Tonight I saw my nutritionist for a review of my detection diet journal. I was anxious to hear her take on it all. I had known since our last conversation that she didn’t doubt my suspicions of fructose/sugar intolerance, so I wanted to see what she thought about whatever else might have been bothering me.

I don’t think I mentioned it here, but I have done some more research on fructose, and found out that there are plenty of things I was eating during the elimination diet that could have been causing reactions, such as brown rice and even celery. Additionally, thanks to some google sessions over the weekend and during the first part of the week, I’ve come to feel comfortable with a more general diagnosis of carbohydrate intolerance, specifically intolerance to sugar. I also have a new plan to begin at the end of this week, which I will get to in a moment.

My nutritionist had a few recommendations for me. Unfortunately, one of them was to drink more water. I thought I made the disclaimer somewhere that I drank way too much water (80 – 100 oz per day) to write it down. I had a hard enough time journaling at all; I can’t imagine logging each bottle. I guess I didn’t though, because a whole page of my 12 page brief was on the importance of drinking water. I can’t blame her; I really should have written it down. Otherwise, she noted my need for digestive support, since on the few days that I drank some sort of cleansing tea, I had an elated mood. I told her that I would drink it more often but it was often too harsh for me and she said she would get back to me on suggestions for gentler cleansing teas. She recommended a hydrogen breath test which was great because I recently asked my gastro for one; he said it was an obscure test and he’d get it for me eventually but that it might take some time and investigation. He also wanted a note from the nutritionist specifying which test, because I’m an idiot, so now things are in the works for him to get one. I really don’t quite get why anyone would consider the test obscure, especially not a hip young gastrointerologist on the Upper East Side, but I guess nothing is relative. No different than the naturopath in Harlem who thought I should eat an apple everyday even if it hurt my stomach. Now that I’m taking this into my own hands, I just can’t justify the $50 spent at Whole Foods every third day, the tears, the separate dinners, the cravings fought off, etc. etc. on top of the two years of suffering, if I can’t get an equal effort back from the medical community.

Other suggestions were chlorella and keeping off the coffee. She also gave me a DVD on the Emotional Freedom Technique. I haven’t gotten a chance to explore it, but her demonstration in the office was fairly interesting. She asked me to focus on something that really made my blood boil. The thing is unfortunately this is super easy for me; I just have to picture my last visit to my new general practitioner at the union health center. This guy gently kept me in his office for nearly an hour and a quarter, all the while trying to convince me that my stomach problems were psychological in nature. He said there was nothing wrong with me functionally and since I wasn’t losing weight I obviously was not sick, but rather I just needed “a really good psychiatrist to help me get at the root of whatever deep-seated problem” was causing all of my symptoms. I can’t lie. Sadly this was when I still had the energy for working out, and I was netting 1500 – 1600 calories a day with weekly cardio, strength training and yoga and not losing a pound. It really boggles my mind that I sit in my cubicle all week with my master’s degree so brain-fogged and bloated and sore that I can hardly do my work while this guy makes God knows what to not even keep up with the latest research in his field.

So anyway, I pictured this Doctor. She asked me to say “Even though I’m really angry with this doctor, I’m fully accepting of myself.” About twelve times. Each time she had me tap on a different part of my face. Then I just repeated the phrase “angry at this doctor” over and over again whist tapping myself on the arm and hand. After a few minutes she asked me to relate on a scale from one to ten, how angry the doctor made me. After tapping myself silly I had to admit I wasn’t really angry at the doctor anymore. My husband asked me later in the train if the technique had really made me less angry. I told him that it had been so tactile and silly that I just wasn’t able to concentrate on being angry anymore, so yes, it actually had.

Last night we ordered Self-Help Way to Treat Colitis and Other IBS Disorders on Amazon. I read about the book on a celiac forum, and on a few other places – all anecdotal evidence; several people mentioned it helped them. The premise is that carbohydrate intolerance, specifically intolerance of fructose and lactose, are genuinely responsible for many cases of bowel disorder, and the author promotes a diet that excludes all sugar except minuscule amounts of table sugar, all dairy except yogurt, and fiber. I didn’t know about their instant “read online” upgrade for only a dollar fifty, so after my husband paid twice the price of the book to have it shipped in two days, I upgraded and started reading. Before he left me and the laptop for bed, we laughed about how it would be nice if for once we paid good money to read something completely new and fresh. Well, besides the premise, which despite being relatively fresh, is nowhere near being completely novel, the diet is incredibly different from anything of which I’ve yet heard. I’ll be making just a few tweaks (leaving things out, not adding them in – I’ve learned the hard way) and beginning it on Friday. Strangely this diet allows white bread and potatoes. I am not sure those things will work for me but I am excited about trying a diet that allows them to see if it suits me. Maybe it will just be a sugar-free, dairy-free week between elimination diets or maybe it will be sustainable. I’m just not sure at this point. I’ll be writing lots about the diet in the days to come.

Of course currently I haven’t exactly gone to Taco Bell or anything, but I have been eating all kinds of organic foods that I shouldn’t, like cheese and chocolate and a banana. Today I even had crystallized ginger in grain-sweetened chocolate. I am so paying for it now. Once the sugar bug was triggered, I couldn’t help myself. At my husband’s office after the nutritionist I stealthily managed five pieces of chocolate into my mouth before I realized what I was even doing. Now that I have empirical proof that what I eat does affect me the next day (and sometimes the next) I really have to work on abandoning the I already feel horrible so screw it mindset I’ve grown used to over the past two years. I’ve begun the habit of measuring my waist and hips each morning upon rising and each night before bed. I used to measure a lot, and take pictures, because I actually needed proof that I was dealing with abdominal distention when I went to see doctors. Until I started doing this, I got a less than pathetic response from physicians who probably just thought I didn’t know that I was overweight. Now I could care less what doctors think about my girth; I figure this type of information will serve me well the next time I’m eliminating. This morning I woke up three inches smaller in the waist and two and a half inches smaller in the hips than when I went to bed last night. Of course, this was not due to weight loss but rather the distention subsiding overnight. Now that its bedtime, the 5.5 inches are back!

