After 14 days of detoxing, I felt like a brand-new human. My headaches had subsided, I had more energy and was able to be more productive. For years I have had the constant need to clear my throat. You know that feeling that you get with allergies where your throat just feels gunky? That feeling went away! All this time my body has been rejecting foods that I was eating, but the symptoms were so mild that I just got used to them.
During the detox period, I took notice of how my body reacted to even the foods that were part of the clean eating section of the diet and did have some reactions right off the bat. I learned that Celery made my tongue tingle, Acai made my throat extremely gunky, and apples made my throat gunky and upset my stomach.
I have been on daily heartburn medicine, such as Prilosec, for roughly 10+ years. I know… I know… that is SO BAD FOR ME! I have tried to get off of it before, but I ended up taking so much Zantac and Tums that it wasn’t worth it. Actually, during this journey, I learned that Zantac was recalled because ongoing investigations uncovered levels of N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), a probable human carcinogen, that increases over time and may cause cancer. My functional medicine doctor pointed this out and we looked into it as a possible cause of my issues in January. We decided that wasn’t it, obviously, but I thought it was very interesting to know. My friend Leigh encouraged me to stop taking Prilosec and this elimination diet was the perfect opportunity to give it a shot and I SUCCEEDED!
I stopped using heartburn medicine during my detox period and started using natural methods to treat heartburn instead. Honestly, not eating foods that upset your body is step #1 to prevent heartburn. Next I learned that drinking Chamomile tea will calm your stomach, so I now have a cup of that each night before bed. I also learned that chewing gum after a meal will increase saliva production and therefor coat your stomach and prevent heartburn. Great tricks and now no more medicine!
After 18 days of clean eating I started adding in new foods and studied how my body reacted to them. My first food group added was Citrus Fruits. I took three days for each new food group to give my system time to truly test each food. For citrus fruits I tried grapes, a clementine, orange, grapefruit, lemon and lime. I definitely was already missing lemon and lime, but it turned out that my body was not missing lemon as much as I thought! Lemon made my throat gunky, as did grapes. These reactions were slight so I might have some in moderation, but it is good to know.
Next group I tried was Nightshade Vegetables! If you don’t know what those are, you are not alone. I had never heard of them and even my Chef boyfriend was not specific on the particulars. Nightshade vegetables are a family of flowering plants that ranges from annual and perennial herbs to vines, lianas, epiphytes, shrubs, and trees, and includes a number of agricultural crops, medicinal plants, spices, weeds, and ornamentals. Still don’t know what that means? Me neither! Here is a list of nightshade vegetables: white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers, cayenne pepper and paprika. I was very excited about added potatoes back into my diet, the tough part with that is that at this point in the diet you can’t have butter… so what’s the point? With the potatoes I was able to roast them in the oven with olive oil, salt and pepper and they were delicious, even without the butter. I also came up with a pretty great pasta dish with brown rice pasta, roasted tomatoes, sauteed onions, and garlic that was a good meal for this part of the process. I was so impressed with how delicious and how easy it was to simply roast tomatoes instead of using sauce out of a can. Check your labels! There is so much unnecessary filling in everything we eat, stick to the basics and your body will thank you.
Next group I tried was Nuts and Seeds! I was so excited for Peanut Butter! You think I am crazy now, but when you are so restrictive on your diet, you can get excited very easily. The sad part is… I learned that my body does not like peanuts as much as my mind does. BUT my body does like almonds, yay! It is all about finding substitutes that work for you.
Peanut butter / almond butter is another label you should really check. This label is from Jif Crunchy: Made from roasted peanuts and SUGAR, contains 2%< or less of: Molasses, Fully hydrogenated vegetable oils (rapeseed or soybean), mono and diglycerides, salt. So many unnecessary ingredients that can irritate your digestive system. They make peanut butter with the ingredients: peanuts, 1%< or less of salt. That’s it!
At this point in my diet I was feeling the best I had in years! I ended up prolonging my diet because I didn’t want to introduce new foods. I had already lost 15lbs and was feeling so skinny! The thought of adding in foods that would irritate my system, did not interest me at all.
Eventually I tried the next group, Legumes. This is another group that I had to look up. Legumes include black beans, chickpeas, green beans, peas, soybeans and more. Technically peanuts are a legume, but I tried them as a part of the Nuts and Seeds group. To try soy, I had miso soup, which is soy based, edamame which are soybeans and rice with soy sauce. In hindsight, that was too much soy to try at once. I had a terrible reaction to soybeans! My throat gunked up, my head hurt, my stomach cramped, and eventually more digestive issues happened, but I will spare you the details. It was awful! Soy can be found in so many foods, such as the above-mentioned peanut butter, which is why it is so important to find out what works for you and then also check your labels. Chickpeas also irritated my throat, but the other legumes seemed to do okay.
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