Holiday Baking

I’ve always liked baking, especially around the holidays. Part of it is my family tradition of making sugar cookies (see my Sugar Cookies post), but I also like to make a lot of other things as gifts for people. This lets me sample some of it, as well as sharing the wealth.

So when I was recently diagnosed with new food allergies, I wasn’t quite sure how that would work for this holiday season. Could I still make things that were tasty but didn’t include gluten, eggs, or dairy? I decided to find out, using my church’s upcoming holiday fair as a good excuse to experiment. After all, I’m not the only one who has these sorts of allergies, and others might appreciate being able to get something sweet at the fair. But really, that’s just rationalization - I’ve largely been doing it because, for me, it’s fun.

It’s not hard to replace dairy - there are lots of options. And for eggs, I’ve been using ground flaxseed with water. The gluten is trickier, since gluten-free flours tend to be a bit more crumbly. But the Internet is a wonderful resource, and I’ve been able to make some items that don’t even call for regular flour and have gotten positive reviews. 

My first attempt was plaintain brownies. They came out very well, as you can see in the photo.

My neighbor, though, did prefer the chocolate-cherry brownies made with oatmeal and black beans (I left out the pecans, since I’m not a fan of nuts in brownies, and I might also leave out the cherries in the future.) Those were denser and more fudgy than the plaintain brownies, but also took more ingredients and longer to prepare. But always good to have options.

Next came the cookies. I tried pumpkin pie cookies, made with almond butter, but I wasn’t that excited about them (though the ones with chocolate chips were better). What I liked more were the pumpkin oatmeal cookies; they have a nice flavor and texture.

Finally I tried a lemon cornmeal cake. It didn’t transfer from pan to plate as smoothly as the directions made it sound, but the crumbs are quite tasty, and I may experiment making it as cupcakes, which would eliminate that problem.

I think I’m going to stop there, though, since I have to go back to work next week, but it’s been fun. I’ve been very pleased with the results, and knowing that I, and others with similar allergies, can still have some tasty treats to enjoy over the holiday season.

Guilt and Eating

When I think about guilt and eating, the first thing that comes to mind is feeling guilty for having something, often after but sometimes while eating. But lately I’ve been thinking about the other issue: eating because of guilt.

This can happen a lot around the holidays as we gather our family and friends for festive meals. People may spend a long time preparing their speciality, and even if it’s something you don’t like, you may feel obligated to eat it. After all, they put so much effort into it, and they’re watching you like a hawk to see if you’re going to partake of it. 

If you don’t, their feelings will be hurt. If you do, you may be eating something you don’t like, which could cause you to later overeat of the foods you do like. Or if you enjoy what they brought, if you try to have just a little of it, they may say something like, “Don’t you like it?”, thus nudging you to take more than you had planned and thus overeat.

I haven’t run into this for a long time, because by now most people know my history with weight and that I try to eat mindfully. But it’s suddenly cropped up again for an unexpected reason: food allergies.

Having been recently diagnosed with, among other things, gluten, egg, dairy, and peanut allergies, I knew that social eating would be difficult, so my plan was to avoid it when possible. What I didn’t anticipate was that people would go out of their way to provide foods I could have, making me feel guilty about not  eating them, even if I wasn’t hungry.

For instance, the other day I got an e-mail partway through the morning saying that lunch was going to be brought in for the office. It was pizza (a no-go for three reasons - dairy, gluten, and eggs), with a couple of salads. Unlike many earlier lunches, these salads were egg and cheese free. The only problem? I’d already eaten the lunch I had brought because I was hungry early, and I didn’t need the ham, chicken, and bacon rich salads by the time they arrived.

On top of that, the person planning the holiday office party was picking out foods I can eat - except I can’t go to the party. When I found out what she was doing, though, I felt like I should try to rearrange things so I could go, simply to eat the food, all out of guilt that she was going to such trouble.

As I’m adjusting to this new reality, I’m remembering some things I learned before. Whether I want the food or not, it’s important to thank the person for making it. It may also help to take a small amount to show I’m sampling it if nothing else, and perhaps ask to bring some home if it’s something I truly enjoy. 

But also important is remembering that if I’m stressed or feeling guilty while eating, it’s not going to be enjoyable, so I should let go of that. Easier said than done, I know, but I’ll try, because I want my holiday eating - and eating in general - to be as joyful and guilt-free as possible.

