Helping a Friend

I’ve been recently helping another good friend lose some weight. Things are going fairly well, but one of the challenges has been their allergies. They are not able to eat egg or nut products. In fact, if food has been prepared near eggs or nuts then it’s likely they cannot eat that food either. This has made planning meals a bit tricky. You would be surprised at the number of store products and restaurant items that have egg or nuts in them despite the dish not containing an egg or nut. This seems a bit bizarre to me, but apparently they love coating things in whipped eggs or mushed nuts.

In a situation like this you have to be really careful to let anyone who is preparing food to know that they need to make substitutions. It can be done and shouldn’t be too much of a hassle in most situations. Sometimes they’ll just have to use butter or something else to accomplish what they need.

On the weight loss side of things the allergies can be helpful in a few curious ways. For example, it’s practically impossible to find cake-type products that don’t contain some kind of egg. This goes for all kinds of junk food from wafer treats to muffins to cookies. A surprising number of junk food items contain at least a trace of egg. Then, of course, there’s tons of stuff that has nuts in one form or another.

So while it’s true they miss out on some great tasting items it’s also true that they have a built in junk food filter. I suppose you have to look at the bright side in a situation like this. At any rate, my friend is losing weight at a decent enough pace and feeling better week by week. Some goals may require different paths for different people, but there’s a route leading there all the same. Keep moving forward.