Wellness Wednesday: That Food Allergy May Not Be a Food Allergy

Back when I was about twelve, I realized that my mouth immediately itched after eating an apple one day. Shortly thereafter, I realized that peaches brought the same reaction.

By the time I was in college, on one of many trips to Chickfilla, I realized that eating their fries resulted in the strangest swollen feeling in my throat behind my nose. As time went on, that reaction broadened to causing extreme stomach pain and other such issues.

As college went on, I started having more and more stomach and gut issues, leading me to suspect even more food allergies. I finally cut out milk too, as my stomach seemed to hurt after having it at breakfast alongside a bagel or muffins. [Now with the clarity of retrospect, I see that the culprit was more so the gluten in the main meal and not the milk I had with it, but that's not the point of today's post.]

Once my health really took a nosedive and I became a bit more educated on names for my problems, I realized I had IBS, along with all these food allergies I seemed to have. I never knew what food would be the culprit next, as my stomach problems, obviously, just got worse. Finally going gluten-free a couple years ago eliminated having stomach pain after every single meal, but I was still having issues.

When I began my life-changing treatment last fall and learned that I actually had 6200 different, treatable problems all ganging up on me and not just one unexplainable, untreatable problem of fibromyalgia, one of the many tests to lead to that conclusion was an allergy test, which I had never had done before because I figured my body's reactions to those foods pretty well spoke for themselves.

While the test did not include all the foods I'd suspected, the results showed that I may not actually be allergic to potatoes (since it wasn't in my system, it couldn't gauge that), I was actually only allergic to sesame and yeast, which I had never suspected, and I was temporarily allergic to corn and coffee (don't worry--I don't drink coffee anyway). Why temporarily? Because gluten, other foods no body should be forced to digest, and the underlying autoimmune issues I have all teamed up to damage the linings of my gut and cause temporary sensitivities that could very well be eliminated once my gut was repaired. My body was reacting like I was allergic to so many things, when a food allergy was not the cause. Damage, often called Leaky Gut Syndrome, was.

Now, I can't explain to you how all that works, or the scientific explanations for all of this, but the plain English version is that not all food allergies are actually allergies. Often they are your damaged gut's way of telling you it needs repaired. Similarly, a damaged gut can lead to other allergies too, like seasonal ones--which can also be greatly helped if not eliminated by the same gut repair.

My point in sharing all of this is this: You don't have to have a chronic illness or autoimmune issues like me for this to be the cause of your food/stomach problems. If there's a food you used to be able to eat and now it seems to give you trouble, there is a good chance you're not actually allergic to it. Your gut may very well be damaged and can't handle it. So don't just cut out the food and think you can never eat it again--a thorough allergy test and a round of a repair diet could be your answer and solution.

So if a food is giving you trouble, or you've started having stomach issues and can't figure out a cause, please don't just ignore it as a fluke or an unavoidable allergy. Correct the issue before it gets worse, and reclaim your health before it gets farther out of reach.

{Linking up with Little Friday, Wellness Wednesday, Anything Goes Linky, Treat Yoself Thursday, Link Love}

Wellness Wednesday: Healthy ≠ Deprived

There are two recurring things I continue to notice when reading blogs, Facebook posts, Instagrams, you name it: everyone and their mother is on the quest to lose weight, and way too many people equate losing weight and being healthy with depriving themselves of all the foods they love.

It seems to be assumed that we have to cut out every happy food there is and basically trudge through meals of vegetables in order to eat how we ought to.

And the latter bothers me greatly because it is nowhere near the truth.

In last week's Wellness Wednesday post, I shared the "diet" I went on that got me to the weight I need to be and, in the process, made me realize the deliciousness that is to be found in--shocker--healthy foods. I'm talking no gluten, no dairy, no soy, no corn, and no refined sugar, among other less-than-desirable components. I highly recommend taking a look at that post if you haven't and giving the "diet" some consideration.

But if you read that post and think it's just insane, or that you want to start out smaller, like with just cutting out gluten, for instance, I am happy to inform you that eating healthy is not about completely cutting out the foods you love. It's about finding healthy--and just as tasty--equivalents to replace them.

As a society, we are so unbelievably accustomed to convenience and driving by a fast food drive-through to pick up a burger, fries, and pop that it is literally second nature. The problem with that is certainly a whole separate issue in itself and more than I could attempt to cover in a blog post. But we've come to equate eating foods that we all know aren't exactly good for us with deliciousness, almost to the point of writing off the possibility of food that is both delicious and healthy.

In reality, there is pretty much a healthy--and tasty--substitute for anything. For example, you've probably noticed how often I use coconut in my recipes--canned coconut milk for cream, cold coconut milk for regular milk, coconut crystals for refined sugar, coconut oil for ... just about everything under the sun--but there are also tons of other switches that can be made: gluten-free flour for regular flour, sea salt for regular salt, real maple syrup for sugar-filled crap, corn tortillas for flour ones, homemade ice cream (tons of recipes in that department) for store-bought, and really homemade anything for store bought.

The only thing there isn't a healthy equivalent of is pop. Can't help you there--I haven't had it since last fall, and I'm still alive. But there are even healthier versions of candy bars, like this.

