something that I could see fitting into my life for a long time, and it had to be based on a real food. Cabbage soup diets were never an option for me.
But the way she talked about the different benefits, I started to wonder what it would be like if I gave up gluten. Could I survive without my favorite foods, and the things I knew how to cook best? Back then, my specialties were lasagna, cupcakes, and any kind of cheesy pasta. I'm looking at you fettuccine Alfredo. 😛
I'm so glad I gave it a try, because after a week I felt like a weight had been lifted from my life. All of a sudden, the almost daily migraines that I had struggled with for years were gone.
After almost a decade of seasonal allergies every spring and fall, I didn't have any allergies anymore. I wasn't getting sick as often, I didn't feel tired when I got more than enough sleep, and the biggest benefit was the effect on my cognitive function.
When I gave up gluten I felt like a fog had been lifted from my mind, one that I had been living under for so long that I didn't even know it was there.
It was incredible! It was the first time that I changed my diet by abstaining from a single ingredient and it had a huge impact on my health. It got me to thinking, even though I didn't have any food allergies growing up, what if I did, but just didn't break out in hives or go into anaphylactic shock?
So over the years I’ve kept a watchful eye on other triggers and about 6 months ago, I gave up dairy too.
I started considering dairy as a problem when I ended up in the hospital last fall with such severe pain on my right side that I was convinced it was my appendix or worse. After a whole bunch of scans, and no medical insurance, they told me that whatever it was wasn't life-threatening so I had to go home and figure it out with my primary care doctor. Well, if you've ever lived without health insurance you know what it's like for a doctor to tell you that — hopeless.
You basically just sit there nodding and trying to smile while you hide the tears welling up in your eyes because you know that after you leave this hospital room, that's the last doctor you're going to see for a while and you don't have a primary care doctor.
So I went home and I did what I learned to do best over the last 20 years.
I became my own advocate.
I started looking into other foods that I might be intolerant to since I already knew gluten was one culprit.
I knew I had to wean myself off drinking milk after years of drinking several cups a day, but it wasn't until I gave up dairy that I realized how much I put cheese on pretty much everything. Well, cheese and butter.
I also didn't realize how much harder it would be to give up dairy than it was to give up gluten — for a couple of reasons.
First of all, because dairy had become a really good substitute whenever I would eat out and had to modify something with gluten. For example, if I was out with friends and I got a cheesesteak, I would just get it served without the bread, but could still fully enjoy the cheesiness.
Fast forward to life without dairy, and less meat as well, and ordering a cheesesteak without the bread or cheese is a bit painful at $6-10 a “sandwich.” I’m not about to live on salads (which I recently found out are terrible for me anyway) so eating out became a real challenge.
Once I gave up dairy, I had to find a lot of new foods because cheese sticks, cubes, wheels, dips, yogurt, sour creams, and ice cream were out of the question. They made up a LOT of my diet. Oh, and lattes. 😛
Then there’s the fact that dairy is literally as addictive as hard drugs.
When I started looking at the facts and seeing how dairy lights up the same pleasure centers in our brains as cocaine, I was sold. It was hard as hell, especially in finding a good combination of foods to cook at home and foods that were safe to eat on the go, but I’m so glad I’m off the hook now.
The pain in my side is completely gone, and anytime I accidentally eat something - since I’m not fully used to checking labels for dairy yet - it starts hurting again.
Just like with gluten, going dairy-free was revolutionary for my body.
More problems that I didn't even consider major problems cleared up almost overnight. The biggest change I noticed from giving up dairy (other than no more side pain) was that the psoriasis on my scalp - which had calmed down significantly since I gave up gluten but that I’d had off and on for almost 20 years - finally went away.
Not to mention my indigestion, nausea, bloating and other unmentionable stomach issues that I dealt with on a daily and just thought I had a “sensitive stomach” — were gone.
The next step on my food journey was finding Ayurveda, the sister science to Yoga that dates back over 5,000 years and prescribes different eating, movement and lifestyle routines depending on your primary “dosha” or energy. I’ll write about this in another blog post, but suffice to say since I discovered it another layer has been pealed back on my food journey and in understanding my gut health.
I can’t believe what that mom went through trying to get her kid's school to allow her to feed her kids healthy, non-chemical-laden meals. And I can’t imagine sending my kid to a school that enforced “violations” of their idea of a meal plan by forcing my kid not to eat!
Sure, my life would’ve been a bit easier if I didn’t spend the last 30 years borderline sick, and if I didn’t spend so much time today working on healing my gut and mental health. But when I have kids, I’m going to be one hell of an advocate for listening to - and trusting - when your body gives you signals that something is out of whack.
I’d love to hear from you now.