food is both an enemy and a friend

So, if I take you right back to the beginning here, it will hopefully give a better picture of why food is both an enemy and a friend. I cast my mind back to being very small, I was a very sickly baby, couldn't keep my food down and was always in the doctors, they pointed to both a dairy allergy and a lactose intolerance - two different things, but basically, lactose is in the most random things, crisps (or chips as any US people reading this will know them as!) gravy powder, sweets, I am Presuming it is a very cheap flavouring in manufacturing, or, it acts as a vanillin to provide a comfort level with foods, probably wrong but you never know! so, as the years went by, I found out more and more what I was allergic and intolerant to, eating sweets was a big no, and how I found out I couldn't eat any with pork gelatine in, with milk ruled out too, this left very little in the sweets (US friends I mean candy) department, so was stuck with mints, and apples, grapes and other fruit, but what you can't have you don't miss, it wasn't a big issue, I preferred not being sick, I missed months at a time with being sick off school, both primary and secondary, and had I known more what was going on I needn't of missed so much of an education due to being ill.

Chicken and eggs were another allergy I found out I had, and egg is in a lot of things, my symptoms upon eating chicken or egg would be like having the flu, I'd be sweating, vomiting, bad stomach among other nasty things, but the more severe reaction was having a itchy rash, my lips would swell, crack and bleed, my tounge would swell and breathing would become difficult, that I can tell you is reason enough not to eat certain things! I get asked a lot what I miss eating and I can think of certain things I've eaten maybe once, but can honestly say I don't miss any of that food at all, especially what it can do to me! People's faces when they realise all the food, in particular, chocolate I'm 'missing out on' I'm not missing out at all, not worth eating it then being violently ill for 3 months, no exaggerating, and, before anyone says well there's people worse off, there certainly is, this is nowhere near what some people have to suffer with in Comparison I'm very lucky, just not with chicken, not worth being ill for the sake of a drumstick!

I found my main food was fruits and veg, call it vegan by proxy if you will! There was still things I was having to cut out and found the best way to do it was to only eat 1 thing say, 2 slices of toast no marg, give it a few hours to see a reaction, this took a few years of food diaries, but got there eventually through going back to doctors and the hospital, it all came to a head when I first found out I had esophageal reflux disease, I was continually coughing up blood so got a fast track through the NHS as I was showing symptoms of suspected cancer, now nothing is as scary as that word without sounding dramatic, but I urge anyone not to be frightened, as easy as that is to say! These days, catching things early is the right thing to do, the treatments are there, don't leave it too late! So, it turns out there was nothing like that, my esophagus was damaged from all the years of vomiting, and my stomach lining came up on the screen and they took a biopsy, after years of being diagnosed with IBS, it turns out they believe me to have coeliac disease! Wow, thank goodness it was nothing sinister, but having a diesase where it can be controlled through diet was a huge relief, there's currently no cure, no treatment as such other than to avoid gluten, and in my case, dairy, most meats, and after a lot of trial and error after diagnosis also confirmed a wheat intolerance, so, how does one live on thin air!!!

No, I'm joking, you may think that is a very restricted diet but, you wouldn't believe how much there actually is to eat, especially now I've found a very caring partner who put in a tonne of research to see if there was anything that could be added to my diet, can't ask for a nicer man than that, a lot of people don't know or aren't allergy aware, it seems unless you have someone close to you who has these things, you don't realise how ill something can make them, from something as simple as cross contamination with a knife, a crumb on a chopping board, as examples.

For years, eating was not a pleasure, eating out was something that would mean a stay in hospital or up to 3 months off school or work, I look back at photos of myself up to the age of 10, I was pale, bony in some photos, and others my ribs are sticking out, there's a few where my tummy is bloated but bones are sticking out. I had a fear of food, one particular fear I will leave for another blog, but, the main one was my mother begging me to eat, otherwise I'd end up in the Bury hole, I can honestly tell you, that didn't make me want to eat, it had zero effect, I'd throw my lunch in the bin at school. I had one very embarrassing moment one lunch time, my mum had made a pack lunch with these hovis mini breads with ham in, I don't know how many times I told her that they give me a bad stomach, I threw them in the bin with the rest of my lunch, little did I know one of the teachers saw me do it, he got the attention of the whole dinner hall, and said 'who's been throwing their lunch away and why' he was looking straight at me, he came marching up to me with the little hovis breads with the ham in a clear bag, and told me off for throwing them away and I shouldn't do that as my mother had spent good money on buying the food, I'd been grassed up! my mum was a dinner lady at the same school, so I was being watched! I had to start bring sneeky about getting rid of food then, I basically just lived on juice boxes of kia ora and the like or sugary pop, I'm ashamed of how silly I was but at the time, it seemed like no one was listening that what I was being given was making me be ill, there was that old fashioned thing of allergies and the like are a load of rubbish, even though doctors were up on it!

I was always feeling like an outcast, it was the 80's and Maggie milk snatcher was in full throttle, all through nursery and primary we would have a bottle of milk a day, they noticed a pattern of me being sick after drinking the milk, took them a while even though I was telling them about my milk allergy, eventually they let me have orange juice, this didn't last long as all the other kids wanted orange juice so I wasn't allowed it anymore, I decided to donate my milk to another kid and be done with it! It is always crazy how others from primary school only remember the fatter version of me when puberty reared up it's ugly head, that turned me Into a pudding, and what a horrible embarrassing time it is for anyone! Overnight turned from a skinny waif that could still fit in a shopping trolley toddler seat into a killer whale, I'm thinking about while writing that is how cruel kids are, but we are here to talk about food, so shall continue with that! So, it was around this time, that mum, dad and me were enjoying our annual 2 week holidays in Spain, they have a lot of soya and lactose free stuff out there and seafood, all the seafood, yummed it up, came back that summer and no one in school recognised me, who's this weeble! So fat I was able to eat all of the things! It seems I have struggled with my weight since then really, I'd be ill and loose a tonne of weight, then put it all back on again, I was eating a good diet with lots of fruit and veg in, I was avoiding bread and biscuits and such like, because they made me ill, noticed all my mums side of the family were bloaters once puberty set in so just mother nature playing a cruel trick! Nowadays, I'm not skinny either, but, I'm so much happier because I have a better relationship with food, I am happy because my ribs aren't sticking out and for once I feel healthy and happy, people may Instantly make a snap judgement that I could do with loosing a few stone but that's none of their business really, I'm happy and feel healthy for the 1st time in a long time, and if it concerns them that I'm not a waif, they don't know my story. I wanted to start writing blogs about my allergies and intolerances to help others as I can't be the only person out there who has these same ones, I will be telling you all in the coming blogs what I've found out I am able to eat, how I went about it, and it's a fantastic journey and was scary to try different things for fear that I would end up having a reaction to new foods, but so glad I did! I want to share recipes, and find new things that other people like me can enjoy too, if anything, in the hope that others won't think of food as an enemy anymore and think of it as enjoyable! To be able to sit with loved ones and enjoy a meal rather than dread it and be fearful, I hope if you are reading this you will stick around for these, and I hope they are enjoyable and informative 

See you soon in my next one about finding out more foods I could enjoy!