You aren't eating what?! Part 3

What I did was eliminate all gluten and dairy from my diet. I mean, all - no butter, cheese, sour cream, bread, crackers, Doritos, root beer (gluten - I know, weird!), lunchmeat and lots, lots more. For the first few days, I ate nothing but plain brown rice and plain vegetables. Then, I found a bunch of recipes online, and bought some GF (gluten-free) products. The recipes weren't that great, which didn't do much to encourage me during this transition...my family wasn't excited about it, either. I would have given up, except the diet was helping.

My stomachaches, gone. Acne, improving. Still feel the fatigue and lack of energy, but I'm hoping that will improve as I get better at knowing what to eat. I can wear pants today that were too tight a few weeks ago - I haven't lost a single pound, but my belly isn't full of air anymore. After about a week with not gluten or dairy, I accidentally had a bit of dairy - my mom invited us over for dinner, and made rice with a bit of butter incorporated. Afterward, Mr. Stomachache was back with a vengeance. Experiment successful - dairy was definitely off the team. I ate GFDF for another week, then ate gluten (no dairy) twice in two days. Again, the experiment showed that gluten does not agree with my system; it is also off the team.

So, where do things stand now, a few weeks later? Well, I'm sticking to GFDF - I may try to introduce small amounts again in the future, but for now, I feel too good without it. You might think that passing up pizza, bread, ice cream and the like would be torture, and indeed, it is difficult. But if I'm tempted to just eat it anyway, I remember how bad I felt before compared to how good I feel now, and suddenly, pizza doesn't sound that great. I'm learning to read recipes differently - when a recipe calls for cheese, I know to pick up some Vegan Gourmet from Sprouts. I made lasagna last week, a tough one as it calls for cheese and ricotta. An online search led me to a recipe for vegan ricotta (made with tofu), and voila - cheeseless, GF lasagna that every member of my family happily chowed.

Incidentally, I'm also cutting out meat. Since I'm going dairy-free, I figured I may as well go vegan - meat doesn't really appeal to me much anymore, and cheese is tougher to cut out than meat, in my opinion. Right now, my body is detoxing - my immune system is down in the dumps, and I'm catching every bug around. It's okay. I know I'm going to feel awesome once I get through it.