Food.

It’s funny, because I never used to care about food at all. I was a picky kid, eating french fries and chicken fingers everywhere we would go, choosing my meals off a very small palate.

However, in the last several years I have run into some quite interesting challenges in my diet, and like many who develop food intolerances, I had to make some changes. In my case these changes were fairly drastic.

I grew up a bread, pasta, and candy kid: always looking for carbs and even spelling my very first word: C-A-N-D-Y (because my parents always spelled it out when trying to hide it from me)! If you have spent any time on my blog at all, you will notice that these things are definitely missing. In the fall of 2011 I began my gluten free journey and saw huge changes in how much better I felt. But something still wasn’t right and in the years since I have been experimenting with what seems like every food group and diagnosis out there to find what made my body happy. While I’m still not where I would like to be, I have come a long, long way, making the biggest changes and improvements in the last year with the new diagnoses.

It’s touch and go when it comes to my diet and I’m constantly learning and testing boundaries, but along the way I’ve had the opportunity to get to know food: to play with it, try new foods, learn my way around the kitchen, and really experience all the fun pleasures that can be associated with food. I never thought I would be someone who cared about healthy eating, and I still wouldn’t necessarily say that I do (as far as being “healthy” in the kale and green beans sense of the word), but I am a strong believer in listening to your body and creating the optimal baseline for success, starting with what you put in it. Cooking can be fun and the improvements in mood, fatigue, GI symptoms, and overall wellbeing are truly worth all the work that goes in. And after a while, it won’t even seem like work – just like normal life!! I promise. So, if you don’t feel like your health and wellness are at a satisfying level, dietary changes are not a bad place to start.