Thursday, January 17, 2013

Figuring it all out...

The past few weeks have been a very interesting experiment in figuring things out.  In December, when I got the results of my delayed food sensitivity testing (iGg), I was starting to feel my worst.  I thought I would be able to enjoy my favorites one last time before I said goodbye.  However, over the holidays (when we were traveling in Seattle), I got extremely sick to the point where after a week I was unable to digest even water. I was so dehydrated and malnourished since I was petrified to eat or drink anything and contemplating an ER visit.  I decided enough was enough. Prescription medicine obtained, loaded myself with over the counters, and strict diet started New Year's Day.  While I am not entirely convinced what happened wasn't just a bug in my GI tract, since I changed my diet I have felt AMAZINGLY better.  Something is working.  And while I'm not sure yet what it is that is working (I still have 5 months to go), December scarred me enough that it is not even remotely worth slipping on my diet to have dairy or eggs or anything that might be hurting me.

When I was prepping for my new diet and went on my first grocery trip, I was a little depressed.  Everything I picked up that was remotely "convenient", had to be put back on the shelf.  If it was gluten free, it contained tapioca or eggs.  If it was gluten free and vegan, it had tapioca.  I left my final grocery store, got in the car, and cried.  After I was done with my pity-party, I realized then that I wasn't going to be able to rely on convenience foods.  I'm not sure why I was relying on this concept, because when was my diet ever centered around this concept? My only concession was that after about a week, I decided that avoiding tapioca was a losing battle.  It's almost impossible to find vegan, gluten-free, and tapioca-free foods in restaurants or grocery stores. Since I have eaten hardly any tapioca in my life, I decided to add it back in my diet and should new symptoms occur, it gets pulled out.

Aside from that, it's been a breeze, surprisingly. It requires that I am more prepared each day by prepping breakfast and lunch the night before.  I am making my own dressings and sauces and baking mixes.  It's all an experiment.  I thought omitting eggs would be the hardest part, but surprisingly, I've done well! What I really enjoy is a warm breakfast.  Potatoes, tofu/soyrizo scrambles, rice toast, etc. all seem to work just fine! I've thought about trying gluten free oats, although I've never been a huge oatmeal fan, honestly.

I got more information from the lab that did my testing and it made me feel very hopeful.  It was centered around the idea that if you have a delayed sensitivity to something, it's not a lifelong sentence to avoid that food.  If it is a minor enough reaction, it can be reintroduced to the diet once the body has calmed down and then integrated into a revolving diet (i.e. don't eat the same food each day, give it about 4 days before you have it again).  This made me feel like a lot of the things on my list may be able to come back. Obviously, when I try reintroducing these items, if I find that I get an immediate or severe reaction, that no longer is in the delayed category and may need to be omitted for life.  But only time will tell... :)

Another thing I'm figuring out is just being fit in general. I feel like things are finally clicking into place. It's no longer a struggle to get myself to the gym each week, or to log my food each day, or to even lose the weight and build the muscle I am trying to achieve.  In the past year I am looking at almost 20 pounds lost... and it wasn't even by starving myself.  While I may joke that right now "I can't eat anything," I really am getting plenty. And while I am having to shift my protein and my pre-workout meals, I'm figuring all of that out as well.  I'm still eating ALL THE TIME and my days still revolve around what am I going to eat? or did I eat enough?

We laughed today that 3 months ago, we kept saying how we "couldn't wait to be done training" so we could have our lives back.  Oh yeah? We are back to 5 days a week and wish we had time to fit in more days at the gym.

Feeling better than I have in a LONG time and I am thrilled about it.

(Except for my cold, but oh well...)