Elimination Diet Update

I know my elimination diet isn't really garden related. Well except for what I should be planting or not planting. But to me food is so intricately entwined with vegetable gardening that I often add such things. I really wish I knew the answers now. I'm going to be planting my peas and favas soon. I'm pretty sure that soy and dried beans are a problem (though not 100%), but what about the rest of the legume family? I'm really hoping that peas and favas (and chickpeas) are OK. Though I love beans they won't be nearly as hard to give up as soy is. Soy pervades out world. And we used to go out to Chinese food about once a week. I'll really miss that. I know my husband will miss it even more.

I haven't had too much trouble keeping on the diet. I did have a slight break. Above are some Applegate chicken sausages. They didn't look like they had any forbidden food. But they had the nasty addition of "spices" on the label. Now I can have all the herbs and spices I want, but nightshades are off the table. I bit into it and damn. Cayenne pepper. So I did some digging and indeed cayenne is one of the spices. I might well eat the rest when I'm off the elimination diet as the amount is probably not enough to hurt me. But I'll be good for now and leave them off. Too bad though as they are very tasty and sadly breakfast is back to being cream of buckwheat and bananas with a touch of olive oil.

I discovered brown rice wraps. So I occasionally have wraps for lunch. They don't hold a candle to wheat or corn based wraps, but still I'm happy to have them. I was looking for noodles too. Not rice noodles but buckwheat noodles. Soba noodles. I went to H-mart as the place to find such things. But all their buckwheat noodles had wheat in them. None were wheatless. Too bad. I did have fun there though. Their produce section is so fun to go through. They have things we don't see in our normal markets. Like dragon fruit, jack fruit, banana flower, and lotus. Things I've never seen before and don't recognize the names. And there where choys all over the place. Choys I hadn't seen before. I bought some Napa cabbage, some green onions, celery, and plantains. I wish I could have bought the mushrooms, as the variety is amazing. But mushrooms aren't on my approved list.

But on to the diet. To keep from starving to death I keep a container in the fridge with a smoothie now. It is made with light coconut milk. I thought I'd be able to buy coconut milk in quart containers since it seem so popular now. But I could only find coconut milk drinks with a lot of additives. Only the canned stuff comes with an ingredient of just coconut milk. I bought a case of them from Trader Joes to keep me supplied. I do love my coconut milk. I only used it occasionally in the past, but this elimination diet really makes me love the tropical.

I have found one place that I can go out to eat. The Summer Shack near our house does a GFY (good for you) meal that keeps to a lot of common diets - including a gluten free diet. Their starch is brown rice. The meat is fish. I have to tell them to take off the vegetable they have (as it tends to be mixed things and occasionally pickled) and replace it with steamed broccoli, and use just olive oil, salt, and pepper for the fish. But it works. And oh so yummy. The funny thing is they used to be terrible. The fish was awful. We really only went there for lobsters in season. But their chef has obviously changed over the years. And now it is oh so good.

I got my food allergy tests done on Tuesday. These are skin tests as they are much more accurate than blood tests. And I'm not allergic to any of the major food allergens. That is good news at least. Often when you add things back into your diet you put them in but take them back out. Since allergies have been ruled out with shellfish and citrus, I'm going to leave them in once they get tried. Usually their trouble is allergies and not sensitivities and my troubles are all sensitivities.

And everyone asks me if the diet is working. Yes, to a degree. My headaches are a little better. And the inflammation problems are way down. My shoulder problems were acting up last week, but I blame that on sewing. I always have trouble with my shoulder when I use the sewing machine. But I went for the first of the season hikes in the Fells this year and I didn't have to ice my knee when I came home. Nor do I feel any pain now. Better, all my weird dysfunctional pain is gone. My fatigue is still here, but not as bad. I can eat more at a time than I used to be able to eat. I used to get nauseous or full after not eating much. That doesn't happen much anymore. I am having very very slight diarrhea issues that I didn't have before, but I think it is from all the fruit I'm eating as it started when I started making smoothies to ease the hunger. And I might point out I was already eating a banana for breakfast, an apple for lunch, and a mango for dessert after dinner. So the fruit content of my diet was already high.

To solve that problem of too much fruit, I need to get vinegar or lemons back into my diet so I can make dressing for salads and the like. I need more of my calories from vegetables, but they don't appeal as much without that addition. I still am getting two to four servings of vegetables day with about 5 servings of fruit. But it ought to be the other way around. I only seem to be able to get that many vegetables if I make soup. I want salads and coleslaw. Even when I steam bok choy I dress it with something. And it is getting close to bok choy season. But I still have a little over a week to go before I put things back in. Or should I say ONLY a little over a week to go. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And just to get my disclaimer in. No one that I mentioned in this blog post has paid me for mentioning them. My views are my own.

Elimination Diet Update

Well the first week of my elimination diet is going both good and bad. Breakfast is cream of rice or buckwheat and a chopped up banana. I'm used to eating eggs for breakfast with cereal and a banana. So it doesn't stick with me as well as my old breakfast.

For a while I was cooking lunches every day. I got tired of that. I used to eat leftovers for lunch much of the time. Or make a soup and eat it over days with an add on of cheese and bread. Now when I make soup it lasts only two days as I need to eat so much of it. So I made some cut up veggies and found a good tasting rice cracker and I make too much protein one day and eat it as a semi sandwich for a couple days after. So now at least I don't have to think ahead every day before lunch. Because cooking really isn't the issue. It is planning. I know I have to plan for dinner, but I'm not used to having to plan for lunch. Now I don't have to if I'm busy with something else. I can just throw lunch together.

I've also found that I've gone tropical. For some reason I'm eating pineapple, plantains, and mangoes. Plantains are especially nice as I've had trouble getting fat into my diet. I'm used to snacking on nuts and cheese which satisfies my hungers. But with all the lean meat, rice, veggies, and fruit I feel like I'm starving not long after I eat. But plantains fried in olive oil really kill the hunger. I've also made a dip of mangoes, olive oil, salt, ginger, and garlic for my veggie sticks. That helps too.

My biggest issue is my meds. I went off two of my OTC ones. The undenatured whey was the hardest. It really helps my asthma. I had to switch my OTC antihistamine so it didn't contain corn starch. Sadly now it contains sorbitol. You just can't win. But I can't go off some of my prescription meds and two of them contain lactose. So the diet isn't perfect. I did switch my toothpaste too. Most have carageenan in them. Whether it is a problem or not is debatable, but if it is a problem, what it does is inflame the gut and the whole point of this exercise is to heal the gut. I took it out.

Another big issue is cross contamination. My husband snacks on whole grain crackers that were kept on the kitchen counter. The crumbs get all over the place. Ie all over the fruit in the bowl, the counter, my inhaler. Not good for me. I don't know of the other proteins are as bad, but I know even a little wheat contamination can keep you from healing up at all if wheat is your issue. And to a certain extent even if it isn't as wheat makes everyone's gut a little more permeable for a short time after eating it. So I really have to keep the cross contamination to zero.

All in all the diet isn't that hard to follow. But I'm used to cooking from scratch to start with so not much has changed except the lack of variety. I'm guessing it will get a little boring over time. But I only have to follow it for a month before I start putting things slowly back in. I thought the hardest thing to give up would be my nightly indulgences. Chocolate and an after dinner drink. Instead I've been eating these yummy little yellow mangoes for dessert. Or occasionally an apple or banana. So it has been OK. Though I've been having the hugest craving for cinnamon rolls. I think there is nothing in a cinnamon roll I can have except the cinnamon. Sugar, wheat, and dairy are all forbidden.