Melons, Cheese and Alcohol

Summertime seemed to be a great time for me and family reunion barbecues. From ages 6 to 10, when I wasn't yet to the point where I had to impress anyone with my looks or intelligence or any other supposedly redeemable skill other than being the best at making the merry-go-round whip your cousins faster and faster until they're on the verge of spraying the surrounding area with vomit confetti, it was something I counted down on the calendar. You know, the slow and cinematic "red-X" drawn carefully on each day-block moving towards the inevitable "________ Today!!!" before a dance celebrating the arrival? It was on a certain reunion when I discovered a strange food allergy: watermelon. Watermelon is almost 100% water, by its weight, but for some reason the most pocket-book ready of fruits left me decorating the picnic tables with my very own brand of that previously-mentioned confetti. I wasn't mortified for more than a few minutes, thanks to still being a little too young. My parents wrote it off to a flu bug, but I was perfectly fine the next day. When I tried again to slurp up the summer fruit, it was even worse than it'd been the last time. And there it was; my first food allergy that I wore with semi-pride.

When I lived on by own at age 26, my diet was seriously sporadic because of a tight "work during the day, attend classes at night" schedule. I'd get home after not being able to eat anything for 6-7 hours, flip open a whole-wheat tortilla, place 2 slices of fat-free velveeta cheese and 'roast' it on the open flame of a burner on the stove, dolloped with a huge spoonful of sour cream as a garnish. That was my dinner three nights out of the week, and my boyfriend at the time and I would order pizza or make cheesy pasta often. I should also note that I was snacking on fat-free yogurt and eating cereal with skim milk for breakfast on most days.

After awhile, I started feeling incredibly exhausted all of the time. Part of it had to be blamed on my schedule, sure, but it didn't explain the extreme bloating, the excessive sweating, the suddenly bad skin, or my first experience with constipation. It isn't fun to recount such things, but at the time I was obsessed with how often I did 'that.' I'd take fiber supplements, laxatives and sprinkle wheat germ over my fruit and yogurt snacks to try and force it to happen. No dice. I mentioned this to a friend of a friend and she explained that she had to see a nutritionist for some of the same symptoms. "It *might* be different," she said, "but it was lactose-intolerance for me." I ticked through all of the dairy products in my head that I ate on a daily basis. I was getting at least four servings a day, which was just one more than the recommended amount for a healthy diet. I trudged all the way up to the north side, in a relatively scary section of the city, and waited patiently at the section of the clinic that was for general patients before being whisked off to the nutritional wing. An older man took my blood pressure, then went on to take down some strange statistics:

a) color of my eyes
b) length and quality of my fingernails
c) the color and texture of my tongue
d) breath odor

The 'Nutritionist' wasn't quite a college graduate. This was part of her *rotation* of sorts, but she was focusing on the non-profit section of health care and had her eyes open to all sorts of wacky dietary practices in this city that's regularly in the "Top Five Fattest Cities In the Nation." I had to keep a food diary, report back to her, and then we'd go through this huge dictionary-type book that was full of ways to heal myself with good food. Writing down what I ate on a daily basis was part a ritual in self-mortification and denial. "This is just a stressful week," I told myself. "I don't REALLY eat this poorly."

When I sheepishly trudged back into the office and slipped the sheets of the food diary across the table to her, she inhaled right away. Then, she went through and highlighted patterns for me. Dairy. Yes, dairy. While it could be other things, she had a feeling that it was dairy as people develop this allergy as adults. So, I was to remove dairy from my diet for two weeks, see how I felt, then add it back at various times to see how my body would react. Yeah, my body hated dairy. Pure vitriol against the lovely thing. No more ice cream, no more lasagna or any parmesan-esque dishes, and definitely no more pizza. I could take the over-the-counter lactase-enzyme products to help me digest the foods, but they don't always help. I still dabble in pizza with help of the enzyme, and thankfully yogurt helps combat the digestive issues I have with dairy (I mean, I had to have SOMETHING to hold onto my dairy past), but if I cut it out all together, I feel and look so much better.

Recently, I'm starting to believe an allergic reaction to either wheat or alcohol. When I drink beer, my face hurts, I wake up puffy and swollen the next day and I have a temporary beer gut that makes it hard to look svelte in the corporate attire I wear every day. But, then there are times when I drink certain types of red wine that I wake up feeling congested and unable to taste or smell until I've had at least five glasses of water to clear it all out of my system. This last allergic could either be the last straw to me just becoming an *all-natural* lady in that fruits, veggies, lean protein, organic teas and water will be my only sustenance or I will jump back into the vat of food that creates all of my body woes and wallow in misery.

It's so hard to say which seems more appealing at this point. This means at family reunions or get-togethers I will either be the girl who shovels the naughtiest of the naughty foods in my mouth as fast as possible or the perceived finnicky eater who is too obsessed with her diet. Luckily, this is at a point in my life where I could honestly care less about what people think of me and more about what makes me happy. At least THAT coincidence isn't so terrible to consider.