Have Food Allergies? Here's How to Eat Around Them!
A client emailed:
"I have been gluten-free and eating clean 75% of the time for 16 months. I have recently been diagnosed with even more serious food allergies. No coconut, no apples, no bananas, no cane sugar, no rice, no pepper, and the list goes on. I feel like I can't eat anything! Please help!"
Have you tried the meal plans?
They're always gluten-free, and with lower fat options, there's no coconut. Apples and bananas can usually be omitted.
Instead of rice you can use quinoa, oats or cauliflower, among other options like kamut :)
If you ever have an allergy substitution question, you can email support[at]getmealplans[dot]com for help :)
We have a lot of users with long lists of allergies and they do really well.
There's also some research now suggesting allergy tests aren't the most reliable either. Sometimes it's better to do an elimination diet (The GLOW meal plan is part elimination diet). That really helped me and my sister identify our true allergies. Basically, eat potatoes for a few days, until you are sick of them, and then slowly add one or two new foods and see what happens with eating them.
Above all, you still have a lot to eat, you just feel overwhelmed, as we all do when foods are taken away -- I have a big chapter on dealing and working around allergies and other food issues in my book The Happy Herbivore Guide to Plant-Based Living.
One big piece of advice from that chapter is to stop focusing on all the foods you can't have and start writing a list of all the options you can have. You'll tire of the exercise before you ever exhaust your list.
Feel better soon!