Elimination diet lessons so far

[mattbell]

The first few days have been interesting.  

Shopping for groceries has been frustrating as just about anything with more than 3 ingredients in it has a prohibited item.  I am trying to be strict about adhering to the diet, perhaps unnecessarily so.  For example, it is doubtful whether the one gram of added sugar in an otherwise acceptable turkey sausage would really have an impact on whatever mechanisms are being tested, but I avoided it anyway.

One interesting thing about the diet is that it has caused me to confront my severe laziness and incompetence when it comes to cooking.  I don't like spending more than a few minutes preparing my food and cleaning dishes every day, so I tend to optimize on things that are both healthy and super easy to prepare.  I'm starting to branch out.  I've cooked turkey for the first time.  This may seem silly, but I've been much more hesitant to cook chicken/turkey/pork because the perceived dangers of undercooking are much greater.  Thus, in the past I have ended up overcooking them.  floppylala  was kind enough to cook for me the first night because I was feeling sick.  

The biggest challenge was on the first day when I kept trying to eat different foods, but nothing would stop my milk/meat/bread cravings.  Since the true sources of food cravings are often unclear, it's hard to figure out, for example, what other than milk would scratch the "milk" itch.  Here's what I found tended to scratch these itches (I'm not sure which foods actually scratched which itches):
- Brown rice, black beans, lots of olive oil on everything, lentils, avocado, smoked salmon, coconut cream, chicken, turkey.  

Grocery costs have gone way up, though I'm not going out to eat anymore (since it's more or less impossible).  I am going through approximately $5 of smoked salmon a day, which at the current rate is $150 a month just on smoked salmon.  That's also the cheaper (but still good) wild stuff from Trader Joe's.

Whole Foods has some interesting hippie-ish (ok, let's be honest, rich privileged liberal wannabe hippie-ish) concoctions that manage to have a whole 15 ingredients and taste great while staying entirely within the confines of the elimination diet.  Brands include Lydia's Organics and Mauk Family Farms, which produces the unappetizing-sounding but tasty "Raw, Mineral-Rich Crusts".  It makes me think of a mining operation.  

So far the elimination diet has not had positive effect on any of the issues I'm trying to solve, but I know I need to give it time.  

Comments

[klrmn.livejournal.com]

i would guess that the 'milk' itch is actually about fat content, and therefore asuaged by olive oil, avocado, smoked salmon, and coconut.

seems likely that the rice, lentils, and beans are as close to starches as you're getting, and are scratching the bread cravings.

[nasu-dengaku.livejournal.com]

These seem like good guesses.

[floppylala.livejournal.com]

Happy to do it. Let's have another cooking night and make more leftovers. I'll be sure to have fresh garlic and herbs on hand.
:-)

[patrissimo.livejournal.com]

i would love to come along

[(Anonymous)]

The list doesn't seem super-bad - it's ripe for curries and non-dairy'd mexican.