Forgive me, dear reader, while I get something off my chest.

As you may have gathered from some of my previous posts, I have a number of food sensitivities, and I follow a pretty careful diet to make sure that I feel my best. When I don’t, I have asthma, I gain weight, I have icky digestive problems and (to be vain for a second) my skin looks lousy, as does my behind. :) And furthermore, when I eat poorly, I basically become a blob with zero ability to do anything athletic because basic life functions eat up what little energy I do have, and I get out of breath by looking at a flight of stairs.

As a result, I never, ever, ever, ever, EVER feel deprived for  single second because I can’t eat or simply choose not to eat certain foods due to their health implications. Now and again, I might briefly miss a food that — in my memory, pre-healthy eating — once tasted good to me, but that’s extremely rare, first of all. And secondly, when I’ve tried these missed foods since changing my way of eating, they’ve not been at all what I remembered and weren’t worth the after-effects. The unhealthy stuff just doesn’t even taste good anymore.

Why I bring this up …

Unfortunately, despite the fact that I try to talk about food matters only to folks who actually care about such things (like you, for example!), I very recently was the focus of a conversation with a group of (otherwise caring) individuals that went like this:

“Poor Jennifer can’t eat much of anything, she’s so sensitive to things … That diet of hers is so restrictive.”

Sympathetic stares at moi.

One person offered that a colleague of hers couldn’t eat wheat either.

Another suggested that she’d rather die than not be able to eat dairy.

More sympathetic stares. (And mind you, I’m not technically allergic to dairy. I choose not to eat it because it has no health benefits!)

My response (given as politely as possible): “Actually, I think of this very differently. I’m glad I can’t eat certain foods and have changed my diet. I feel like a million bucks even as a sleep-deprived mama because of how I eat. I never regret not eating foods that aren’t good for me — not for even a minute. I’m actually grateful for eating this way every day and wouldn’t ever go back to how other people eat even if I could.”

And indeed it’s true.

I am truly grateful for having been sick in my first 30 years. I am grateful for having to learn how to eat healthy foods. I am grateful that an illness as mainstream and “chronic” and as “lifelong” as asthma was easily solvable for me with diet (as it would be for most people) so that I am motivated to eat right the rest of my life, making it pretty much impossible ever to develop any of the health problems all of the older people in my family have suffered from or even died from (like strokes, heart disease, dementia and pretty much everything else that’s fairly preventable with proper nutrition). I wish others could experience the “before and after” that I did for themselves so that they’d see the huge benefit of healthy eating.

Now, I’ll admit that that last bit of conversation where I said I never wanted to eat like other peopleagain  (meaning mainstream Americans — or really mainstream Westerners) was a little snarky. I think I was actually kinder when I said this than how I typed it in this post. I know I smiled and used a gentle tone because I believe the people talking about me really meant well, even though they were speaking through their own unhealthy obsessions with food.

But really, don’t pity me because I’m deprived. If deprivation means leading a life so healthy, so thin and so free to do what I please I couldn’t have fathomed it back when I was eating the standard American (vegetarian) diet, I’ll take it! I wish everyone could be as “deprived” as I am now.

In fact, I wish you a life of total “deprivation” starting today! :)