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My body: hey so our joints are wonky and we have very little energy so please don't overdo it or you'll suffer, k?

Me: ...ok so frozen meals are easy

My body: FYI I need you to cook everything from scratch

Me: pre-cut veggies?

Body: from SCRATCH

#MCAS

[Dietary restrictions]

I feel like my life is basically spent prepping and stocking up on individual freezer meals that I make myself

So that when I inevitably have a flare and can't really get out of bed, at least I am not eating stuff that makes me flare harder

It gets old

[Dietary restrictions]

But also I'm really grateful that there are currently times where I can cook batches of food for my freezer

And also I am really glad I'm Autistic and my brain has decided cooking is an acceptable special interest

[Dietary restrictions]

I'm trying to work on more blog posts about how to cook when your joints are wonky and you have very little energy and also a lot of dietary restrictions

But so far it's mostly like...a list of ideas on my phone because I have very little energy

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I feel like a lot of the cookbooks I've read either use ingredients that I can't eat, or they assume that I have the time and money and energy to just waltz to the Farmer's market and hand select my produce

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And most of the accessible cooking hacks that I learned from OTs are things like using pre-cut veggies or a slow cooker, or prepping things a day ahead. Which are all things my mast cells specifically dislike.

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As food ages, it releases histamine. The more surfaces are exposed to air, the faster this happens (e.g. ground meat), and the slower you cook something the more histamine gets released

Minimizing dietary histamine helps me manage my MCAS

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There's just...a lot of other stuff to factor in too, like other potential food triggers (e.g. some people react to salicylates)

Plus things like "did this fruit get coated in wax or sprayed with something" etc

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It is really easy to just feel a sense of dread every time you need to eat because it's honestly impossible to predict every food trigger.

I'm trying to...still enjoy food when I can, and have strategies for coping with flares

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I also personally hate elimination diets (tho kudos if they work for you), and am trying to rotate my foods more even though my Autistic brain really just wants to do the same food thing because it's comforting and easier.

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I have tried a lot of "medical diets" and in my late 20s I just decided I was done with them. But then eventually I started having all these gut symptoms, so I tried some of the MCAS specific stuff and honestly I was kind of annoyed that it actually helps

[Dietary restrictions]

It is just...so much work

But also that's better than 12 hours of severe abdominal cramps and [redacted], plus when my MCAS baseline is good I sometimes get restful sleep which is the dream so

I do the things