Time for the big switcheroo!

The last few months have seen some major changes for me, especially concerning food.

Since January, I've been writing this blog and talking about my work towards eating heathfully most of the time and reasonably the rest of the time . . . about working through the various emotional and psychological issues I have around food . . . and then about working exercise into my life as well.

In June, I was diagnosed with food allergies to a large number of foods. A couple of weeks ago, I learned that instead of just allergies, I also have atypical celiac disease. Atypical because I have to give up cow dairy (which has casein, very similar to the gluten in wheat, barley, rye, etc.) in addition to gluten, and atypical because it's not necessarily my small intestine that's carrying the brunt of the effects of my consumption of gluten and dairy. . . .

Before this year, I had already cut out some foods while trying to deal with interstitial cystitis. Then I got on some amazing antihistamines that helped with that condition. More recently, cutting out my food allergens has dropped my IC to its lowest level since I first developed it.

In any case, over the past few months, I have not only appreciated the weight-loss blogging community but also the food allergy/intolerance community as well. Both have buoyed me as I have worked towards being a healthier me.

At some point I started thinking about combining my interest in the two in a blog. When you can't have dairy, tomatoes, wheat (or other gluten-containing grains), soy, almonds, eggs, and a few other foods, you realize you have lost the ability to eat about 90% of what most Americans eat. And as you start to figure out food, you want to be able to share that with others.

And honestly, the restrictions are not all bad. Trying to make foods unhealthy without any butter, wheat, soy, or eggs is not impossible, but it's more difficult--especially when you consider that I try to eat whole, organic foods and eschew artificial additives and preservatives. I walk into grocery stores and find myself untempted by a huge variety of foods that would have called to me two months, six months, or two years ago.

So I'm taking my weight loss public in a way that I have not done before now; my full name and photo will be attached to what I'm writing. (Of course, I do know my sleuthing Turkish reader found me out a while back!) I'm adding in doses of how I'm dealing with food allergies/intolerances for good measure on my new blog, including recipes that my friends who can eat all those foods say are genuinely good. (And plenty of those recipes are normal ones that just happen not to have any allergens in them.)

I have, in the last year, not spent time counting anything and have been able to lose weight that way; part of what I have been doing is trying to prove to myself that I can trust myself to make good decisions without strictly rationing what I eat. However, I do recognize that other people find it very important to count what they eat. So on my new blog, I'm plugging each recipe into a program I bought before I post it so that I can offer an approximation of calories per serving, and WW points as well.

My new blog is called "Aprovechar," and if you want to know why I picked such , you'll have to head over there and read the first post I wrote there. (Of course, I'd love it if you'd link up to me, too.)

As you can see on my new blog, I'll still be tracking my weight loss there, and I'll still be writing on the same topics. I'll just be adding more topics and trying to keep a focus on getting the most out of life every way I can.

Because of some posts I have written on here, I am not linking this blog to that one. I wrote on this blog with the intention of keeping it private and unattached to my name, and that remains. Please keep my privacy intact by not referring to this blog by name if you comment there. I won't, at least for now, be announcing the new blog to many people I know in my day-to-day life, but I'm sure I will tell some of them at some point.

In the meantime, I hope you will join me at my new blog and add a link to it in your blogroll. (Yes, right now! Won't you forget later? I often do. ;))

Oh, and I may still be posting comments to you from this blog, since some of you have Blogger-only comments enabled.

New site: http://aprovechar.danandsally.com