Too Skinny?

Jeff Peterson is a local reporter who recently lost 31 pounds after going to a vegan diet. The newspaper article has before and after pictures of him, and while I didn’t think anything strange of his new appearance, apparently others don’t agree.  “People will say to me, 'You're getting way too skinny,’ Jeff said. ‘People aren't used to seeing people at regular weight."

I might consider this an anomaly if it weren’t for other similar experiences. For instance, I was recently talking to another man who lost a lot of weight (in his case about 100 pounds), and when people saw him for the first time since that loss, many were shocked. Some asked if he had cancer, unable to conceive of how else he could have shed so much weight. Others commented that he looked almost cadaverous, although when I met him, he seemed to me a healthy weight.

I also encountered this odd phenomenon with my own weight loss. After I had gone down about 100 pounds, I was also getting the comments about becoming “skinny” and people worrying that I would lose too much or become anorexic. It made me question my perception of myself, to worry that they might be right. When I looked in the mirror, I still thought I was heavy, but what if I was deluding myself? After a lot of thought, I realized that given the fact that I’m only five feet tall and still weighed around 150, I couldn’t really qualify as “too thin”. 

When I think about why I got those comments, I have to agree with Peterson, but I think it goes a little deeper than what size people are used to. After all, we see images of models (some of who I do think are too skinny) and actors, who are much thinner than me, so it shouldn’t truly be a shock. And passing by a stranger at my size, friends and family probably do not think, “She’s too skinny.”

But when you lose that much weight, many people no longer recognize you, literally. I ran into a situation where a man who had known me since I was 14 had to confirm with my brother that I was, in fact, me. Those who have known you at a heavier weight may wonder how else you’ve changed. Are you, in fact, the same person that they knew? It may also make them reassess their own bodies. Suddenly what they had considered an okay weight no longer looks so good compared to you, and that could be threatening.

The tricky part, of course, is that it can go too far. Some people do get down to an unhealthy weight, or become anorexic. But the vast majority do not.

So if know someone who is intentionally shrinking and you feel like they might be going too far, I would suggest taking a moment to consider objectively before commenting. After all, for those of us losing, hearing that we’re suddenly too thin instead of too fat is not particularly helpful, and may even cause unintended angst. 

Acceptance of Where You're At

Last week I wrote about bidding farewell to favorite foods after finding out about a lot of allergies. I’ve since started the process of figuring out what I can eat, and along the way I came to a place of acceptance. I realized that being angry and despairing about these changes would not serve me or anyone, especially since I can still eat a lot of foods. I felt like a switch had flipped, letting me approach this new reality with a more positive attitude.

Then I remembered that I’ve been through this before, in relation to weight. 

When I was an overweight teenager, I was about as far from accepting as you could get. I was determined to find some silver bullet or magic pill that would let me eat whatever I wanted without adding pounds. That mindset didn’t help in my weight loss attempts, since part of me assumed that soon I wouldn’t need to do any work, so why bother now? 

Eventually I realized that the magic pill simply doesn’t exist, and that instead I needed to examine the details of my eating patterns. It was much easier once I admitted that.

My other hurdle was when I got to a point of maintaining my weight loss. I had it in my head that I should be able to eat like a “normal” person. I didn’t know exactly what that meant. I just knew that I got jealous when I watched other people eat pizza and chicken fingers and French fries and cookies, apparently without a second thought. Interestingly enough, I had this sense even though I didn’t necessarily want those foods anymore, or very often, or very much of them.

What I didn’t realize is how inherently flawed this type of comparison is. You can’t know by looking at someone if their body can handle the foods they’re ingesting, or if they might need the calories - perhaps they’ve run a marathon, or are doing lots of hiking, in which case eating high calorie foods doesn’t have the same effect and is even necessary. 

Marc David writes about this as well in the book Nourishing Wisdom, in a discussion of forming new habits and behaviors: “...[This] lack of acceptance inhibits the transformation process. Acceptance is always the first step.” (p. 116) 

That certainly seems to be true for me. In all the times when I’ve managed to accept where I’m at - no silver bullet, no “normal” eating, loss of some favorite and common foods - I’m much better prepared to handle making changes. 

Which isn’t to say that acceptance is easy. It’s not. But it is important. After all, we can’t move forward with confidence without knowing where we’re starting.