Calling a Spade a Spade (well, trying to).

Vegetarian. Check.

Peta 'Go Veg' stickers we had in our militant varsity veg days. How d'ya like them pixels? 

Lactose and gluten intolerant. Check? Check?

Shit.


Let me introduce you to the Grinch Who Ate Christmas. That's usually me. In fact, that was me a few days ago. But how do you be said Grinch when you're lactose AND gluten intolerant AND in the running for being a veg going on eight years?! All I could think was: "Christmas is going to suck this year". Suck and bloat.


And it did.


Labeling stuff is tiring but it's so much easier to sum up your dietary choices/prohibitions in one word. I'm a ... 

(ponce?)


Done.
People then nod in a farce of understanding but generally leave it. But when you've got to go into some detail about it, I'm talking 3 minutes worth, you suddenly become very aware of how tit you sound.


The vegetarian restrictions I've willingly embraced 'cause they're self-imposed, my little metanarrative I can follow in a black and white fashion, but the latter is a recent discovery (after almost a year of feeling shit) and have been, shall we say, bestowed on me which naturally, I want to rebel against. 


But I'm rebelling against myself. How counter-intuitive and adolescent 'punk' of me. I might as well koki the anarchy 'A' on my shoes and wear a Cliche Guevara tee.

Eating is cheating.
In my case, this is almost every meal and I won't start feeling better until I get hardcore with my diet. Duh, Lauren.


Or change my diet? Does this mean a paradigm shift in belief and morals?

Obey stencil collage on paper

We can directly control what we put in our mouths... uh, in most cases. Let me rephrase, we can control what FOOD we put in our mouths. Yet this is one of the hardest challenges I have yet faced. What a ridiculous middle class, bourgeois challenge to have. I make me sick. Literally.

Lame, no one likes that weird food girl who sits wistfully at dinner, can't eat anything off the menu and talks about her restricted diet incessantly all evening (ala Jozi preachy vegan of the mid-2000s). Or quietly eats all the 'poison' food and then complains about the ensuing pain. But is packing your own quinoa really the answer? I've lost cool points just thinking about it (and I lynched for those points). 

Besides, that involves forward planning and doesn't fit into my self-fancied 'easy breezy-anything goes' lifestyle of eating out tons. This might also have something to do with being lazy and not loving cooking. But I prefer the former.


I'm killing myself, softly, while getting more soft around the edges.
Hooray. You are what you eat I guess, and I clearly went out and swallowed a beach ball.


Time to get serious. As serious as words on a digital page on a blog that seven people follow.


Discovering you're lactose and/or gluten intolerant is like a break up. A break up with a lover; a delicious cheesy, pasta, bread and butter sort of lover you'll get fat for. When you've cut out meat, cheese becomes more than your lover, it becomes your religion. I've been in the denial phase (not to mention grief and anger) for so long and I'm proud to report that last week, I circled the 'acceptance' stage. I know this because I bought not one, but TWO allergy-free cookbooks. BIG step for me (especially considering I don't cook). Also, they were on special.

One big step, yes, but it's more about the baby steps, as in WTF am I doing?! Let's see how this goes, I'll take it one step at a time. And again with the steps. Maybe I should throw some exercise in there while I'm at it. And some fish.