FOOD

 I've always had an interesting relationship to food. Growing up, I was a competitive dancer who was always on the muscular side, so was constantly being told I had to watch my weight. My mother constantly yo-yo dieted, so that didn't help with the relationship either. I eat my emotions, like me mother did before me. However, that's not really what I want to talk about today.

Starting in January, I finally gathered enough resources to go on a very restrictive food plan to see if I could pinpoint what was triggering my migraines. It was a very long list of foods to avoid, and I actually found it pretty easy to do- I guess all this healing is starting to pay off! However, we go to my mother-in-law's house for dinner once a week and the list of things I couldn't eat was way too long for her to manage, so, we agreed that while I was on this food plan, we would order in from restaurants where I knew there was something I could eat. We did this for 8 weeks, but I felt horrible every week as we headed to her house because I know that one of her absolute joys in life is to cook for other people. Her husband passed away four years ago, so she lives alone, and finds it disheartening to cook for one. So, when we go for dinner, she pulls out all her favourite recipes, things that she wouldn't cook for just herself and it brings her so much joy. While she understood why we were ordering in, I could just feel her heart breaking a little that she wasn't 'allowed' to cook for us, and mentioned more than a few times about how guilty she felt about not cooking. So, this weekend, I told her that she could cook for us and she made us a delicious meal- lasagna, cheesy garlic bread, ceasar salad with bacon and creamy dressing. I haven't eaten gluten, dairy, bacon, or yeast in 8 weeks. Today, I've had a migraine all day.

I'm not really looking for any answers or solutions. I could give her the list of things I'm not eating, but she's 85 and has her recipes and is starting to get confused with things, so I don't want to cause her all the stress that would come from trying to cook that way. Ordering in worked for a while, but as I said, she never really felt comfortable with it. I could send my husband alone, but she likes me (and I think she's awesome) and enjoys my company and would feel bad that I wasn't able to eat at her house. We could go over in the afternoon for coffee, but like I said, she REALLY loves cooking and doesn't get the chance to do it very often. I could give her some recipes of things I can eat, but then she wouldn't get to eat all the things that she loves to eat and that hold so many memories for her.

I feel like I'm stuck. I'm just starting to feel better about my relationship to food, setting boundaries for myself and working on healthy eating for me. So, for now, I'm just accepting that once a week I'm going to eat a meal that will make me feel ill so that I can share in my mother-in-laws joy and pride as she feeds us.