The Funny Side Effect Of All My Food Allergies

What I can eat now is so vastly different from how I ate as a vegan/lacto-ovo vegetarian (I was both at different times). I'm way more restricted now than I ever was then. And animal products are a must (one of my biggest staples now is dairy products) or I would die of malnutrition. But the funny side effect is that now everything I eat, while less in quantity, is so nutritionally dense!

Food porn!

A common veg refrain is that piles and piles of veggies only have a few calories, when just a little meat has lots of calories. That's great if you eat a lot of quantity. But I am a smol person - I can't eat a lot of quantity.

I gained roughly 40 pounds as a vegetarian/vegan. I lost it all when I stopped being so for my allergies. I weigh what I did in high school (I'm 40 now). Granted, some of that probably has to do with me being allergic to damn near everything I was putting in my mouth at the time, but when you are under nourished, your body hangs onto every crumb for dear life. This is why people who eat cheap food - the "standard American diet" of heavily processed convenience foods - can be so overweight, even if they're poor and live on Ramen, Wonder Bread, and Chef Boyardee. They're overfed and undernourished.

I wasn't a junk food vegetarian (you can be one, which some people don't think is possible, but it is), though admittedly I had a sweet tooth. But I got full after less than a cup of salad. I ate half the bean burrito. I ate half a sandwich. If your diet is small portions of low calorie food, you're always going to come in below optimum.

Today I am grateful for my food processor, which allows me to chop huge amounts of onions at once so I can freeze them for later and not have to cry every time I need onion in a recipe.

So while going veg is probably just the ticket for people who are not quickly satiated and trying to lose weight, for me it was probably not a good idea, even without the allergies. But I would have never admitted that at the time. I read fucktons of nutrition books so I knew what I was doing. A registered dietician told me I knew more about a vegan diet than she did. It wasn't (barring the allergies) what I ate - it was how much.

So today I'm making meatballs, which I will make sammiches with or put in spaghetti. And they're like, the most nutrition-packed meatballs ever. They're made with:

Venison
Breadcrumbs from homemade bread
Grassfed milk
Sea salt
Organic Worcestershire sauce
White onion
Heritage breed, pasture raised egg
Black pepper
Organic garlic powder
Onion powder
Oregano I grew on the balcony

People who are used to typical diet advice probably read that list and say, "OMG, cholesterol." But my body does really well with this kind of food. Last time I had my cholesterol checked, it was still make-the-nurse-doubletake low (when you're a vegan, your cholesterol drops to just what your body makes itself, which as I recall is something around 145? That number made a nurse who gave me my results actually cuss in surprise. But now, it's barely budged upward at all. Like maybe it's 160? I'd have to check my records). I think, because ya know, I'm eating one meatball and feeling like I just ate the whole deer - not a quarter pounder, or two quarter pounders, or whatever the fuck normal people can put away at one time.

Meatballs!

So given that half of one of these on bread with tomato sauce is probably the only solid thing I'm going to put in my mouth all day, I need it to have as much nutrition as possible. One cannot live on one's protein shakes alone (though some days I do try).

And before anybody asks ...I don't have an eating disorder or anything, I just can't eat. Sometimes I think it's the depression, but really I've always been this way, even as a kid. Well, once I stopped having growth spurts, anyway. Every now and again I have a day where I feel like I am eating All The Things, but really I'm probably just eating like a normal person that day. XD

So now I'mma go eat. Om nom. :)

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