My point is this: if you want to eat healthy, yes, you'll need to eat more fruits and vegetables. But eating healthy does not mean no ice cream, no cookies, no pancakes, and no more delicious meals. It's just a matter of implementing healthier versions and sticking to it.

And if I can do that? You bet you can!

And linking up with Wednesday Wishes, I wish the mindset of healthy = deprived could be replaced in our society by the happy truth.

I highly recommend this brilliant young lady's recipes. (Prepare to drool over her Instagram pictures.) She lives for figuring out how to make healthy versions of anything--even Little Debbie snacks!

P.S. Linking up with Monday Morning Gossip, Thinking Out Loud, Little Friday, Be.You.Tiful Link Party, Let Your Light Shine

Wellness Wednesday: How I Lost 25 Pounds [the Healthy Way]

I've been wanting to share this losing weight thing with you guys for a while: how I lost 25 pounds without exercising, and while being healthy. I kinda hate to refer to it as a "diet" because the goal of it was not to lose weight but to become healthy--and through that, the weight inevitably came off. So when I say "diet" in this post, know that I mean "what you eat" and not "weight loss scheme" okay? And of course, exercise is ideal when you're wanting to get healthy, but during the time of starting this diet, I was definitely not able to exercise.

I shared a few weeks ago about a few of my many kinds of treatment for my many health problems, one of them being a gut repair diet to, obviously, heal my insides from the damage of gluten and all kinds of things over the years. I'm sure you've seen me refer to it like every time I post a recipe. This is called the Repairvite Diet, which, as it sounds, is intended to repair your insides, and it was followed by the Clearvite Diet to detox your system. As soon as I started the Repairvite Diet, I started losing about 3 pounds a week. Most people are on the diet for only about two months or less, but I kept encountering my own strange problems and so had a lot of setbacks that no one else ever has that prolonged the conclusion of it, so I was on it for a good five months. However, I simply stopped losing weight about two months in because I didn't need to lose any more. And I've stayed at that same weight since. I'm not a twig, as you can see in my pictures; I'm just where I need to be. And if I added exercise, you can bet any leftover flab would go away.

So, what does it entail, if I lost all this weight without exercise? A healthy diet. That's it. I took the Repairvite supplement, whose goal is of course to help repair my gut, but it's not required, and this diet is healthy for anyone, leaky gut or not. Without even exercising, simply removing all the crap of pop and refined sugars and more made me lose all that extra weight. Exercising would have really moved it along and helped me get even healthier.

But here's the deal with getting healthy and losing weight: If you want a change, whether you have health problems that need help, or you're overweight, or you just have those few last ten or fifteen pounds to lose, you have to want it. I was so desperate for health that I was willing to do things, like change my diet, that I would once have thought pretty radical and crazy and that I would never do. But I gave up favorite foods--for over half a year now--in this quest for health. I guess I had a choice, but as I see it, I really didn't. You have to want to feel better and be better. And f you really want to change, you'll do what it takes.

This diet is all about replacing unhealthy foods with healthy versions and removing processed, harder to digest foods in favor of clean ones. You don't have to go without chocolate and ice cream and cake and all that gluteny, sugary goodness you love. There are healthy versions of just about anything, "healthy" meaning gluten-free, dairy-free, refined sugar-free, soy-free, and corn-free, among other things. There is no counting calories or anything like that. You can eat as much as you want of all the foods allowed on this diet. So, ideally, you don't really get hungry. This keeps your blood sugar regulated, which keeps your brain and body in gear.

An average meal on this diet, for me, is Easy Turkey and Veggie Fry. Or Honey Balsamic Chicken. But there are so many more options than those--I've just found a few I love and stick to them for a while, and then I find new ones to add. My mom started the diet several months after me and has her own recipes she's come up with and lives on. Being limited in the kinds of food you can have does not at all mean that you have to eat what's boring or things you don't like. I love the meals I eat on this diet and, if I ever go off it, I plan to keep them around because they're so good.

I'm continuing this diet for now, even though I've finished my time on the supplement, because I'm slowly testing what foods my stomach can handle. Right now I'm good with eggs, but corn is still being determined. There's a good chance I'll always be mostly on this diet, simply because eating well to get healthy is not something you do for a couple months and then go back to eating your Big Macs. This is a lifestyle change, and a consciousness of exactly what you're putting into your body.

Looking back before this diet, I can't believe how healthy I eat now compared to where I was a year ago. I also can't believe how many healthy foods I love now that I used to think were nasty; I just had to figure out a better way to make them--shocker, there's more ways to eat carrots and broccoli than just raw. Like Easy Fried Broccoli.

All this to say, you really can eat healthy, get your stomach functioning how it needs to, and feel better--not with some crazy pill, or starving yourself, or working out like a maniac and eating nasty foods. But just by taking the time to change what you eat--and discover meals you absolutely love that are also good for you.

This is all just from my own personal experience--you can read more about the Repairvite Diet here and here and, if you're interested, the Clearvite Diet here, and I highly recommend following the advice of a doctor like mine in your area over my advice, as I'm clearly not a doctor. I'm not getting paid anything to tell you about this diet (wouldn't that be nice!), just trying to pass along the good news that losing weight isn't as impossible or miserable of a journey as you might think. :)

P.S. Linking up with Be.You.Tiful Link Party, Let Your Light Shine, Anything Goes Linky