I'll begin my story in the middle at what we might call the climax. It was the moment I got what I consider to be some of the worst, though not THE worst, news in my life. Yep, bad news, fun's over, life will be different, more challenges ahead. At least, that's how it seemed, but, as you will see in some blog posts to come, it was actually some of the best, most helpful news of my life.
I was having a nutritional done, part of which included being tested for food sensitivities and allergies. My doctor was using a muscle-strength based test to see what foods weakened me, what didn't weaken me, and what foods make me stronger. Our bodies are electro-chemical and are very sensitive to whatever we put in our system, the things we eat, or even just touch, can either sap our energy or support our energy and stamina. He was testing all kinds of foods on me, including eggs, soy, corn - -ZAP! All muscle strength gone with the corn. Oh no! There goes my healthy home-made popcorn meals where I pop it myself on the stove, spray it with canola or olive oil and sprinkle with a little salt, nutritional yeast, onion powder, chili powder, whatever suits my fancy. There goes my cornbread (I'm a southern girl), corn muffins, corn on the cob, and not to mention anything that has corn syrup or high-fructose corn syrup (which I was already trying to avoid).
Next up, testing dairy, POW, energy knocked out, no more dairy. I'm a Sasscer by birth and that goes hand in hand with being an "ice cream-o-holic", done! Bye-bye cheese, yogurt and the new experimentation with making my own kiefer. Ouch! Alright, then we have the gluten testing, you can probably guess the results of that one, GEEZ LOU-EEZ! No more. . .ummm, okay, what doesn't have gluten in it? The good news is, I was good to go on chocolate, in fact, I'm pretty sure it made me ten times stronger, that's great nutrients for strength. Had I failed that one I think I would've croaked.
The real kicker with all this is that I was three months pregnant, that's a huge diet change to make in the middle of a pregnancy. I took to eating a lot of brown rice and sweet potatoes (it turns out that my daughter, who I was pregnant with at the time, absolutely loves sweet potatoes, funny). I started experimenting with gluten free flours (can you say expensive) and I discovered almond milk, which has made me really dislike the taste of regular milk on the occasions that I do cheat on my new restritions. Now guess what! Cutting these foods from my diet has turned out to be the good old "one-two" total knock-out for my health challenges, including a mental-illness (more to be written on this later, when we go to the beginning of my story). Also, I a had very healthy pregnancy and labor and delivery went very well and very quickly (we're talking under three hours) and it resulted in a very healthy, happy baby girl (she came out a 10 on the APGAR).
You know what else! I've learned a lot through it all and I've begun creating my own, cost effective and delicious recipes, which I will be sharing on this blog.
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