OK I have decided to share with you my journey in the search to healing my body. 6 months ago I was really sick. I was in so much all over pain that I needed pain medicine to function for my family. I hated it and tried not to take it because I did not want to turn into a narcotics statistic but then my family suffered. My joints hurt so badly that I was having a hard time getting around. Then my body just started hurting all over. I went to the Dr to have blood work done and everything came back normal. He sent me to a rheumatolorgist and even though I had inflammation he couldn’t place it so he just gave me the umbrella diagnosis of Fibromyalgia and sent me home with a medication that I should just take. I read the side effects and was not OK with it.
I had the Mirena IUD placed 4 months post partum because of abnormal bleeding, which ended up only making the bleeding worse, and the Dr still kept talking me out of having it removed again and my symptoms had been getting worse since then so I decided that I was ready to heal my body. Not cover up symptoms. Clearly my abnormal bleeding was a clue that things were not in balance and I needed to have the Mirena removed to know really what was going on. I scheduled an appointment to have it removed and the PA that was removing it for me tried to talk me out of it again and told me that there was no way that it could be the Mirena that was causing me any of my symptoms. A week later My joint pain was almost gone and I had started running again.
I made an appointment with a holistic Dr to help me get rid of some symptoms I had had for years now which included brain fog, dry brittle nails and hair, dry skin, hard time focusing, sugar and processed food cravings, poor quality of sleep, seasonal allergies, my cycle was short why my periods where long and heavy and excess weight. This lead to blood tests that tested both my genetics for how I process vitamins, blood count, state of my nutrition and so on. I learned that I have genetics that make it hard for me to process B vitamins and folates so I need to be sure to supplement those and that I was low on CoQ10 and Omega 3s. Just starting to take these suppliments changed so much for me. I was functioning again. I quit hurting. My skin got a little better. But I wanted to tackle the rest of my skin issues, the rest of my brain fog, my short attention span, my sugar cravings that were still going strong and my weight.
I was seen by another holistic Dr and she told me that it was probably my gut that was wreaking havoc on my system. So she prescribed an elimination diet with supplements and antifungals. Warning me that I was likely to feel much worse on the diet before I got better so to wait until after the holidays to do it. She believes I have something called Leaky Gut Syndrome. So pieces of my food are actually penetrating my bowl and leaking into my bloodstream causing inflammation and all my issues. The 4 week plan will hopefully help my gut heal and then I can slowly introduce some of these foods again.
An Elimination diet means that I would not be eating eggs, wheat, corn, Soy, sugar, shellfish, beef, pork, alcohol or coffee (when she said this I told her she went too far LOL). She did hand me a long list of things I could eat. Including rice and oats so that was something.
I decided that Jan 1st was a good a day as any to start and it gave me time to wean myself off of coffee and switch to green tea which I could have. The Dr had sent me a meal plan and a grocery list and like the ADD person that I am I waited until the first day of the diet to fill my prescriptions and go grocery shopping. That trip to the grocery store was a $300 trip. A lot of the items I will be able to use a gain nest week because it is a 4 week plan so this weeks trip will be less expensive. I ended up going to 3 pharmacies to fill my prescriptions because the anti fungal that I needed at those places had simple syrup added to them which I couldn’t have. I’m on day 7 now and still haven’t gotten that yet because of pharmacy transfers and other issues but hopefully Monday will be a better day.
I have cooked sooooo much this week and it was all new to me recipes. Most of them were very good and we had fish 2 times this week which was nice. I haven’t been good enough at cooking fish and that is the reason for my Omega 3 efficiency.
Day one I felt good and was doing fine. My older kids were still at their grandparents so I was still getting to sleep in with the 1 year old. Day 2 wasn’t that bad either, the kids came home that day and I went for a run that night. Day 3 I hurt all over and the brain fog hit me to the max. I was always full because the meal plan leaves no availability to go hungry but I was dragging. Day 4 I was dragging even more. Day 5 I was still in a funk but still sticking to it but missing coffee and Day 6 was hard. It was Family night which means pizza and a movie on the couch with the kids. Husband, being the good husband he is, brought home the pizza and handed it to me while he changed out of his work clothes so that I could pass the pizza out to the troops. That was the first time I really wanted to break the diet. Handling and smelling the pepperoni pizza. I didn’t want to cook so I ate leftover beans and rice and made my self a bad smoothie. Day 7 and I am a little bit peppier. Good husband let me sleep in since I was up and down all night with the one year old and have been all week getting around 4 hours of sleep on average a night. This does not help me heal but it is the way things are at the moment.
I’ve been doing my research and apparently the trifecta of getting rid of sugar, gluten and dairy + antifungals (the one I have) and probiotics is causing a storm in my gut flora and the nutrients I am getting from my food. So my Dr was spot on about things feeling much worse before they get better. I’m just hoping that by the middle of next week I will start to get the ability to think back. I seriously could just stare at a wall and I wouldn’t get bored because I just can’t think at the moment. Writing this post was hard. But I know I am doing this for a reason and hope that since the antifungals have done their job and I no longer crave sweets all the time that I will be able to keep it up after I quit this diet. I will be incorporating some of these meals into our normal meal plan because the fish we had was really good and so was some of the chicken. The smoothies have not been good at all.
I am also happy to announce that 12 lbs have been shed since we purchased this house. 2 during this week. If I lose 2 lbs a week for the next 3 weeks I will be very happy and this will have been worth it. I’m more than tired of my gut and my double chin. If I could just stop being so tired all the time that would help too.
If you read this all the way through then thank you for reading. Have you done the whole 30 or an elimination diet? Is it something that you need to do but have been putting off? Tell me about how it went. Did you have withdraws? Anybody have any recipes they want to share with me?