Food Allergy Goals for 2023: A Fresh New Start

With 2022 at an end, I thought it would be productive to reflect on the year ahead and explain what I would like to improve on in this new year.

My food allergy goals

We all have our resolutions, so I thought it would be appropriate to discuss my food resolutions with this allergy community. Let's start 2023 with a fresh outlook and new strategies, shall we? So here are some of my 2023 food resolutions and goals.

Plan meals weekly

This is a big goal that I am determined to make a routine this year. When dealing with food allergies, meal planning is essential. Planning your meals with the proper safe ingredients greatly removes the stress of figuring out meals. For me personally, my most severe allergy is to wheat. This can be challenging, given that I love everything with wheat, like bread, pasta, crackers, and cookies.

So making sure I prep my meals not to have wheat takes effort and practice. I want 2023 to feel more efficient regarding my everyday meals. I sometimes tend to "fly by the seat of my pants" as life gets busy with work and other obligations. I tend to find myself scrambling to make a meal because leaving it last minute is of no help when you can only have certain foods. So this year, I am going to make an effort to plan my meals weekly and create a grocery list to make meals happen with more efficiency.

Discover more delicious food substitutions

Another goal for me this year would be to try more food substitutes. We are lucky to live in a time when there is so much innovation in the food space, and creativity is booming. For example, I am obsessed with my current wheat-free crackers. They taste like the real thing! 

So I would like to make a list of all my trigger foods and take some time to find more substitutes for those products so I can broaden the foods I eat rather than just sticking to the 1 substitute I know among the foods I am allergic to.

Explore more foods and cuisines

In addition to expanding my list of substitutes, I would like to expand my palette of the foods I eat. Even though my list of food allergies is pretty substantial, I know there are more foods like fruits and vegetables that I can expand on to help me feel like my list of "yes" foods isn't so small. 

A quick example is trying to make leek soup. I never ate leeks before, and recently I discovered that I love them. So that's such a win, expanding my palette so that I have more options and don't feel so restricted about the foods I can't eat due to an allergy and focus on more foods I can enjoy.

How about you? Do you have any food allergy goals for 2023 that you would like to share?