Results of My Clean Diet

I made it through the 3-week Clean diet and it wasn't until the first few days of going back to life as usual until I noticed just how good I felt during those 3 weeks. I didn't realize it at the time, but I felt great. Sure I was sometimes cranky because I was hungry or missing my chewing gum and there were plenty of times that I felt tired and weak while hiking or exercising, but overall I felt great. I woke up hours before my alarm clock every morning and felt refreshed and ready to get up. Never once did I have a head ache or a stomach ache. I never felt overly fatigued or had my usual "ick." What is my "ick?" It's that unexplained feeling of nausea that I often experience in the afternoons. On so many afternoons it just comes over me, as if out of nowhere. One minute I feel fine and the next minute I want to crawl under my desk. Over the past 15+ years I blamed it on every possible thing in my office: mold, dust, the heat/AC system, until finally I decided that I must be allergic to work! Nothing seemed to help. I removed stagnate water (fish tank) from my bookshelf, I dusted and vacuumed like crazy, I had the AC turned off to my office, I switched from plastic drinking mugs to stainless steel . . . I tried everything. Everything except changing my diet.

I lived through these three weeks of detoxing and I can't believe it didn't hit me that I never had a bad day at work. I never had an episode of the "ick." Then Monday came along and my diet was officially over. I can't say that I jumped right into eating breads and sweets. I've been very good at keeping a very healthy diet. The only foods that I've added back in include fruits & veggies on the no-no list, a couple of eggs, peanut butter, and very small amounts of dairy (yogurt and a little milk). As far as drinks, I started having some caffeinated teas and I also had one glass of wine. Over the weekend I started to feel not-so-good, but I blamed it on my husband blowing sawdust all over our yard with a leaf blower, the dust from cleaning the house, and the seasonal pollen. Never thought about any foods I was putting into my mouth.

Then Monday came and i went back to work. Every morning I get a cup of tea around 10 o'clock and up until today it was always caffeine-free green tea. On this day, I splurged and had a cup of caffeinated spiced chai with a bit of milk. Then at 11 o'clock I had a banana. Boy did I miss my daily banana.

And by noon I was dizzy and nauseous. It was then that I instantly realized how good I felt during my detox and how quickly I went from feeling great to feeling terrible. Oh my goodness, was it the caffeine, the milk, or the banana? It had to be one of them, or maybe the combination of all of them. Those three things are my daily ritual. I have them every day and every day I felt sick at the same time (coincidentally right after consuming these items.)

At this point I'm going back to the elimination diet and this time I am going to add the no-no foods back into my system one at a time in hopes of trying to find the culprit. I should also note that this is probably the worst time of the year to be experimenting with this because of my seasonal allergies. I could have the greatest diet in the world and still be effected by the pollen in the air right now so I'll have to take that into consideration.