Maya's Happy Place

 I say I’m allergic to everything, but you and I know that’s not really the case. I’m anaphylactic to peanuts and soy protein. I also have severe allergies to some tree nuts, chickpeas and green peas with minor allergies to sunflower, strawberries and watermelon.

I have a love/hate relationship with food for so many reasons that go far beyond just food allergies and eczema. I have very little self-control when it comes to diet. But when it comes to my food allergies I’m very strict with what I ingest. Go figure.

Ever since I was little, I had a fear of getting fat. So I did dumb things to stay skinny or lose the weight whenever I looked in the mirror and didn’t like what I saw.

When the mirror lies, its time for self-love. Or a cupcake.

Down The Rabbit Hole

As a teenager, I tried diet pills, took fiber supplements, drank way too many energy drinks, starved myself and became bulimic as a way of self-harm. Back in those teenage years, I should have probably seen a therapist and gotten help, but therapy and psychiatry was too much of a stigma for my family to bear. You see, my grandfather was a doctor at a psychiatric hospital, so my family had many friends who were psychiatrists or doctors in the psychiatric field. To them, only the severely troubled kids or teens had a therapist and God forbid someone close to the family found something wrong with me. They also were afraid for my allergies and the psychiatric drugs I would be subjected to.

Food Allergies Sabotage Weight-Loss Goals

This year, many of my allergies disappeared and I gained forty pounds. That’s what happens in response to being able to eat your favorite foods that you haven’t eaten in like five or six years. Foods like sesame chicken, Taco Bell and Burger King burgers that I couldn’t have due to cross-contamination and soy derivatives. The bad stuff was now back on my list and my self-control (like my size six clothes) went out the window.

What’s a diet when you have Taco Bell?

The soy allergy improved to the point where I could eat vegetable oil derived from soy aka soybean oil and even peanut oil. Peanut protein or tofu (soy protein) could send me into anaphylactic shock. Of course, because I’m now eating soy derivatives my hand eczema started acting up.

This made me mad. I can’t even have ‘cheat days’ with my food where I have a bit of this soy derivative or cover my sushi with actual soy sauce. I have to buy coconut aminos and cook like Macguyver to make things actually taste authentically Asian.

So now of course, my mission is to lose those forty pounds in whatever healthy way I can.

Before I restarted the allergy immunization shots in 2019, I was suffering from severe cross reactivity to many various foods, including rice, tomatoes and apples. You can read and learn more about cross reactivity from this post.

Now I can eat those things and so much more.

The good news is I’m extremely motivated in the gym. I’m pretty sure I’ll get back to my 145lb goal weight as long as I stay away from soy derivatives and cut out soybean oil again.

Do Allergies Make You Fat?

The answer, in a word…is yes. Allergic reactions cause inflammation which triggers mast cells to trigger in the body. This causes a plethora of chemical reactions which I cannot get into here because I’m not a doctor. But yes, it is true that inflammation is connected to weight gain. All these years of worrying about my weight now makes so much more sense. Yet another reason why those with food allergies have to be easier on themselves and know that certain things come with the territory. It is only through healing and managing the allergies that you can begin to lose the weight healthfully and long-term.