Eliminated

As of today, I've started an elimination diet in order to figure out why I'm still having stomach and various digestive issues. After all the tests I endured last year the best the doctors could do was tell me I had IBS, or Irritable Bowel Disease. Awesome, so what the hell does that mean? I'm supposed to accept this diagnosis and just to to live with it? Essentially, that's what I've been trying to do. But lately I've been thinking there has to be an underlying cause to the IBS.

I could fork out quite a bit of money for a food allergy test, but I'm not feeling getting pricked with more needles. After doing some research, I learned the most fool-proof food allergy identifier is an elimination diet. Essentially, you remove the 4 major food allergens from your diet completely. That means no Dairy, Soy, Wheat or Nuts. You remove all traces of these allergens from your diet for 2 weeks, then you introduce them back for one day only, one allergen at a time. For four days, you track how you feel after eating that specific allergen. Then you introduce a second allergen, track it for four days, and so forth until you've reintroduced all the allergens and tracked your symptoms.

Sadly, the list of high allergen foods is much longer than the low allergen foods, so it took me over an hour to find suitable meals and food at the grocery store last night. Even though this will be tough, I'm going to stick it out. If I know for sure wheat is my problem, it will allow me to tailor my diet and hopefully lessen my digestion issues and almost constant discomfort. Curious as to what an elimination diet would be? Let me give you my diet for the next two weeks:

Breakfast: 1 serving Cream of Rice, 1 banana
Lunch: Lettuce, carrots, oil and vinegar dressing, Chicken breast, sweet potato
Dinner: Rice pasta with homemade sauce and turkey meatballs
Snacks: Organic rice crackers, any non-citrus fruits

This pretty much means avoiding most processed foods, since they have hidden traces of milk, soy, wheat and nuts. Alas, this means no chocolate treats. Chocolate is actually a big allergen. But that's not to say I didn't go out with a bang last night. I had a Snickers bar and a Reece's!