If you know me at all, you probably know that I work out a lot. You probably also know that while I’m not fat, I’m not overly skinny either. I’m sort of average, with a little more fluff and stuff than someone who works out 10-12 hours per week should really have on their frame.
I’ve had this problem (with extra pounds) most of my life. There was this brief period in high school when I exercised like a crazy person and dropped to a size 4, but overall, I’ve been kind of roundish most of my life.
I’ve been to doctors, most of whom told me to eat less and exercise more (duh) and none of whom would listen when I told them that I ate within my calorie targets, exercised a lot, and in general, just had really poor metabolism and wasn’t there some test or series of tests that could be done to troubleshoot these things?
Seriously, one doctor, after hearing that my daily food intake was the following:
- 4 shots of espresso with 1 Tbsp heavy cream and 1 tsp sugar
- Eggwhite frittata
- Salad with chicken breast and very light dressing
- Apple
- 5 oz salmon with kale and a slice of bread
- 1/2 oz dark chocolate or 1 Tbsp ice cream as dessert (seriously, with John being diabetic, when we have ice cream, we each have a spoonful. That’s it.)
Told me that I should stop with the heavy cream. For reference: 1 Tbsp heavy cream is 51 calories and 5 grams of fat. I burned that off in the first 10 minutes of my (at that point) hour on the elliptical. I was livid.
Years pass, I change my eating up from time to time, decide to train for triathlons, and still, I’m soft and roundish. But then two of my coworkers find this new doctor that they really like and I figure, well, since I have great health insurance, let’s see if this new doctor can do anything for me.
I’ve been seeing her for about a year now, and she’s tweaked various things, including my thyroid levels, to try to help me sleep better, feel better, and lose some weight. It hasn’t been unsuccessful, but it hasn’t been entirely successful either. I’ve lost about 8 pounds in the past 15 months, which certainly isn’t nothing. But I’ve felt… for a long time… that while nothing was technically wrong with me, things weren’t entirely right either.
Fast forward to three weeks ago and my doctor and I are talking about my latest blood work, which found yet more things that were not really wrong but not entirely right either and she asks me out of the blue if I take antihistamines. I answer yes (I’ve taken them off and on for years and I have perpetual post-nasal drip, as does my father) and she immediately says “why have we never done an allergy test on you?”
So, allergy test it is. The biggest issue is that the blood work she does takes three weeks to get back. So, for now, I wait. While I wait, I worry a little. What if I’m allergic to wine? Or coffee? Then there’s the question of whether or not I’m going to choose to go without the foods I am allergic to. Or how much I am going to go without them. Clearly they are not killing me, but they are making me sleep like crap, they are contributing to extra weight, and they are leaving me feeling like something is not quite right. And yes, I’m aware that technically those symptoms are likely going to contribute to me living a shorter life span, but are we talking 90 years instead of 95? 93 instead of 95? 70 instead of 95? There’s no good way to know. If I’m allergic to cheese, can I still have pizza once a month and see benefits? Once every three months? Once a week? It’s silly to worry much right now, but it’ll be interesting to find out the results and see what happens if there are things I’m allergic to that I’m currently eating that I’m willing to give up.
And this is all a very rambly way of saying that I had allergy testing done and I’ll get the results back sometime next week.
