Food Allergy Awareness Guest Post: Embellishmints

I met Hilary in college, and have been so grateful we’ve stayed in touch. She’s been a great example of following your passion and living up the blogging life while being an excellent mom. She had a brush with restricted diets, and so when I asked her to do a post about food allergy awareness week she was so gracious to do it. I like her perspective because it shows you don’t have to suffer with food allergies (you might just experience it for awhile) to understand, appreciate and have empathy for others. I think you’ll enjoy her story. Take it away Hilary…

Imagine having to drastically change your diet overnight. Sounds nearly impossible, right? Especially if you don’t have to do it for any real reason. Whenever I heard about someone trying a “radical” diet I just figured they were being trendy, or had recently watched a documentary about the way animals were treated and vowed to become a vegan right then and there. Honestly, it was all a little bizarre to me. I had never met anyone with a food allergy so it wasn’t like they were making these changes because they had to. I knew one thing for sure, I wasn’t going to be one of those people.

Then I had my son. That sweet little guy kept me up every nigh for hours at a time. For about 2 years…it was exhausting! When he was about 2 months old he had health issues and it just kept getting worse and worse. His doctor told me he was allergic to a protein in milk and I needed to take dairy out of my diet. What? No milk? How would I … no. How could I survive?!

That night I went home and googled “Different names for dairy” and cross checked every single thing in our kitchen with that list. If it passed the test I could eat it. If not sayonara! Ok not really, I just put everything I could eat all together in a cupboard. It fit on one shelf. Just like that my diet was reduced to about a tenth! Who knew dairy was in almost everything! Except Oreos. Hallelujah.

My doctor told me to eat a dairy free diet until my son was 6 or 7 months old. Like a rockstar I chose to stretch it until he was closer to 7 months. Let me add for dramatic effect that this time was during the holidays. I lasted through Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas without eating anything that contained dairy. The amazing thing is I was not tempted once. I like to think it’s because I have a lot of willpower and am extremely tenacious, but I’m pretty sure it’s more because I had to do it. {I tried doing dairy-free when I had my second son so I could lose my baby weight at super speed but it lasted one meal I think. Dang it! I guess I’m not as tenacious as I had hoped!}

When I went to my son’s 6-month doctor appointment my son’s doctor let me know that when he said “You will have to take dairy out of your diet if you’d like to continue breastfeeding your son” what he really meant was don’t eat obvious foods like yogurt and cream cheese, etc. That there was no need to take out things like crackers just because they have whey in them. Unbelievable!

So I guess that means I am tenacious! Right?

There were a few things I loved about having a “restricted diet.” I use quotes because my diet restrictions don’t come close to what Megan has had to adjust to, but they were restrictions nonetheless. Anyway, back to my point, I loved that it showed I really would do anything for my son. I also loved that it really broadened our horizons when it came to our meals {and the fact that I lost a ton of weight eating Oreos. That was awesome}. Some of our favorite dinners came from that time and I’m excited to share some of those with you today.

Let’s keep in touch! You can find me on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest too! Let me know what you think about these recipes!

Slow Cooker Balsamic Chicken Recipe

Tomato Basil Chicken

Skinny Buffalo Chicken Lettuce Wraps