Just Another Food Blog?

Hello! I'm Stella. Not another food blogger. Actually, this is my first stroll into the culinary territories. Up until know I've sailed through the troubled waters of creative expression, while carefully working through my major project on corporate storytelling. But this side-project is different; This is personal!

All though my life I've had this love/hate passion for food. Processed foods, fatty dishes, oh-so-many carbs and everyday desserts had been my way of the comfort ninja for quite some time. But the older I got, the harder it became to handle the effects of such a diet in my physique.

You see, I have struggled with two seemingly unrelated health issues for more than 15 years: acne & hyperinsulinemia. And the chain of events related to these conditions have been so reforming that I had to literally change my entire view of food to balance them out!

I won't say much about acne, because most of you people have felt it in your guts during puberty, but I will talk a bit about hyperinsulinemia because there's perhaps less hype around it.

Hyperinsulinemia is a condition where the amount of insulin in your blood gets much much higher than what's considered normal. Although often mistaken for diabetes, it actually isn't. However, hyperinsulinemia can potentially lead to type 2 diabetes if you don't take drastic measures on your diet and physical exercise levels (e.g. monitor each meal's carbs intake to make sure you don't trigger hypoglycemia and maintain an active lifestyle). How bad this can get? Well it depends. For me it meant gaining weight easily and living my everyday life with an incessant need for sweets and a constant sense of sleepiness physicians offer refer to as lethargy. Not too sweet for a young girl eager to become an active citizen of the world, right? Well.. stay with me 'cause the story gets bitter!

After having visited my fair share of experts (physicians, gynecologists, dermatologists, homeopathic practitioners, you-name-it-I've been there!), and having tried out almost any acne treatment in the market (except for the accutane one) I found out that all those zits around my face were not hormonal-related at all: I had been dealing with an intriguing set of almost 15 food allergies for more than 10 years, meaning that if I were to go anywhere near the guilty foods, new zits would be added to my rich collection. The allergy list is quite interesting as a case study, but to sum it up I was obliged to stop eating flour, grains, anything that touches the ground (like cabbages, potatoes and carrots) and even some fruits. You guessed it already? All carbs! Good thing chocolate wasn't in the list!

At first I thought the whole allergy thing was a practical joke. But after a week of denial I actually gave it a try for a couple of months and cut down on the amounts of the "guilty" foods on the list. To my astonishment, that worked miraculously: my skin started to clear out at an impressive pace, without any additional acne treatment other than an anti-allergic pill and dietary changes. But I had ended up eating practically the same things every day: orange juice for breakfast, a medium-sized banana at 10am, roast chicken or fish with rice and tomatoes for lunch, another apple in the afternoon and yet another dish of protein with some sort of colorful (non-green) salad for dinner. How long can you go with just that on your daily plate? I'm not the patient kind; I soon revolted...

So there I was, the night before hitting my 28th birthday, feeling exhausted and hungry, with a few extra pounds in all the wrong places, unable to have a slice of my birthday cake because it had flour in it...Great huh?

With me, groaning and moaning lasts for a couple of tough mental fortnights after which I generally come up with some sort of plan. One thing was certain: I wasn't gonna be spending my entire life on allergy meds and restrained diets. There had to be some sort of code for my body's chemical factory to function in a balanced manner, no fatigue, zits-free, and I was determined to crack that code.

That's how I got down to expanding my knowledge on the human body, nutrition, food history, clean eating, global cooking, physical exercise and alternative healing. I have a holistic and rather scholastic approach towards everything I do, and I get bored easily. So I experiment a lot and keep notes of everything I try and their effects.

My three year research and experimentation has led me in a zit-free state where I have learned to listen to my physical and mental body while enjoying tastes I love with much of the excess weight gone. It's still a work in progress for me, but I feel the urge to invite everyone aboard this trip to share unconventional ways to look at food and self-care, discover healthy and fun recipes from all over the world, re-visit all those stereotypes on eating and cooking, and have fun feeling pretty and empowered!

This is what the WanderFoods project is all about: working your way towards your true potential through the sharing of healthy tastes from all over the world. Now sleeves up: we got some pretty cool stuff to talk about!