Oh, my stomach hurts! I just had my first pizza in several months. Even though it tasted great, several hours later my gut was saying, “This hurts!” And the next day I was sick.
I was little when I sat on my grandmother’s knee and ate rye bread dunked in sweet, light (with milk) coffee. It tasted wonderful. SHE was wonderful. Giving up coffee (I had to do it twice) meant giving up all of those memories of my grandmother. I gave up sweets too: sugar, pastries, chocolate cake and TastyCake (the East Coast Twinkies). Groannnn!
All those lovely things; All those memories of family get-togethers. All those gluten products! I can’t eat that stuff anymore.
My small intestines have something called leaky gut. Stress and eating the wrong foods actually cause fissures in the intestines and they leak toxins into the cavity of the body. Not pretty.
My body has a lot of aches. I live with fibromyalgia, neuralgia arthritis and mostly recently, autoimmune disease with my thyroid. There is so much that I cannot eat.
Do you think this doesn’t limit my diet? Do you think I haven’t lost friends over (shudder) going out to a restaurant? Or from turning down invitations to come over for dinner? It’s a scary proposition. One friend showed me a card she takes to restaurants and present to the waiter. It states, if you feed me anything with peanuts I could die. Ahhhhh!
For me, the questions I have to ask of waiters and restaurant managers would amount to an inquisition. Which I’ve done. And, that is exactly how they acted like I was doing. So, I don’t bother. Sitting is also painful due to compressed discs in my back.
Going to a potluck dinner produces high anxiety. Being invited to someone’s house for dinner is like a complicated theater production which involves the inquisition again. Did I mention I can’t eat any milk products either?
Come over to my home and read my menu. Today’s menu features cooked rutabagas, with beets and kale. This is actually quite tasty and healthy. Add some cooked-in-water (no oil) cod or salmon. I buy mine at a co-op because most salmon and cod contain high amounts of mercury and other toxins because the oceans they are fished from are being poisoned. I might also have some brown rice or rice pasta, with the meal. That’s it!
One can get very creative with this food. But it’s a very different diet than most of the rest of society eats and it’s very different from what I was raised with. It’s a diet without any spices; or MSG, or cornstarch.
So please understand that I want to get to know you, I am not trying to be difficult. I just like a pain-free life. Though having that with friends would be great.
