Becoming High Maintenance

I grew up knowing that "beggers can't be choosers" and that meant that if you of accepted what you were given.  "Picky" had a negative connotation and was considered synonymous with "ungrateful".

A lot of life has happened since I moved out on my own.  While I absolutely support people other people being particular on many things, including food, I have always viewed myself as ungrateful if I am particular myself.

I have literally only sent food back at a restaurant one time and that was because the chicken was severely undercooked.

Many years ago I tried a low-carb diet for a while.  At the time, I was very addicted to bready carbohydrates and this really helped to break the cravings for bread.  I lost some weight but it all came right back later.  The intense bread cravings never really came back after that, though.  I still ate bread or breaded items but not in the quantity or with the level of desire that I had previously.

A few years ago I went gluten free and the reasons are explained in this old post.  However, I didn't want to inconvenience anyone by really saying that I needed food to be gluten free.  So I didn't.  And if I had gluten more often than my body liked, I knew that I would pay for it later.

These days I can go to restaurants and see many things marked gluten free.

Having been on the autoimmune protocol for the last few months, I have become more aware of how difficult it is to go out to eat if you have any sort of food allergy or dietary need.  Just to feed myself, I have had to become high maintenance.  It has been very hard for me to do.

I've been learning to carefully read menus and ask questions.  Sometimes I don't realize that I should have asked a question until too late.  But I file that information away and I know to ask the next time. 

Asking many questions before ordering food and customizing the order is a new skill for me and I am learning to not consider myself ungrateful for doing it.  My coworker recently told me, "It's your money being spent and it is your body.  You have every right to ask that your money is spent making your body healthy."  I think that is a really good perspective and I am trying to adopt it.

This week I successfully ordered an almost AIP Friendly Cobb Salad at one restaurant.  I wanted the extra nutrition of spinach and I saw that the restaurant has a spinach salad on the menu.  So I requested spinach instead of lettuce.  "No problem."  I requested no cheese, peppers, tomatoes, or croutons.  "No problem."  Since the hard boiled eggs were quartered and not diced, I did not request them to be skipped.  I've added egg yolks back in so I separated the white and the yolk when the salad came.  There was bacon on the salad and I will bet that it was not nitrite free.  I debated skipping it because the salad did have chicken.  It ended up being a really nice, filling salad.  Some places I literally pay the salad price for basically a bowl of ice berg lettuce (no nutrition) with nothing on it. 

Tonight I was invited to join some people for dinner at Denny's.  It was last minute but I decided to try it.  Denny's has an omlet that is loaded with vegetables.  It has squash, spinach, and a bunch of other stuff.  So I asked for the omlet to be egg yolk only, no tomatoes, no peppers, no cheese.  Omlet only with no potatoes or bread.  The server told me that it would not lower the price to skip the starches.  No worries; I can't eat them so no use wasting them.  The omlet turned out to be quite good with the spinach and squash. 

The lack of pain has been so exhilarating that I do not want anything to move that backward.  So, if I am spending money,  I want to make sure the food a good investment for my body.  I don't really see myself becoming high maintenance in other areas but I think that with food, I will learn to be a little more.  Particularly at restaurants.