God, I'm such a downer! But here's what worked.

First off, Happy 2012!!  And thanks to Tim and Jerry, for hosting a fabulous NYE party.  Love, Love, guys.

Second, Merry Christmas, Io Saturnalia, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanza, etc.  I'm going to save myself a lot of time and just insert my holiday letter into the blog in a minute.

Third,  I have GOT to wrap up this blog and move on.  When I started this blog 2+ years ago, I weighed roughly 122 pounds and set what I hoped was an achievable goal of losing 10 pounds of mid-life squidge, aka fat.  I tried everything from walking, to Bringing It with Tony Horton's P90X.  I got bird poop in my hair from the walking, and lots of giggles with my friend Ena from P90X, but not much weight loss.  I thought I saw a muscle or two somewhere in there, but it was hard to see, because it remained buried under the layers of fat.

I was eating like a bird, thinking it was just a simple, calories-in-versus-calories-burned formula -- I used to laugh at the "diet" people.  And I still scorn commercial diets.  But I am now well and truly convinced that you are what you eat and it DOES matter where you get your calories.  I thought I was eating right, and switching to oatmeal and eating more veggies and eggs per Jackie Warner's advice, actually helped me drop a few pounds.  But it turns out that I was not eating that well, and that it's nearly impossible to really eat well in today's fast-paced, heat-and-eat food world.  Only when I got blood test results showing my allergies to wheat, dairy (yes, my friends, all forms of dairy -- whey, casein, butter, milk, cheese, yogurt, and even goat dairy, so, no, I can't eat your delicious feta), and eggs, did I truly start eating well.  And I would never have done it without that confirmation and the identification of my specific allergies.

Armed with information about my specific allergies, I was able to summon the willpower (because that's ALL it's about, and it's REALLY hard to summon that willpower) to eliminate dairy, wheat and eggs from my diet.  Yes, it sucks for me -- no more cheese burgers, no more French Toast, no more Blue Boxes of cheesy deliciousness, no more quiche.  Naturally, it turns out that everything I loved was killing me.  (Also one of my favorite country songs.)  But it worked and it worked quickly -- the weight I couldn't lose for a year and a half just melted away.  That layer of subcutaneous fat I bitched about 2 years ago is gone.  And my eczema and rhinitis cleared up too.  Amazing.  I've had allergic rhinitis since childhood, and figured that there was no way to cure it.  That's certainly what all my doctors said.  At the time I started eliminating my food allergens, I was actually sleeping on foam wedges at night to help all the phlegm drain from my head, so that I could breathe.  Once I stopped eating dairy/wheat/eggs, I no longer had the phlegm or the itchy eczema.  I started sleeping through the night for the first time in years.  No more bed wedges.  The food allergy was apparently contributing not only to the eczema, but also to the rhinitis.  Who knew?  (James Braly, M.D., food allergist, and author of Hidden Food Allergies knew -- I cannot thank Dr. Braly and his book enough for this life-changing information.)

It turns out that allergic reactions are inflammatory in nature, they affect multiple organs (including, for me, my largest organ, the skin), and the food allergies start in the gut.  Long story, not-so-short, the gut is more permeable than normal, allowing larger-than-normal food particles to enter the blood stream, which are then attacked by antibodies to the food (in my case, wheat, dairy, egg), causing this nasty inflammatory response as if your body is trying to kill a virus, but it's really attacking your food/nutrients.  You aren't properly digesting food or absorbing the nutrients your body needs to function properly and do things like heal.  There is a whole world of trouble caused by these allergies.  

So the secret to weight loss (not to mention relief from rhinitis and eczema)  in my case, and I believe MANY others out there who just don't know it, is food allergies and avoiding the allergens.  There is a reason that dairy and wheat are the two most common food allergies in the U.S.  And dairy and wheat are in EVERYTHING.  You think it's safe to eat sausage?  "Contains milk."  Hummus?  It's beans, tahini, and oil with some garlic, right?  "Contains milk."  The good news is that the allergies are common enough that manufacturers have to warn you that they're in there.  But it's still an enormous bummer to pick up something that really shouldn't have milk or wheat in it, only to find that they've added it.  So now I'm on a meat + fruit + veggies + grains - wheat diet.  I spend a lot more time cooking and I'm not much fun at parties and frequently annoy people by insisting on reading labels.  But hey, it's my life and my health -- I think I'm worth it.  ;-)

My advice to the rest of the world?  Don't rely on your doctors to figure everything out for you.  Doctors are people too.  Just people.  They've got a medical education, usually from a medical establishment that is certain that it already knows everything there is to know.  The world is still metaphorically flat if you want to convince most doctors of anything that wasn't taught in medical school.  And the medical establishment is heavily funded by large drug companies.  If there is a pill for it, why bother to look at your diet?  And there is a pill for just about everything.  And pills have the benefit of being fast.  The doctor just has to scribble a scrip for you and send you on your way.  These doctor people only have about 5 minutes to actually listen to the problem that has been consuming your life for weeks/months/years, about 5 minutes to examine you, and about 5 minutes to tell you about the drug they're going to give you to see if it will help/keep you from coming back.  Yes doctors have a medical degree, but they don't know everything about everything.  Most haven't studied allergies generally, even fewer have studied food allergies in particular (even my two allergy specialists were useless in helping me), and most don't even know what atopy is.  So, with apologies to my medical doctor friends, I suggest that you educate yourself.  Be persistent.  For some reason, the medical community is not willing to share the real technical articles with the public -- you will get mostly very general articles that tell you nothing useful.  But if you persist, you may eventually strike gold, like I did -- I recommend dermnetnz.org, a New Zealand dermatological web site that actually gives the public access to technical medical information.  Imagine that.  And buy the book.  Yes, you may have to shell out some cash to educate yourself, because they don't like to give out that information for free.  I eventually started buying and reading books on food allergies and nutrition, because I knew (from dermnetnz.org, thanks) that a food allergy was probable with my atopic dermatitis.

Companion advice?  Either keep your information to yourself or be prepared to do battle with the rest of the world, because your friends have never heard of your food allergy, and, therefore, you must be an idiot who believes everything they read on "the internet," big eye roll.  Even worse, if you start sharing  nutritional information, such as the evils of sugar and the benefits of vitamin C, you will confirm for certain people that you are wacko.  Yes, that's just crazy talk.  I hesitate to even write about it here, because I know that I will be judged.  So be it.  I am comfortable that I am NOT stupid, that I have educated myself thoroughly with information from reliable and intelligent sources who know more about nutrition than my friends know, and I will just have to let people think I'm stupid or crazy.  I can live with that.  And I can live with being just a little less fun at restaurants and parties.  I can sleep at night -- I can sleep at night, because I'm not being kept awake all night by eczema covering my arms and legs and phlegm clogging my nose and ears and draining painfully down my throat.  I don't need a double-blind, random-whatever controlled study to prove to me what I already know from educating myself and from personal experience.  I've got my education, and I highly recommend to anyone who will listen, that  you get your own education.  Go forth and read.  It will be time-consuming and frustrating -- there may not be a pill for your problem.  But I think it will be worth it in the long run.  You only live once, right?