![\"Apple](\"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/c2tblog-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Happy_Apple-672x450.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nAlong with the need to eliminate additional foods from my diet has come a certain ambivalence toward meals. I still get hungry. And I still enjoy playing with recipes. But the everyday meal has become more about getting something in me so I don\u2019t have a sugar crash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Much of the pleasure of a meal gets lost in the uncertainty that comes with not knowing which day a food will affect me in an unexpected way or exactly why. My friends who have experience with oral chemo describe a similar phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Feeling blah about meals can help you cut costs. It seems especially wasteful to buy expensive restaurant food when it doesn\u2019t taste any more exciting than the tacos you have waiting at home. But it can also change your social life if you often gather with friends for food and drinks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It also becomes more tempting to be less particular about balancing your diet or even eating healthy. Reaching for things that are consistently safe doesn\u2019t always mean you\u2019ll achieve a balanced mix of nutrients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s easy to resort to cereal and milk if you know that\u2019s the one thing that brings no ill effects. Who cares if you\u2019ve eaten cereal for dinner 6 days in a row? Or in the case of my mother, lettuce with a squeeze of lemon juice was her go-to once she was past her Dr. Pepper and saltine cracker phase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In retrospect, I\u2019m guessing Mom suffered from mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS<\/a>). Her symptoms and the list of medications to which she had adverse reactions point that direction. Since it wasn\u2019t a known or researched condition when she was growing up with \u201callergies,\u201d it\u2019s impossible to know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But given her sometimes immediate and significant reaction to food, I understand how she could have reached a point that it became so difficult and confusing to try to choose a variety of foods that it became easier and more comfortable to stick with the few things she knew were safe. Although I understand how that could happen, I could also see how her health suffered from lack of nutrition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One trick for motivating yourself to include variety when it\u2019s easier to eat a grilled cheese sandwich again is to explore your happy foods. Let yourself get hungry. Not starving, but hungry. Stand in your kitchen and pick something you have on hand that you remember enjoying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It doesn\u2019t need to be a food you want right now. There may not be anything that appeals to you in the moment. Just pick something you remember making you happy. Eat it. Savor it. See if it makes you feel happy to eat it now. If so, add it to a list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Later you can refine this list. If some food gives you a questionable reaction, note that in real time. If your list is filled with unhealthy foods, keep refining until it\u2019s not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, I have raw almonds in the house for the first time in a few weeks. I took a handful and ate them before lunch. It reminded me how happy I am eating almonds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That tiny act then led me to eat a golden delicious apple. I\u2019ve always known they make me happy. Their skin isn\u2019t tough. I like eating it. The apple is sweet, but not too sweet. The texture is juicy and firm. And I remember picking them on a trip to the orchard when I was a kid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The significance lies in the fact that choosing one thing I knew made me feel happy led me to eat another thing that makes me feel happy. And both of them are healthy, gluten-free, and well tolerated by my histamine sensitive gut. I doubled both my pleasure and my nutrition component simply by choosing happiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Could there be an easier way to make a choice? I don\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Will every happy choice be healthy? No, of course not. I might choose a chocolate bar and then later regret how it makes me feel. That\u2019s the reason for keeping a list to remind myself in advance. But just like every top-down\/bottom-up approach, when I choose happy, I\u2019m more likely to choose healthy and when I choose healthy, I\u2019m more likely to be happy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Starting with happy narrows down the number of foods I need to research for health purposes and also makes me more likely to do that research later. It\u2019s energizing in a way that\u2019s similar to seeing sunshine outside your window. You may not be out in it yet, but you feel the anticipation of good things to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What better time than now to reach for some happy foods!?<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are your happy foods? I don\u2019t mean in a scientific, how does something affect your gut biome and elevate your mood. I mean, what are the foods that make you happy to take a bite? Along with the need to eliminate additional foods from my diet has come a certain ambivalence toward meals. I … Continue reading “Happy Foods”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[792,9],"tags":[1089,3052,3794,3793,3795],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5808"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5817,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5808\/revisions\/5817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5808"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5808"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5808"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"ad\"](\"https:\/\/www.cooking2thrive.com\/blog\/c2tblog-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/STC_ad_22_OL-9.png\")
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