The Exhausting Mathematics of Hunger While Receiving SNAP

How ill health and being poor impact my eating

Lara McKusky’s health issues make fresh fruits and vegetables some of her few safe foods, but they’re usually hard for her to acquire at food pantries. Photo by Taylor Vick on Unsplash

I didn’t remember the online application for SNAP being this labor intensive the last time I applied for food stamps, about five years ago. Or was it six? It’s hard to say; my traumatized, ADHD, PTSD-riddled brain has a hard time gauging time and my memory is full of holes. What I did know about time was that I waited until it was almost too late to ask for help, every time, because I’m convinced I can fix any situation on my own. This time, it was my therapist who said to me: “Lara, you can’t continue to spend $600 a month on food for the four of you! You’re going to need to stop grocery shopping and start finding your local food pantries!” And I remember thinking: Surely not! Surely not food pantries! It’s not that bad yet, is it?

I had been on food stamps, which was hard enough to swallow. But to have to say out loud that I got something from the food pantry? How embarrassing. It screams “I am at the bottom! I have to ask for free food in order to feed my kids because we are dirt poor!” I don’t know for sure that my kids were embarrassed, but at first they all refused to go with me to the food pantries. Which was a two-fold problem.

With my PTSD, which my kids also have, I have mild agoraphobia. It’s common in PTSD sufferers; we just feel vulnerable being out and about, like anyone can “get us” from any side. I have a strong aversion to strange men while out in public as well. I haven’t gone out to grocery shop in probably 10 years. I loved grocery delivery when it became available in my area, and when I couldn’t afford that, I began doing curbside pick-ups. But food pantries require me to go in, interact with people, push a cart around, and make selections.

The second part of my problem with shopping had to do with my health. My body had been, well, shutting down over the last year. Every ache and pain and dysfunction was attributed to my PTSD for a long time. I’ve had “fatigue” on my medical chart since 2018, and none of my doctors were doing anything about it. Then for the past 15 months or so, my blood pressure had steadily gone up after a lifetime of normal—low even!—blood pressure. It was causing light-headedness, dizziness, nausea, cold sweats.

I was utterly physically exhausted with the least bit of exertion. My pulse would be flagged by my watch, warning that my heart rate was over 110. I would sweat, starting with my face, then my scalp and neck, before sweat would be running down my back. I felt so gross. I wanted someone to go with me in case one of these “episodes” happened to me while I was out. So I started making one of my three teens go with me.

Now, luckily, the food pantries I‘ve found are tiny little places without glaring overhead lights. I’m able to zip through in about 15 minutes and head home. But it was still an adjustment after so many years of avoiding going out and shopping.

There were more problems I faced: I was having worse and worse stomach issues. I felt like no matter what I ate, I got a stomachache. The rosacea on my face kept flaring bright red, despite regular use of medicated cream. My joints ached, especially my hands, which made using the computer for my work as a freelance writer and graphic designer difficult. My migraines, after more than three years in remission, had returned. My lab results were all over the place, with more than half of them returning with an “abnormal” label.

Finally, in March 2025, it was noted that my iron was way lower than it should be. My vitamin D was deficient. My vitamin B12 was so low as to be useless while still in the “green” or normal range. Iron pills, after three months of taking them, had raised my iron by one whole point. I still felt awful. My new hematologist decided immediately that I needed iron infusions. He put me on vitamin B12. My endocrinologist put me on vitamin D. I felt marginally better but still, leaving the house at all was exhausting. I finally had my first iron infusion on October 16th. It will take four to six weeks for my body to process the infusion and finally start to feel better. In the meantime, no iron pills, and I’m so exhausted, I’m back to daily napping. At least food stamps allowed me to shop from home.

In September 2025, I was put on MCAS protocols. MCAS, or mast cell activation syndrome, is a disturbance in how your body reacts to virtually any stimulant to your system. It could be allergies indoors or outdoors, it could be changes in temperature including showering with water that’s too hot, it could be your clothing detergent, or smelling a chemical smell. Or, it could be from what you eat.

Reactions are basically the release of histamine in inappropriate levels. This can happen at any point in the process of your body reacting to a stimulant. It’s very complicated and hard to understand let alone explain. You can test normal across blood tests, for different allergies, but this inappropriate immune response with histamine isn’t going to show up on regular blood tests. It’s hard to catch, hard to diagnose. But I had all the co-morbid diagnoses and lab results that pointed to MCAS.

So I’m now on a low histamine diet. I take H1 and H2 antihistamines, which means your standard 24-hour non-drowsy antihistamine med twice a day. Histamine-blocking nasal spray twice a day. Histamine eye drops before bed. And this is just a basic protocol, it doesn’t include MCAS-specific meds.

