Where it all began

A couple of years ago, my baller boyfriend decided to take me out for dinner on my birthday to one of my favourite restaurants-- Red Lobster. My typical experience with Red Lobster was to start with some garlic cheese bread, polish off a Caesar salad, guzzle down a sweet slushy boozy delight, and finish by shoveling a pile of seafood into my mouth until I felt like I was going to explode. Well, on this romantic eve of my 23rd, I did explode-- and not because I ate too much food; because I ate too much poisoned food. That sounds dramatic. I had food poisoning. I practically had to run out of the restaurant. I threw-up in the car all the way home, and the rest of the night is kind of a messy blur. Not my favourite birthday moment. I'd had food poisoning before, but this time it didn't seem to go away. I stopped vomiting only a few hours later, but days and then weeks and then months afterwards, I still didn't feel well. I decided to chat with my doctor. He sent me for some tests, and about a year later I was diagnosed with IBS....also known as the "we don't know what is wrong with your digestive system" diagnosis. It's not that bad compared to other digestive illnesses, but it still sucks to feel crappy. I started doing research, tried the elimination diet, tried cutting out wheat, sugar, dairy, etc...but as it turns out, I lack discipline (and I LOVE food). And in the end removing those foods only made me feel worse! So it's been a couple of years, and I've decided that there's no point in trying to totally eliminate one thing from my diet. Instead I'm going to try to eat as naturally as possible (while giving into my irrational cravings every now and then). Step one: cutting way back on refined sugar. I've been obsessed with honey for quite some time, and it has some amazing health benefits, so that will be my number one sweetener. Recently I've become familiar with agave nectar, which as far as natural sweeteners go, I find that it is most similar in flavour to refined sugar. I'll be attempting to bake with agave this week. Wish me luck!

Me....and my journey with food

I'm 25, and I have no idea what my life has in store, but that's okay because I am blessed with crazy and fabulous family, a terribly handsome boyfriend, a loving Saviour, an abundance of friends, a church I can't seem to enough of, and a job that makes me smile:). Not much to complain about really...except for my love-hate relationship with food...