In the first installment of my blog post, found here, I discussed why I was doing an Elimination Diet, what exactly that diet entailed, and what my protocol was to slowly start adding foods back in. Read below to find out how the last month has been going!
Where am I now in the Elimination Diet Process?
I am now about 40 days into the process, which means that I have started adding foods back in and monitoring my reactions. After 25 days, I was allowed to quite taking the Inflamma-Core supplement and start trying different foods. I added one food at a time so that I could properly attribute any reactions I may have had to that particular food.
The first food I added back in was raw, local, whole milk from grass-fed cows. I love milk, but conventional milk doesn’t agree with me very well as it makes me extremely bloated. I can literally go from 6-pack to 6 months pregnant by kicking back 16 oz. of conventional milk.
Luckily, I didn’t notice any issues from adding the raw milk back into my diet (P.S. Do your own research to find out if raw milk is right for you… don’t just take my word for it!). The next food I added back in was grass-fed beef. Again, I had no issues.
The next food after that that I added back in were eggs. I would love to tell you that they were omega-3 pasture eggs, but alas, they were not. That is typically what I eat, but not in this instance. You see, I have brunch every Sunday morning with my family, and although I typically engage in intermittent fasting and don’t eat until 2 or 3 pm, on this particular day I decided to have my favorite Denver Omelet. About halfway through my absolutely delicious Denver Omelet it hit me… oh crap! The Denver Omelet has cheese, onions, peppers, and… HAM. Oops. I wasn’t supposed to eat pork products for another 4-5 weeks!
The problem is that in terms of pork products, I really only eat bacon and the occasional pork chop. I hardly ever consume ham so when I was sorting through foods to eat and foods to avoid in my mind, bacon was the only pork product I focused on avoiding… I had completely forgotten about ham. So of course I did exactly what I was supposed to do and quit eating the Omelet right then and there. Yep… that’s what happened. Sure is. No more Denver Omelet for me.
doo dee doo… la la la…mmm hmmm…no more Omelet for this girl. I followed the rules. Yep. Sure did.
OK… can you tell I am lying yet? I actually thought, “Screw it!” and devoured the rest of my omelet in about 3 bites. Can you blame me? I already had the pork in my system and it was so delicious… I just couldn’t help myself!
Food Reactions
Some other foods I have added back in with no reaction include:
– Strawberries
– Soy (I don’t eat it much, but it is in the occasional processed food I eat, like organic dark chocolate covered raisins)
– Chicken
– Broccoli
– Shellfish
– Oats
– Tea
– Basil
So far, so good in terms of adding foods back in and I am thrilled about that! Since I am gluten free 100% of the time no matter what, the more variety of other foods I have to choose from, the better!
What foods do you still have to avoid?
There are a couple of foods I still have to avoid and it’s while it’s annoying, it’s not so bad! For another 1-2 weeks I still have to avoid oranges, peanuts, almonds, pork (oops!), and I always avoid gluten. In fact, I may actually go a bit longer than 2 weeks without pork because of my slip-up, but we’ll see.
So what’s next?
I am making an appointment with my Doctor for next week to see what tests she wants to run on me. I am not sure if she will want to check certain levels to see if I am absorbing nutrients more effectively, or if she wants to run another allergy test to see if my allergies improved…I am just not sure. But that’s what I pay her the big bucks for! Either way, I will be interested to see what she has to say!
How am I feeling?
Overall I feel good. I think the detoxing of sugar, dairy, eggs, artificial sweeteners, and soy among other things was good for me. Again, I eat whole, unprocessed, organic food 90% of the time, but clearly even some whole, unprocessed, organic foods can be a major stress to your system if you have a sensitivity to that food. You know the funniest part? As I went along with the diet, it got easier and easier. The longer I went without a treat or a cheat meal, the easier it got to avoid those foods and no care. A wonderful side of effect of this whole process has been increasing my willpower. I discussed it another blog post of mine, but willpower is like a muscle…the more you exercise it, the stronger is gets. I know some people believe that willpower is not a reasonable/realistic tool for most people when it comes to changing their nutrition habits and that’s fine, but I enjoy challenging and really exercising my willpower at times and I definitely notice it getting stronger the more I use it.
Well guys, that’s it for now. Once I visit my Doctor and figure out what the next steps are, I will let you know. In the meantime I will stick with my plan as written in the first installment. Thanks for reading!
What did you think of this post? Love it? Hate it? Have any of you started an Elimination Diet since my last article? How is it going?
Molly Galbraith is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist and Coach who has dabbled in both Figure and Powerlifting competitions. She is Co-Founder of Girls Gone Strong and J-M Strength.Her life's mission is to help women give themselves grace and compassion when it comes to their bodies so that they can discover and accept what their best body looks like.
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