But, I continued on. Adding sugar and soy. I was able to eat a modified meal at noodles and co. (they have rice noodles!) and it was super yummy! I also got a bubble tea (the bobas have sugar) and it was super yummy (I got two in one trip to the MOA). Symptoms were . . . still the same.
I went to a party on Saturday night were I was tortured with BBQ wings and cupcakes. But I stayed strong and ordered some plain chicken and a plain salad. On our way home, I expressed my frustration with the diet to Jill. I was hoping that surely by now I would be feeling great and that the feeling great would be my motivation to stick with the diet. However, I wasn't feeling great. In fact, my body was reacting the same as it was before the diet (albeit better than the first week with caffeine withdrawal and massive legume overload). But I also expressed my concern with not finishing the diet to completion. I didn't want to fail.
Jill, being the awesome best friend that she is, reminded me that I was doing the list for myself. Once the elimination diet was no longer helpful to me, stopping wouldn't be failing, because the goal was to help me. I pondered this after I dropped her off. When I got home I did some research. I tried to stick to good medical sites (you know how the internet can be) and I found some really helpful information.
I had previously been casually diagnosed with a condition when the doctors could no longer explain my symptoms. I took this with a grain of salt, because it is a syndrome (aka not a lot of science to back it up). While not life threatening, the syndrome explained my symptoms perfectly, but so did a lot of other things (for example, food allergies or sensitivities). Well, low and behold, one of the reasons why symptoms don't subside on an allergy elimination diet is if the person has that syndrome. With that I knew that I was on to something.
After more research I found that the syndrome is not at all caused by food or inflammation from food, and has more to do with the chemical reactions in your body. It can be caused by stress, hormones, etc. But it has more to do with your nerves than food. Now, certain foods can make symptoms worse, such as legumes and caffeine (aha, now I knew I was on to something). Also, one medication that is used to help symptoms is my previous tension headache medication (because it relieves stress). The time I went off of my medication lined up with the time when I started noticing my symptoms had worsened.
So my casual diagnosis turned legitimate in my mind (and my husband gloated because he always thought my symptoms were caused by stress). And with that, I felt justified in quitting the allergy elimination diet. The next day I grabbed some pizza at target and ate some chocolate and greek yogurt (yum!). My quitting was justified when my symptoms remained the same after I started eating everything again.
So, if completing the allergy elimination diet was how my success was measured than I failed. If figuring out why I have my symptoms is the measure of success (which I think it is!) then I succeeded. Now I know how to better manage my symptoms (less caffeine, NO legumes, no artificial sugar, and stress management, which I am constantly working on), which I think is a win.
#1 on the list complete!
*disclaimer: I don't want to share the actual syndrome for the world wide web to know, but for enquiring minds, it is (as I said earlier) NOT life threatening or harmful to my body, just inconvenient to me*
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