Monday, March 29, 2010

It's better than eating nothing

It snuck up on me. If I had to guess, I'd say it started a couple years ago in grad school when I had to wake up before noon in order to get anything done. I found myself starting to eat breakfast again (don't scold! when you wake up at 10 or 11, lunch *is* breakfast!) and found that it made me kinda queasy from 8 until around 10:30. And before you ask, No! I was not pregnant. If I was pregnant 2 years ago, I would probably know by now. Anyway, it slowly worsened until I finally stopped 2 years later and thought to myself that it probably wasn't normal to be feeling awful after nearly every meal, and that skipping dinner just so I wouldn't feel terrible that night was probably not the best strategy. Also that I didn't have any favorite foods anymore. What the hell!? Food is awesome. I love food ... at least I think I do, but whenever I try to imagine what I'd like to eat, I never come up with anything ... sad.

So I decided I probably have a food allergy or intollerance or something like that. My doctor agreed with me, although, by agree, I mean I said "I think I have a food allergy" and he said "yeah, sure that could be." Set me up with some blood tests, turns out I'm slightly sensitive to soy ... but not enough to cause anything major. So here I am at the last resort or as I like to look at it, a new adventure! The elimination diet. Or the Allergy avoidance diet. Whatever you want to call it.

Warning, Science ahead: It turns out that you can be allergic to food, in which case, you have antibodies to proteins in that food, so you body sees the food and thinks it is an invader and attacks. Yummy. You can also, however, be intolerant of food, which is usually a lack of an enzyme or some other reason you cannot properly digest or absorb the food which causes all sorts of fun things. It seems the former they can usually catch with a blood test. Unless it's a quite uncommon problem. The latter takes some metaphorical elbow grease. Unless the elbow grease is implying cleaning dishes, in which case it's literal elbow grease. My doctor, after telling me to google 'elimination diet' to which I replied "I did. I got Martha Stewart's breastfeeding elimination diet. That's probably not it, is it?" decided to google it for me (seriously? I think I'm getting a new doctor ...) and sent me to this allergy site which claims that probably 60% of adults have food allergies and don't even realize it. That's a lot of people. It could be you!!

The diet is simple. Eat only things that are super hypoallergenic. Once you start to feel better, add food groups until you find the one that sets you off. Sounds easy. Or hard. depending on how you look at it. I tried watching what I was eating and through process of elimination, finding the culprit ... but seriously, there is so much crap in food today. It's probably an intolerance of some preservative or something that is very common! So here I am on my big adventure...

What foods, you ask, are hypoallergenic? Well, white rice (b/c it's a whole bunch of nothing), apples and pears, most vegetables, beans (ick), non-gluten grains like Qinoa (no idea how to say that) and lamb (random, right?). Also, rice milk, pear nectar, and chamomile tea to drink.

This is terrible. I have no idea how to cook lamb.

Today I went to the store and bought apples and pears, green beans, mushrooms, Qinoa, rice milk (yikes) and lamb. I got home, started cooking, and realized that I already ruined everything b/c the damned lamb was sold in a marinade that had something which I already *know* I'm allergic to (lemons. not limes or oranges. Just lemons. odd, I know) including a whole slew of other things I'm not supposed to eat. But I'd be damned if I was going to throw out my first lamb, so I washed it off and cooked it the less exciting way. With garlic and salt. It was good. No it wasn't. It was kind of gross. I have had lamb before. I have had really good lamb before. I will have to keep trying.

The rice was good, though. And by good, I mean, I am not starving right now.

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1 Comments:

At March 30, 2010 at 10:35 PM , Blogger Unknown said...

Overanalyzing? Don't worry about whether you have an allergy or not and what you're allergic to, just try some diets that people use in various parts of the world at various times during the day and see how you feel. Throw out stuff that makes you feel bad and remember what you like.

 

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