Foods That Make Me Sick

I grew up with food allergies that I seemed to outgrow as I got older. As a young adult I developed a new one. Then, after losing 100 pounds, my food allergies took on a whole new meaning. Foods I’d grown up eating without incident were suddenly making me sick.

And I wasn’t handling that very well…

You Could Cut the Air with a Knife

Although I’d been diagnosed with allergies to egg whites, peanuts, and corn as a youngster, I continued to eat those foods without any side effects. In college, I learned (the hard way) I was allergic to shellfish. No more shrimp cocktail for this guy. Dang! As I was losing 100 pounds, I started experiencing side effects like gas, bloating, and itching from eating foods I “thought” were healthy. I couldn’t put my finger on what foods were causing these symptoms until I read “The Blood Sugar Solution” by Dr. Mark Hyman.

The first thing I learned was high fructose corn syrup was partly to blame. A small amount was in a whole grain bread I was eating and I would get the worst gas every day after lunch (If anyone at work is curious why I step outside periodically, consider your curiosity satisfied.) Regular corn syrup was in some dark chocolate covered blueberries with acai I enjoyed in the evenings. I’d also itch like crazy at night and have a hard time putting the blueberries down. Low-calorie ice cream sandwiches? Yep, they’ve got corn syrup in them too.

Later I would learn that not only was the corn syrup and high-fructose causing problems, but the grains themselves were contributing to the problems. Even after switching to sprouted grain bread I was still experiencing gas and the associated bloating. No more sandwiches? Guess so. On a treat day I’ll enjoy some bread, maybe on a burger, toast or a donut. Otherwise, no more bread for me – except the Eucharist that is. That’s bread I’ll never give up.

Unfortunately, corn syrup was not the only source of my itching. Some of it was stress but some of it was also an allergy from my youth resurfacing. My biggest struggle was trying to understand, “Why now and why not when I was unhealthy and eating these foods?” Best I can understand are the tolerances we, as humans, develop to the things we normally expose our bodies to. We don’t develop full tolerance to them; otherwise we could eat whatever and stay completely healthy and disease-free. However, we do develop enough of a tolerance to minimize the effect of some symptoms. Or maybe it’s that there are so many symptoms they just run together and we don’t even notice them. A new normal maybe?

The Challenge of Knowing the Truth

Perhaps understanding was not the answer for me. Acceptance, perhaps? Not acceptance that this is how it’s going to be, rather acceptance that as I get healthier it becomes harder to get even healthier still. A whole new set of challenges emerges and my body, which has become used to receiving the proper fuel, now reacts far more violently when it receives junk. This junk isn’t ice cream, candy bars and pizza, either. It’s bread, potatoes, and all kinds of dairy.

I look at what I’m enduring as just another example of the devil trying to knock me off the path of righteousness. It’s right to take care of my body, the body that was given to me by God so I could do His work. This is a real test of not just “how bad do I want to be healthy” but “how deep is my belief in the path God has chosen for me?” The devil would have me turn back and say, “I can’t go through life not eating bread or cereal. I’ve got to eat a few french fries now and again.”

Why can’t I sacrifice a bowl of oatmeal or a slice of toast? Pales in comparison to what Jesus sacrificed for me.

God bless,

 
Todd Marsha