000000Well, you may all be wondering how my first food intolerance reintroduction went. The answer? Eh, could have been better.
August 9th I tried out eggs. I had one hard boiled egg with a little salt. That’s it. Remember I haven’t eaten an egg in three months so showing enough restraint to just eat one was pretty amazing. I then kept going about my day as usual and kept track of any symptoms in my food journal.
Related: Tips for Beginning Food Reintroduction
The next day (Aug 10th) I experienced a lot of belching. This is a symptom I had at the beginning of elimination and the one that actually makes me the most anxious due to my phobia. On Aug 11th things continued to go down hill a bit. The not so pleasant bathroom habits plagued me again. But I got caught in the conundrum of what was causing my symptoms. It could have been the egg but it was also that feminine time of the month, so I can’t rule that out either. Aug 12th and Aug 13th continued the trend. By the time my four day window came to a close I was about ready to throw the book at eggs for good. Then on day five when my symptoms persisted I had to take a step back and evaluate. Eggs were most likely no longer the cause.
This is why a food journal is so important! I had to look back at my past four days and figure out what I’d been eating a lot of. I realized coconut oil had been a key ingredient in a my meals recently. At the start of elimination my use of coconut oil was pretty scarce. I wasn’t sure what to do with it and couldn’t get over how it looked (don’t ask). As I got more comfortable with the product I’d been using it more and more. So I took to the the internet to do some research. The goal was to try and figure out if coconut oil could be my potential culprit. Turns out a lot of people have complained that ingesting too much coconut oil at one time can cause …loosening effects. While this doesn’t account for the symptoms I experienced on the day after ‘egg day’ it could potentially explain what’s been going on since Aug 12th.
Related: 9 Tips and Tricks for Surviving and Elimination Diet
I decided to take a step back and remove coconut in every form from my diet for the next few weeks to see if my symptoms would clear. Then came the waiting game. I had to wait for five symptom free days before I could try any type of reintroduction again. I wasn’t free to try anything else until August 19th! Then came the big decision. Did I give eggs another try or just move on to the next food? If eggs caused another set of issues they would be out for good which would just crush my soul a little bit. After a lot of pros/con lists I decided that I wanted to give eggs a second try. I truly believed that the issues that came about in the first round were unrelated to the egg.
I’m successfully rounding out day three after my second egg! I’m happy to report no issues so far! I’m so excited two more days and I can officially add eggs back into my diet. This first round of reintroduction has been a learning experience for me. I have to keep going strong with my food journal and not give up hope on this journey!
As foods are given the green light to come back into my diet I want to do a featured recipe to celebrate! I have so many egg-celent ideas! (Nailed it.) Fingers crossed the next two days go smooth!
Next food: spinach!
I hope this shows a glimpse of how I try to use the tools at my disposal to decipher what my body is telling me. Do you like these reintroduction stories? Want more? Starting your own elimination diet? I’d love to hear your story! Feel free to write me or drop a line on my Facebook page! Don’t forget to subscribe below.
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That’s so interesting, because I have celiac I never had to do the elimination diet, I was just told never to eat gluten again. I didn’t realize how complicated it would be.
It’s definitely a bit of a process. But it’s taught me a lot about myself and what I’m capable of. It’s also really shaped the way I view food now. Always learning always growing!
I have an egg intolerance and I was devastated too, theyre so delicious. It makes me so sad that they make me feel so horrible! So glad you are able to eat eggs again!
I’m so sorry your body doesn’t allow you to have eggs! But as always better to focus on all the great things you still can eat! There’s a lot of great egg re-placers on the market to help in baking/binding!
I loved reading your blog! I find your process very interesting. About a year ago I began tinkering with my diet to try and figure out what was causing some reactions in my body. Your process is so thorough! I’m going to try something similar! Thanks for sharing.
Thanks so much! Methodical and thorough definitely come with the territory, hence OCD Kitchen 😉 Let me know what you decide to try and how it goes for you! Taking control of your health and your body is one of the best things I think someone can do for themselves. Be sure to check back if you need tips for how to go about elimination.
I have been eliminating things for almost three years and never really know what is truly affecting me because my symptoms can be so mild and escalate quickly or I attribute stress to it. I clearly need to write a food journal and practice with elimination. I know there are several things and that makes it challenging. Thanks for the post and sharing your experience:)
No problem Alison! I’ll be sharing a post soon about the template I use in my food journal daily! Hopefully it helps!
My daughter is in the middle of her elimination diet that was started in August. She is looking forward to reintroducing around thanksgiving. She is a college sophmore so it has been complicated for her to eat compliant food. Thanks for your articles. It helps us know what to expect and how to go about it all!!
Hi Christy! You don’t know how much your comment touched me. That is the whole reason I started this, to help other who might be experiencing the same things! I’m glad these posts have been helping. I haven’t written anymore quite like this one as I wasn’t sure if people found them useful or just plain old TMI. But now you have me rethinking it! As always you/or your daughter are welcome to reach out to me through email at ocdkitchen@gmail.com I’d be happy to answer and questions to the best of my ability or just to lend an ear. I know this process can be difficult for all those involved not just the one doing the elimination!
Hope to see you back here soon!
This kind of thing is why elimination diets are so hard! I feel like I’m the master at this point, but I still always struggle with, “Am I reacting, or am I eating too much of something else, or is it hormones, or or or.” It especially didn’t help since acne is one of my symptoms, and we all know how unpredictable that can be. Glad to hear eggs worked out for you. They are so hard to give up!
That’s definitely the tough part Chloe! Good luck with you elimination. 🙂
That’s not even 10 miutens well spent!
I never thought I would find such an everyday topic so enallthring!
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