AIP Elimination Diet – Reintroduction Week 3: Eggs etc

This post isn’t really anything to do with eggs, as such, it’s more to do with the numerous wagons I’ve been falling off since about Friday. In one weekend, I haven’t just reintroduced one other food, but about thirteen.

I’ve no real idea why I fell from such a great height, but I’m figuring it could have something to do with the Alcohol Factor. Now I’ve been back on wine, I’ve noticed a massive difference not just in the way I feel, physically, but the way I feel mentally.

During the Elimination phase, I got to a point around four weeks in where I just felt wonderful. I had energy, zest, a desire to multi task and just bundles of va va voom. All the bad stuff had left my system and I could actually feel a pureness instead of the poison I usually feel swimming around my body.

Two weeks after starting back on wine, however, and I once more feel sluggish, fat, tired and generally just not bothered about anything. The reason for this is obvious – alcohol is a depressant and there’s always a comedown after the high. I’m not talking hangovers (haven’t actually had one yet), I’m talking more the general blueness, that doom cloud that starts to hover over you wherever you go.

Today I finally went home after a month house-sitting at the folks’. It was during this time that the elimination diet ended, reintroduction began…and the drinking started again. I’m sat here in my turret, now, and I  honestly can’t believe that I ever went nine minutes, never mind weeks, without a drink because, since Friday 13^th March, it feels like I’ve done nothing but drink.

Perhaps it’s the novelty of being dry for so long which has pushed me a bit overboard, or maybe it’s something darker. All I know is that I feel rubbish, which I’m convinced is down to alcohol. But here’s the thing – it doesn’t stop me loving (or wanting) a drink.

Yesterday, as a direct consequence of having a nice cold beer in front of the footy, I ended up having bread and cream cheese, then a bit of chocolate, then a very large slab of mature cheddar cheese as an afternoon “snack”. I also had soy sauce on my salt & pepper chicken, plus some red wine in the evening. So that’s another million things, right there, that I haven’t reintroduced properly, and my daily calorie total was a whipping four times more than I would usually eat. I didn’t eat a lot, but I ate all the wrong things. Just because that cold beer felt so damn good, I wanted to taste a whole host of other damn good stuff, too. So why is all the damn good stuff so bad for us? That makes no sense, and is another reason why I don’t believe in God.

Now I’m back home, I do feel more in control and, at the end of the day (touch wood), I don’t have any reactions at all as regards my HS. I’ll be keeping an eye on things this week in case there’s any real fallout on that score but, fingers crossed, it doesn’t look like I’ve ingested anything I’m allergic/intolerant to.

It’s worth noting, too, that I’m convinced the turmeric & ginger tea is working absolute wonders for my gut. Sometimes it’s like I can feel it healing me, and I can actually trace the remission of my symptoms to within two days of when I started drinking this tea (six large cups a day, every day). It sounds newfangled saying all that, but curcumin – the active ingredient in turmeric – and ginger have long been used as anti-inflammatory remedies, and two thousand years of Indian and Chinese medicine can’t be wrong – only now do I understand why.

So, to date, there have been no real reactions, notwithstanding the recent ‘possible’ reaction to tomatoes. And the eggs? Well, apart from going right through me every time I had one for the first few days of reintroduction (great way of losing weight, by the way…), I can now cross eggs off the likely trigger list.

This Friday, I’d intended to reintroduce my true love – cheese – but I already binged on that spectacularly, yesterday, so I need to choose something else, or just go an extra week sticking to what I know is safe – and off the alcohol – to give my body a chance to catch up with all the changes and ‘rewind’ a little bit.

I just need to get back on track this week, back in my own home, back in my own routine, back to the self-discipline I obviously have ‘somewhere’. I’m very, very disappointed in myself, and that doesn’t help on a Gloomy Monday, but it’s nothing a hot bath, an early night and a good old talking to in front of the mirror tomorrow morning can’t cure. Hopefully.

Coming up: Week 4 – ???