Paleo causing food anxiety

AngInCanada

This may be long so I appologize.

I did my first whole 30 last year and that's what got me into paleo. During reintroduction I had a lot of anxiety about having a reaction to foods. When it came to reintroducing peanuts I had a panic attack because I thought I was going to have an anaphylactic reaction to them. I tried numerous times over the next few months to reintroduce them and each time I had a panic attack. To this day I still can't eat anything that has peanuts.

I've now completed 2 more whole 30's and I'm 90% paleo. The thing is, I have anxiety over non-compliant food. Yesterday my son, who is 11, made homemade gluten free pizza pockets and he was so proud of himself. He wanted me to try a bite. I took one tiny bite and got panicky thinking I was going to react to the flour or the cheese.

It sounds insane typing it out but the feelings are real. Saying I'm going to be 100% compliant 100% of the time would be unrealistic and I hate that I have this fear of eating. It's silly. I'm wondering if anyone else has had something happen like this before.

Thanks
Angela

StephenBug00

Hi, Angela. Thanks for sharing.

I had similar feelings towards foods I'm not supposed to eat, but I didn't have panic attacks. When I started my 2nd month of cold-turkey paleo, I freaked out when I learned that my grandma's sweet potato fritters I ate contained all-purpose-flour. I always asked if they were Paleo or not, and she said yes about these fritters. She's still trying to grasp what I can and can't eat on Paleo. I couldn't stop thinking about consuming the flour all day. But like 3 weeks later, I had a totally different reaction to a salad I didn't know contained some sort of non-Paleo sugar until after I ate it. Strangely, I was ok with it thinking that most of the salad I'm eating is paleo, so I should be fine. Unfortunately, I ended up with one question in my head the whole night... Was it really ok for me to eat that salad? I'm almost at 3 months of Paleo, but I still have a whole lot to learn about balance. This is supposed to be a lifestyle and not an obsession diet.

Nowadays, I can't imagine getting back to how I used to eat because fear of getting sick.

No need to apologize for it being longer than the usual. I'm glad you shared as much as you did.


Thanks,
Timmy Bug