An allergy pity party

I always pitied the kids who suffered from extreme food allergies, such that they couldn't be in the same room as a peanut or they'd blow up like a Thanksgiving parade blimp, or they started to gasp for air at the sight of shellfish. It was a distant sort of pity, the kind where you really don't care that much because at the end of the day, you still get to eat peanuts, along the same lines as when someone tells you they are a vegetarian, and you respond with the perfunctory "Oh, good for you, I wish I had the sort of self control to do that, but I just love meat too much."

Perhaps it is karma telling me to have more genuine compassion for people that I have spontaneously developed an allergy, most likely to some sort of food, as of yet still undetermined. Until I go through the various prick tests I've had to eliminate the top five most common food allergens: all nuts and nut oils, strawberries, shellfish, tomatoes, and aged cheeses. Nut oils turned out to be the most complicated category, as they seem to be just about everywhere, but still the hardest to let go has been CHEESE because it is a great passion of mine. Luckily the fresh varieties are still available to me, and today I gorged myself happily on a fresh mozzarella, tomato and pesto sandwich.... abruptly afterward which I remembered that tomatoes were supposed to be off my diet, and the pesto probably had pine nuts in it. Elimination diets are a lot more intense than I had supposed, and a true test to my limited willpower when it comes to food (If I had thought about the tomatoes and pine nuts, would I still have ordered the sandwich? Probably, yes).

Overall, the experience has made me think more seriously about how much I take food for granted, and how little I have to think about what I eat, compared to someone who has to face dietary restrictions on a daily basis, be they allergies or chosen restrictions like veganism. I hope for the sake of my sanity that I come out of the allergy testing with a reaction to something like cilantro (which I despise), but life doesn't often hand out such favorable cards. The willpower to make good food choices and resist the things that tempt us most is something that many of us struggle with on a daily basis. But perhaps mindful eating really makes us more mindful people. I've heard stories from people on elimination diets who felt they were much more alert and felt stronger, simply by being more assertive and selective about what they put into their bodies. There is strong logic behind the idea, but it's too bad that can take something as dramatic as an allergic reaction to make me step back and ask the question: how does my body really react to what I put into it?