Histamines are throughout your body. When you eat high histamine foods—and there are conflicting lists all over the internet on what foods are considered high histamine—it can cause an “MCAS flare,” which is different for every single person. Alternately, you can eat “histamine liberators,” which are foods that aren’t themselves high in histamine, but when they hit your stomach, they tell histamines to release into your system. MCAS flares are often caused by foods that people are commonly allergic to like strawberries, nuts, and dairy. It’s all hit or miss. A food I eat for weeks that makes its way onto my “safe” list might suddenly cause a reaction. You can become sensitive at any moment. The reaction can be mild, not look like an allergic reaction at all, like throwing up and a fever, or it can be a full blown anaphylactic reaction. Selecting foods becomes a minefield.

In October, I was diagnosed with POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. My blood pressure rising, the dizziness, the high pulse: all symptoms of POTS. Suddenly, getting my blood pressure under control became very important. I just started blood pressure meds so my energy levels are variant, exertion is problematic, and virtually anything can cause an MCAS flare.

I also have type 2 diabetes, so I’m on a low carb, low sugar, low histamine diet. Fun times. The MCAS diet requires that I avoid a laundry list of items you probably consume on a regular basis: no eating refrigerated leftovers, no canned food, no citric foods or citric acid, no processed meats, and no hard or aged cheeses, just to name a few things. The “no” list feels impossibly long some days. I now know I’m sensitive to wheat and any soybean products. Tomatoes are a no, potatoes are a yes. No chocolate, but I can use caramel syrup for sweets cravings on low carb ice cream. Neither of which are available at food pantries, as you might imagine. So basically, I don’t have any desserts or sweets available to me if I’m not on food stamps. No treats at all, no break in the consumption of savory items.

To say eating is problematic is an understatement. I have to monitor my energy throughout the day and decide if I have the energy to make a meal. Because 90% of what I eat has to be cooked or fixed from fresh foods, I’m making three meals a day basically from scratch. Getting up from my desk or the couch and walking to the kitchen to make meals can cause an immediate rise in my pulse and body temperature. I might make it to the kitchen and have to sit at the table, monitoring my pulse until it calms down. Sometimes all I can do is lay on the couch and sleep for two to four hours, so that my pulse is normal again when I wake up.

By then, my stomach might be growling loudly and painfully. I have to rethink what I was going to fix. I can eat macaroni and cheese from a box with no impact, thankfully, and it’s what I often turn to when I have episodes like this that suck my energy dry. In the mornings, I often get sweaty and tired very quickly. Some mornings, I sit down a lot. I may have gone down to the kitchen with the intention of making eggs, a favorite safe food of mine, but only after I feed the two cats and the dog, open all the shades on the main floor, do what remnants of dishes are sitting in the sink, do my asthma treatment, take my blood sugar, take my blood pressure, take my liquid B12, refill my large water bottle, refill the ice trays and water filter system we use, I’m ready to sit down. By then, I’m thinking: cold cereal sounds good. I can eat rice or corn-based cereal, and thankfully dairy doesn’t cause issues for me.

Food is something I think about and deal with hourly. Running to two different food pantries weekly takes a lot of my energy. I’m still working, I’m in grad school, I’m trying to keep the roof over my family’s head, which has become increasingly difficult with my uneven energy levels. A lot of my safe foods are fresh fruits and vegetables, which are nearly impossible to get at food pantries. There are loads of canned options, but since I can’t eat canned foods due to histamine levels, those are no help.

I can’t use my slow cooker anymore because slow cooking, even on a stove top, increases histamine levels in foods. So every meal is made from scratch. Some days I’m desperate for something easy to make. Putting together limited ingredients from a food pantry is also difficult for my ADHD brain with executive dysfunction. My ADHD family struggles with textures and smells, and often we already have limited food options before being forced into food pantries. Favorite foods becoming suddenly unavailable can really derail our daily routines and eating habits. Even though my kids are older teens, change is difficult for neurodivergent brains. They finally started going with me to the food pantries so they could see their options and make some choices.

If food pantries are my only option, my food selections become very, very slim. Low carb and gluten-free options don’t exist. I start eating a lot of the same things over and over. Which isn’t good for my weight, my diabetes, or my overall health.

Getting SNAP in September was such a relief. I could get fresh vegetables and fruit in good shape. I could go back to working more hours since I wasn’t having to run to food pantries on the regular. My kids’ favorite foods were available to them for the first time in six months. It was like the household let out a deep sigh.

But it was short-lived. I’m writing this on November 2, 2025. There are people fighting at the federal level to get the administration to fund food stamps again. In the meantime, I have $178 left of my last food stamp deposit. I’m holding out for frozen pizza, for an easy Friday night dinner, butter, and organic milk, which has a later expiration date and lasts longer. How many of each of those can I get for $178? Would you do the math? I’m exhausted.

Lara McKusky is a neurodivergent nonfiction and speculative fiction writer whose work examines poverty, feminism, and contemporary philosophy through both lived experience and research. As a freelance business consultant and graphic designer, she specializes in serving unique small businesses while raising three teenagers as a single mother. Her essays dissect the labyrinths of America’s social safety net and the compounding effects of chronic illness on personal financial stability. Her fiction similarly explores power, survival, and resistance. Whether writing personal narrative or building fantastical worlds, she brings an interrogative lens to systemic inequities and the philosophical underpinnings of modern life.