Cheesecake: Restricted

Like a computer, when the human body is working correctly, it’s an efficient, marvelous, fast machine. Somehow all these organs smooshed inside you work together to create a living, breathing human working at full capacity. However, with a computer, if one little thing is off, the whole system just might shut down. With the human body, if you make accommodations and sacrifices, your body can often still run at full capacity, even if you are a little ‘off’.

I’m one of those people who happens to be ‘off’ by a bit. Personality wise, I hate going from dry to wet, sleeping on my side, and lately, my biggest pet peeve was eating. More specifically, not eating cheesecake. To delve into the great cheesecake drought in my life, we must go back to my teens.

Eating has always been a trial for me since I got out of my teens. When one is a teenager, they can eat a whole pizza for dinner, not exercise, and still not gain any weight. But, when one hits adulthood, especially women with PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome for those who aren’t in the know), those days of eating what you want go out the window. After getting into my mid-twenties, I had gained so much weight, so gradually, that I went from 130 lbs to 170 in a few short years.

To explain PCOS a little further, it essentially causes little benign cysts to grow on your ovaries, affecting reproductive health. Some of the lovely symptoms include: Menstrual cycles so heavy they can send you to the hospital, difficulty losing weight, and excess body hair.

I went on a heavy diet to lose weight after the dark times (otherwise known as completing graduate school), as my rule was that, as long as I am stressed out and being forced to read hundreds of pages of university level papers and books a week, I am allowed to stuff my face. So, I finished up university, went to my naturopath, and she kicked my butt. Well, she didn’t literally kick it, but she told me that there was only so much she could do and I had to commit to eating better to lose the weight. Now, she made it a challenge. And when I was challenged, I never wanted to give up. That’s how I made it through grad school, tolerated getting pooped on at my job (I work with kids if it isn’t obvious), and beat notoriously difficult videogames.

I was put on a keto diet. For those who don’t know, keto consists of: meat, some dairy, and green vegetables, and that’s pretty much it because it avoids those nasty, delicious carbs. My naturopath afforded me a budget of 50 carbs per day, which is crazy low.

The first thing one has to acknowledge about losing weight, is that you often look and feel like a crazy person. In stores, you have to carefully pore over the labels of anything you buy. If there are more than 10 carbohydrates, you better put that delicious cookie down and look for an alternative. But, you can splurge here and there when it’s just yourself you have to worry about. So maybe a cookie here and there isn’t that bad, especially if you exercise it off and burn up those carbs. Also, if you’re really lucky, there might just be enough fiber in the food to counteract the carbs. For those who don’t know the secrets: You can subtract the number of carbs by the number of fiber on the labels. So if a cookie is 20 carbs, and there’s 12 fiber, you can get away with it because that only counts as 8 carbs. Unlike solving quadratic equations like in school, there is some math you can actually use in life. Who would have guessed?

So I lost the weight, and then, I got married soon after. After you complete school and get a job, your schedule clears, you get lonely, and then you decide it’s finally time for marriage. He married me in six months.

I love him, but he loses weight and burns carbs by breathing. He’s allowed to eat whatever he wants because his metabolism is so efficient. I work until 7:30 on some days, so I let him handle dinner a lot of the time. Sometimes he suggests pizza and I go back to my old ways. Humans are social eaters, you know? It feels weird to turn down food when someone else is offering to make it for you. Also, somehow, food prepared by someone else always tastes better, too. I gained a bit of the weight back, but not too much, so I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

My maternal clock hit when I turned twenty-six, and I came down with a bad case of baby fever, and he’s always wanted children, so we set about getting pregnant. I had to cut out any ‘splurges’, like eating cheesecake, icecream, or pizza. Getting pregnant when you have PCOS is like going into boot camp. You have to make sure your body is in tiptop shape to support any bean who might grow inside you due to high miscarriage rates.

The tiresome thing about eating healthy is the repetitiveness of it. Much like how I had slowly grown to hate my morning routine over the years (getting up, brushing teeth, doing my skincare routine, showering, shampooing, conditioning), I had grown to hate the repetitiveness of healthy eating.

By the way, some foods are deceivingly unhealthy. Fruits and some vegetables are absolute traitors and can not be trusted. Corn is a backstabber (at least 17 carbs per serving), apples and oranges have their moments like when you’re on the dating circuit, but aren’t marriage material (they have 20 carbs, but they are complex which means they don’t immediately spike your glucose), and cookies and icecream, while honest about what they are, are just as toxic. So anyway, this is what my diet looked like for the longest time: Shrimp and vegetables, sausages, hamburgers on keto buns, yogurt, sardines, plain tea, coffee (so long as it's under 200 mg), quesadillas on keto tortillas, and eggs. And that’s pretty much it.

So that’s how I got pregnant. When you eat like that, food changes in your mind. There are things you still look forward to eating, of course, but food becomes more like fuel than it is something pleasurable to share with others, and that, in itself, while healthy, can become a tragedy. While everyone else is enjoying that piece of cheesecake, you have to have the discipline to fold your hands in your lap, stay strong, and let the merriment happen around you.

However, while pregnant, you are usually allowed to eat carbs again, and I took advantage of this. I ate some things that were not so good (but were delicious), and could eat that piece of cheesecake again. I could join in the merriment, enjoy birthday parties without ordering the salmon on the menu every single time, and I didn’t have to avoid social opportunities due to concerns with my dietary restrictions.

But then, more bad news. I got diagnosed with gestational diabetes. So, buh-bye cheesecake, random cravings for mac and cheese, pasta, and social eating and bonding. Hello shrimp, hamburgers, and anything keto. People take for granted just how much food is a major part of socializing. Dating? You go out and eat. Getting to know someone new? Eating is a great choice. Celebrations? Eating is the go-to. To be locked out of all these wonderful activities aches more than a tummy after devouring a 3000-calorie dinner. Well, maybe not that much. I wished that everyone else would just serve healthy food at all times, but then again, I wanted them to enjoy their bodies working at full capacity and the zest of life, even if I couldn’t.

When I was losing weight the first time around, all I had to worry about was myself. So I could afford those cheat days here and there, and the occasional slice of cheesecake. When I had another life to look after, I couldn’t risk it. And somehow, it was OK, even though it could be isolating. Maybe I couldn’t always enjoy a cheesecake with my family, but I could enjoy my sardines (one fish that others tended not to enjoy) with my baby, my boring shrimp meals, and everything else. Having PCOS, I was terrified of miscarrying to begin with. I had a scare of a chemical pregnancy early on, and broke down in tears for fifteen minutes just sobbing in my husband’s arms that I lost the precious bun in the oven inside me before it could even grow.

But the baby likes my weird diet. He dances when I eat yogurt. He flips when I eat hamburgers on tasteless bread, and rolls vigorously when I eat spinach. Keeping him alive, feeling him move, is greater than the finest pleasure I get from eating.

Maybe someday, I’ll be able to eat that piece of cheesecake again. But for now, I guess I’m satisfied with taking my own dessert (keto ice cream is real folks, and it’s actually tasty) to family dinners.