This blog is about my family, and I've realized that there is one big part of our family that I haven't posted about here. It's food. Ever since our oldest daughter was born with food allergies, what we're going to eat is what I think about when I wake up every morning and what keeps me up at night. As we've added more kids and more allergies to the clan that responsibility has grown as fast as my kids do - most days I can hardly keep up! Since it's such a factor in my everyday, it's about time I start sharing some of what I'm learning.
Though we've dealt with food allergies for the better part of the last 14 years, it was about three years ago that my concern for my family's health really skyrocketed. Among the 5 of us we struggled with everything from food intolerances, chronic stomach aches, and hypoglycemia, to ADHD, eczema and skin irritations, and my high-risk pregnancy, just for starters. I was thoroughly overwhelmed. Trying to sort through the "ifs" and "whats"of each situation had my head spinning and while I was appreciative of the medications available to help alleviate some of our symptoms, I felt uneasy relying solely on them when I wasn't clear about the roots of our problems.
I waded through websites, appointments, specialists, conversations, and trial-and-error phases and I didn't seem to be getting anything but more overwhelmed. Finally one morning, after yet another visit to the corner pharmacy, I came to a breaking point. Weighed down with discouragement and fraught with good old genuine worry, I sat in the parking lot and cried. Hey, I was pregnant, remember? Even so, I simply did not know what to do. I didn't know all the answers and I didn't know how to find them. I sat there asking, "How am I supposed to fix all these problems when I don't really even understand them?"Then it came to me. Maybe I didn't understand all the medical ins and outs of our needs, but I did understand food. I understood that wholesome, simple, healthy food is better than processed food, and that the more nutrients a body receives from food, the more equipped that body is to grow and heal.
As soon as I considered that concept the more obvious the solution became to me - we needed to change the way we were eating. The time had come for an honest evaluation of our family diet and I didn't like what I saw. When my oldest was at the height of her food allergy reactions I made nearly everything we ate from scratch and monitored every ingredient. She later outgrew most of those allergies, coincidentally the same time I began struggling with an autoimmune condition. I considered it a huge relief to be able to rely on frozen foods, boxed foods, and take-out to keep my family full when my inflammation and fatigue had me down for the count. Later, even though my condition improved, carpool, homework, and after-school activities swallowed up my time and quick-fix meals continued to dominate my menus. Sitting in that pharmacy parking lot that day I realized I had drifted too far from our home cooked "allergy" diet and it was time to correct course. Maybe I couldn't fix every health problem we had but I could fix healthy, wholesome meals and start from there.
Although I was absolutely convinced we needed to make some changes, I wasn't ready to wage a full-scaled food revolution overnight. Let's face it, my kids were not going to go from frozen pizza to fresh peas without a fight. I had to decide what my goals were and how to break them down into a series of gradual changes. My objective would be to rid our meals of processed foods and replace them with homemade meals made from whole grains, natural meats, and organic produce. We also needed a serious reduction in our sugar consumption.
The first thing I did was talk the whole plan over with my husband. Change like this had to be a combined effort and I needed a co-captian to help me ward off mutiny from the crew. He was fully on board, so I charted course and set sail. My plan included re-introducing fruits and vegetables to our meals, learning more about food sources, transitioning pre-made foods out of our diet, adding new, whole grains to menu, and cutting down sugar.
I'll elaborate more on each phase of the plan in detail later, but I can tell you right now the common theme for me in this endeavor has been learn, learn, learn. When we started down this road I felt like it was me against the world. It seemed like everywhere I looked there was food within reach, but not the wholesome meals I was grasping for. I considered one meal, or one item in one meal a success if it met the criteria of our new diet and my family ate it willingly. I've since built up a repertoire of recipes, one by one, and I'm more efficient in preparing them. There are still busy days, sick days, lazy days, and fun days where we find ourselves in the drive-thru line or at the mercy of the pizza delivery man, but those days are the exception, not the norm. Our "new diet" is no longer a novelty, but is simply "the way we eat."
Two years after our food reform began our allergy sufferers were suffering less, our eczema and skin irritations decreased, and we started sleeping better. My husband combined his food choices with consistent exercise and lost nearly 40 pounds. We've made more changes since then, and we're still working to improve. Improving our meals also improved our mealtime. We spend more time in the kitchen together, and my children are learning to really cook. More importantly they are learning to choose foods that will give their bodies a better shot at being healthy. I'm not claiming to know all the answers but I've come a long way from that teary eyed day in the parking lot. Now instead of feeling helpless I feel that I'm helping; helping our family become stronger, healthier, and fuller in more ways than one.
I really appreciate all the recipes and information I've collected from other people along the way, so I'm going to start using this blog as my shout out to the other allergy moms out there, and anyone else who needs some food strategy reinforcement now and then. Recipes will follow soon, and in the meantime, carry on warriors!
