Greeting, from the bottom of the sugar barrel!

mustnothrowcantelopes

5'2''.5 but not quite petite, chatty, amiable, walking contradiction with a major sweet tooth here! Not quite sure what else to say. Hmmm...let's see..friend of mine encouraged me to try this website and since I had already lost a little weight (6 lbs) and was starting to gain it back, I figured I had nothing to lose. I think I've been at this a little over a week and it has been a fun and somewhat frustrating experience so far.

I'm someone that has a lot of health problems aside from my weight. I have gout, yes, GOUT at 25 so I pretty much have to avoid any kind of red meat and delicacies ( cow's tongue, sweet breads, beef, liver patte, pork, etc.) I realize that some of these things may sound disgusting to some people and even though there's no history of gout in my family, I'm Russian, so I grew up on some of these foods and had to tell myself "No". It's been pretty easy for the most part. I honestly never cared much about steak or veal. I do slip up every once in a while, but I try to make sure those times are few and far in between and I always have just a little. It's also good for me because I love cows and the horrible things that are done to those poor, dear creatures so that we can have a burger or whatever is just disgusting and horrifying.

Aside from gout, I'm borderline diabetic with cases of hypoglycemia, which is a lot harder than above mentioned. I Love ice cream and Napolean and chocolate and peanut butter. Pretty everything that not specifically a "sweet" has some kind of sugar and my goal is to run from it like the plague, at least for a while or severely limit my in-take. I have to say, before this I would have at least 2 pieces of candy or some kind of sweet every day and before my friend , the same one who encouraged me to join this site, brought up my eating habits, while I disagreed with some stuff she said, I didn't realize how bad I was being with certain foods that I ate, like *sweets". I haven't cut it out all together, but I'm definitely not eating candy or ice cream or cookies every day.

And then there's of course, my supposed lactose and gluten intolerance. I've been tested. I'm not allergic to either, but I've never been tested for the intolerance part. I'm not that much of a milk drinker in general. Cereal with milk is not a staple for me, but I do put it in my earl gray and use it sometimes when I make mashed potatoes and I do love ice cream. I've tried every single non-dairy variety ice cream that I could think of and it taste good, so I don't know what to do with that. Basically though, I had a bowl of cereal with milk recently and I felt bloated afterward and there was a large build up of mucous in my system. I'm pretty sure I can't handle milk. Most peoples' bodies are not designed to handle milk, unless you're an infant and you're drinking your mom's breast milk and/or formula. I'm still not sure if I'm lactose intolerance or have an intolerance of all dairy. If I have to give up cheese, I'm going to cry.

The gluten thing is a whole other matter. The person that told me I was gluten intolerant was a holistic M.D. that I'd been seeing for years. He's also a certified psychiatrist as well as other stuff, kind of a jack of all trades. I do feel like I've been feeling better since I stopped consuming gluten products so much , but a lot of times it' really hard to avoid, especially when you 're in a situation where you didn't bring food with you and there's only fast food places all around. The food industry isn't particularly kind to vegetarians as I've discovered, but I think they're even less so to people that are gluten intolerant. If I ever became a vegetarian, I'd probably have a field day, I remember I was in a super market once, looking for veggie friendly products and anything and everything I picked up that was, all had gluten in it.

So to sum it up: Avoiding sugar + gluten+ dairy+ red meat = ___________________ (insert creative word for mass explosion and or colorful curse/profanity)

The one thing I can see about what I've gotten out of this site so far is that I have been seeing steady results. I'm constantly surprised by them. For example , I went a convention over the weekend and pretty much went over my calories almost every single day. I fully expected to gain weight, but I actually lost a little. Maybe it's because I was running around a lot , although it's kind of hard to run in a corset I realize I need to be doing more than this and make better choices with what I eat. I tend to go over the amount of fat I'm allowed to consume and sometimes with carbs too. That's been the hardest. I also need to actually excercise in addition to my daily activities.

So yeah...this was supposed to be short, sweet and to the point. I apologize if it's been a novel as far as intros go.