Wednesday, November 22, 2017 // The Statement
6B

Personal Statement: No more pretzels

“

Why even drink coffee if you’re 
gonna just have decaf?” I could 
probably buy my own coffee 
shop with the number of times 

someone has asked me.

“I like the taste but I don’t want to 

get addicted and then start to need the 
caffeine,” I would reply. Then it’d start 
a discussion about how they don’t taste 
the same. (Sorry, guys, even after having 
flirted with drinking coffee for almost 
half a year, I still taste no difference.)

Besides, I’m really much more of a 

tea person. But all tangents aside, the 
rationale for my seemingly backward 
coffee-drinking habits was simple: Drink 
one cup of cheap, decaf coffee when I 

crave the taste of it (coffee connoisseurs, 
don’t @ me) and that, in turn, would leave 
me satisfied for at least a month or two. 
I thought allowing myself to have a little 
when I was really craving it would be just 
enough to satiate my hankering but not so 
much as to turn me into a regular coffee 
drinker. 

Cue junior-year second semester. I 

was sluggish and tired, and the nausea 
and stomachaches I’d always had, but 
chosen to ignore, were now almost daily 
occurrences and were worse than ever. 
My mom suggested I see a nutritionist. 
After I described my symptoms to her, 
the nutritionist seemed to immediately 
understand what was going on.

“I think you have a candida infection,” 

she told me. “Essentially, there is yeast 
buildup in your bloodstream. So, you need 

to eliminate gluten and sugar from your 
diet. Some low-sugar fruits are OK, but in 
moderation.” (Read: no more than half-
cup of low-sugar fruits per day.)

At this point, I was already intolerant 

to dairy products and, more recently, 
eggs, so this was the icing on top of a 
really burnt, dry cake. So, even though I 
saw it would be a challenging road ahead, 
because I’m one of those people who 
trusts health professionals, I let her send 
me on my way with a recipe book of dairy-
free, egg-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, 
air-free (I’m just kidding) meals to cook.

Fast forward three weeks or so: I’m 

sitting in the newsroom of The Michigan 
Daily, munching on a salad from Au Bon 

Pain. It was the southwest chicken salad 
(hold the tortilla strips). It was the first 
real meal I’d had all day, and the second 
time that week I’d had this salad.

Almost 
immediately 
after 
starting 

the diet, I went back to school. It was 
my first semester as co-editorial page 
editor — a job that consumed at least 20 
hours of every week — and four classes 
that had multiple assignments due every 
week as well as a mountain of reading for 
each lecture. (Thank you, sociology and 
Spanish majors.)

Just like any other busy college 

student, I had no time to spend hours in 
the kitchen preparing alternative meals. 
So, instead, I spent it obsessing, worrying 
about what I was eating. I started eating 
less and less, until I was only having one 
whole meal a day to avoid having to deal 

with the dreaded question “What was I 
going to eat?”

And because my eating habits became 

so messed up, I would snack on whatever 
fit the diet, and in large quantities — bags 
of popcorn, corn tortilla chips — because 
my meals weren’t satisfying enough. Then 
I quickly got sick of those foods, too.

Breakfast used to be my favorite meal 

of the day, but without toast and after 
being told I should “stay away” from 
gluten-free bread — “Who knows what 
preservatives they have in there!” — I had 
lost my favorite meal. I hated thinking 
about food.

This semester, I cracked. I started 

getting hungrier and unhappier. Because 

I hadn’t been allowed to eat so many 
things, I started eating more sugary 
treats and junk food than I’ve ever in my 
life. I started eating way more of the basic 
foods I’d loved but had been told to stay 
away from.

I began to lie awake at night, thinking 

about how bad I’d been at keeping with the 
diet and whether the pack of Starbursts 
I’d had was making my infection worse. 
This, in turn, made my sleep worse and my 
eating habits kept spiraling downward. If 
I was already giving up on this diet, what 
was another gluten-filled sandwich or 
pack of sugary fruit snacks?

One day, though, as I went to The 

Daily’s vending machine and saw I was 
about to take the last Starbursts pack 
(sorry, Michelle), I realized I’d eaten 
more Starbursts that week than I’d had 

in my entire life. I love Starbursts, but I’d 
always had them only once in a while, and 
they were a special treat I looked forward 
to.

But as I sat down with my fifth pack 

of Starbursts that week, I realized the 
only reason it was eating more sugar 
than I normally do was because of the 
unreasonable restrictions of my new diet 
I wasn’t used to. While the nutritionist 
may have been right to tell me I’d been 
having too many family-sized bags of 
pretzels, asking someone to eliminate 
something entirely is a tall order. Some 
may be able to do that fairly easily, but 
everyone is different and, for people like 
me, extreme restriction manifests itself 

as a stressor in an already stressful life. 
I could likely achieve the same goals of 
getting better sleep, warding off infection 
and leading an overall healthier lifestyle 
— if I just practiced limiting these foods 
in moderation. I knew my body best.

Now, I’m still not a coffee drinker. But 

it’s not because I forced myself to cut it out 
completely. I simply let myself indulge in 
a cup now and then, enjoying the flavors 
when I want to. Though I realize it’s not 
always feasible to practice moderation — 
as some people with allergies or severe 
intolerances have to abide by strict diets 
— I implore us us as doctors, nutritionists 
and a society to work moderation into our 
discourse and health care programs to 
recognize that people are different and 
what works for one does not work for 
another.

by Anna Polumbo-Levy, Editorial Page Editor

ILLUSTRATION BY AMELIA CACCHIONE

