This is my mini-chronicle of following the Dr. Oz and Dr. Hyman Food Sensitivity Elimination diet. The beginning of this series and the links to the elimination diet can be found in this link: Click Here.
I have a family gathering this weekend (Happy Birthday, Mom!) and it’s not going to be easy being on the elimination diet. Like it wasn’t bad enough that the only meat we eat is fish (yup, we’re pescetarians), but my brother-in-law is a seriously gourmet cook whose culinary skills I sorely do NOT want to miss out on. He’s making ratatouille as well as his homemade marinara and pasta.
So I have a plan. The first two foods I’m adding back are Wheat (so I can have bread and pasta) and Nightshades (Ratatouille has both tomatoes and eggplant). Luckily, Wheat is Thurs/Friday and the Nightshades just happen on the day of the party. Whew! Disaster avoided!!!
Days 6 & 7: Adding the big “W” -WHEAT back into my diet. Unless you lack a heartbeat, you’ve probably heard all the hoopla about the benefits of eliminating wheat from your diet. Many of our clients feel better when they don’t eat wheat. There are also many people who have the very serious disease Celiac, which is actually an auto-immune disorder and not an allergy at all. Randi Mann, Women’s Health Nurse Practitioner at Wise Women’s Wellness in De Pere, says that simply eliminating wheat would help people lose much of the weight they need to lose.
So I was a bit apprehensive when I added wheat back into my diet because, well, I really like bread! It’s no small task to eliminate wheat given that it is in so many food products as a thickener or filler. Kiss any typical convenience foods or salty snacks good-bye!
My worries were for naught: Adding Wheat back to my diet was so easy and dare I say “fun”? Instead of the cream of rice I chose the Hodgson whole grain hot cereal instead with walnuts and strawberries. Not only did it taste good, I felt just fine thank you!
The funny thing is that now that I’ve added bread back to my diet, I can’t really do anything with it. Everything I make seems to be missing something, like butter or cheese. We made pizza tonight and I had more of a very thin focaccia than anything else. Oh well. Tomorrow I add tomatoes back and then I can have an avocado and tomato sandwich, one of my favorites! Of course, in a few more days it will be better with a slice of cheese…