I really need wheat, gluten, sugar and dairy-free breakfast ideas. Other than hardboiled eggs. After failing so hard on this diet, I wanted so badly to keep abstaining from soy, gluten and wheat; the main foods that I really never minded giving up. However, thinking about giving dairy up again I realized I would really need a substitute for cereals in the morning and for tea. I found Edensoy unsweetened soymilk tonight – the only ingredients are organic soybeans and water, and it tastes amazing.

“It is certainly delicate,” said my friend with an amused smile, “but I have not been struck up to now with its complexity. It has been a case for intellectual deduction, but when this original intellectual deduction is confirmed point by point by quite a number of independent incidents, then the subjective becomes objective and we can say confidently that we have reached our goal.” – Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire

Twelve days of longing interspersed by craving and occasional manic episodes where I don’t care if I ever eat anything that tastes good ever again are over. Two remain. And I don’t think I would have the benefit that I do tonight without the rampant cheating that I perpetrated tonight. Okay, so given that my nutritionist gave me dairy back on day five, its not really cheating, but today at Bell Bates I picked up an organic spaghetti squash, three more boxes of Celestial Seasonings Madagascar Vanilla Rooibos, sheep’s milk yogurt, an avocado and a bottle of organic kefir, of which I managed to drink nearly three-fourths over the course of two hours. After the onset of a burning up high in my belly, right below my breast, I noticed that my daily bloating was of pre-elimination diet proportions. This warranted a second look at the kefir label. I think I could have died when I read INULIN…I could not believe I had been so stupid. Inulin is notoriously hard to digest; since I wasn’t taking my probiotic anymore while on the diet, I figured it couldn’t hurt. Just to be sure I looked it up and found that inulins are a “group of naturally occurring polysaccharides (several simple sugars linked together) produced by many types of plants” and “belonging to a class of fibers known as fructans.” (wikipedia) blah blah blah. Inulin is a fructose, one that is “problematic for people with fructose malabsorption.”

I think it would have been a lot better had I stumbled upon a spoonful of crystalline fructose, considering the low digestibility of inulin for many, however, I feel this is a clear lead. Unlike Sherlock, I can’t wrap things up just yet. Not nearly. Something I’ve been eating all week long has not affected me nearly as badly as the kefir, but has been causing symptoms all the same, namely bloating, diarrhea, and constipation. Or else, I’ve been doing right by my stomach and the bloating and friends are just residual. I can’t really be sure, but I have to make a decision about the next phase based on an educated guess of sorts. I can either continue with limited, clean dairy and move on with adding things in, or I can take out the dairy completely as I will have eggs to make up for the protein. Clearly re-eliminating dairy will be the smart choice, although I’m exhausted with such limited food choices by now.

Additionally I have not given up coffee completely. This I am chagrined to admit, as one of my pet peeves is the treatment of those of us with gastrointestinal distress as stupid children who don’t know how to stop putting harmful things in our mouths. More on this later, but I will be abstaining tomorrow and indefinitely. I wonder who will get my place in the Starbucks line.

I woke up this morning with one major observation. Just one day into the diet and my gas level has been significantly reduced. Amazing. However, everything else remains the same. I was bloated last night, I bloated up big right after my breakfast of half an avocado & celery with tahini butter. Pain last night after spinach, pain this morning. This morning’s pain and bloating brought a question into my mind – I’m already unhappy with the amount of fat I’m consuming on this diet, but could it be part of the problem? Fat?* For this reason I’m eliminating a few foods from my already sparse diet.

Since it’s not listed anywhere, for my own edification and that of my readers – here’s my list of “allowed foods.”

Tilapia, salmon (I was vegetarian before this but didn’t want to die on the diet)
All vegetables fitting the following requirement: Green & Leafy (kale, chard, etc.)
Yellow squash & zucchini squash
Avocados
Filberts, pecans
Sea salt

Fruit and fruit juices have always given me problems, pretty much my entire life. Since the onset of all this gastrointestinal distress, any legume, other than brown lentils, can literally bring me near death’s door. This is the bulk of why I had to give up my veganism. Over the years I’ve come to suspect fructose, or some other form of sugar intolerance. This means not only avoiding the above-mentioned offenders, but also staying off of sugary veggies, like root veggies and other starches. Besides, I was eating tons of starches when all of this started on the Macdougall diet. Why include those now?

I’m avoiding dairy just for the execution of a technically correct elimination diet. Given the fructose/sugar-related restrictions, it would be really nice to have my Fage, (even included on the candida diet) or eggs. Since these things weren’t eaten the entire first year of my illness, and then symptoms did not appear to become worse with their introduction, it’s really hard for me to justify not including dairy and eggs. This point is up for discussion with the nutritionist, but probably only after the requisite two weeks.

Which brings me to the newest addition to the diet. We’re going to eat turkey tonight. This is not just me throwing up my hands after one day; its me throwing up my hands after two years of inexplicable illness. When I gave up veganism, I didn’t do so because I believed that it was being vegan that was making me sick. It just needed to be done at the time. Hopefully the turkey and the fish are only temporary.

I’ve been a vegetarian for so long. I don’t even remember when I stopped eating meat. It was at least 8 or 9 years ago.

*Later I would find out that a macronutrient was causing me problems, but it wasn’t fat.