New Year’s Resolutions and Food Allergies

We finally made it past 2020! With New Year’s Day comes New Year’s resolutions. Usually people make resolutions about working out more, waking up earlier, eating better, etc. But have you ever thought about making resolutions based on your food allergies? Here are five resolutions you can make that will help you in your food allergy journey.

1. Learn to love your food allergies. While we tend to focus on the negatives, there are up sides, too. If we didn’t have food allergies, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy as many home-cooked meals, we wouldn’t have learned to be responsible at such a young age, and we wouldn’t have as much gratitude for things that other people take for granted. There is a ton of good that comes with having food allergies, if you only stop to look.
2. Become a food allergy advocate. This year, learn how to speak up for yourself and others. Your advocacy doesn’t have to be anything huge or time consuming. Just doing something small will make a huge difference. If you are a teen, I highly recommend joining FARE’s Teen Advisory Group, also known as TAG. The Teen Advisory Group has taught me how to advocate for individuals with food allergies, and I’ve also met some amazing people along the way. Click here to learn more and sign up.
3. Learn how to make new meals. It can be difficult to find recipes that will accommodate our food allergies. However, there are so many allergy-friendly blogs that can help you with this! Some of my favorites are Allergylicious, Everyday Allergen-Free, and Allergy Awesomeness.
4. Connect with others who have food allergies. It really helps to have people who understand food allergy problems when no one else does, and who can also swap recipes and tips. Again, the FARE Teen Advisory Group is a great opportunity to connect with other teens who have food allergies. Another great option is the chat function in the Alan app. The Alan app is a food allergy app that has a chat function with options for parents, young adults and teens.
5. Learn more about food allergies. No matter how much you know about something, there is always more to learn, and this is also true for food allergies. I thought I knew a lot about food allergies, until I joined FARE’s Teen Advisory Group and the food allergy Instagram community. I learned about poverty and food allergies, what it’s like to go through OIT (oral immunotherapy), and much more. If you want to learn more about food allergies, I recommend following a few accounts on Instagram or food allergy blogs. Honestly, anything that you do that is food-allergy focused will help you learn more about food allergies.

As you can see, there are several New Year’s resolutions that you can make that will help you on your food allergy journey. Thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful 2021!