Welcome, I Think

Now I'm posting about food. Oh geez.

I'll start with the introduction, I guess. Over the past several years, I have consistently complained about my fatigue and various other symptoms to my physician. Over the last year I've had major blood tests run three times--all inconclusive (thyroid levels all normal, no anemia, etc.) and finally it was my therapist who suggested that I might have a food allergy.

Now, I eat some foods but I LE PICKY. I am currently an un-committed vegetarian (Oh bacon, our love affair might never end) but there are a lot of foods I refuse to eat. Salad and tofu being among them. I can do it (at least for salad, most tofu-y soy products have me gagging...hard) but they are really unenjoyable. I do however, love most other vegetables and fruits, so in that way it could be worse.

As part of this 'Determine Your Allergies' diet, I went to a nutritionist who helped me set up a plan and figure out what order I would be adding foods back in...

That's right, "back in" as "take them all out."

Pretty much, I'm impossible to feed right now.

I cannot have:

- wheat gluten
- corn
- milk proteins (oddly enough I can still have butter because it has very low levels of milk protein/lactose--it's all fat)
- soy
- eggs
- food colorings
- food preservatives
- citrus

It's really, really hard.

I've just started adding in foods again (yay!) and the first one up was cheese (milk proteins, really, but I ate cheese because I love cheese) and it's already likely that this is one of the foods I am sensitive to. I'm not sure if there will be any else, but I thought that over the course of this experiment, as I added back foods, it would help to blog and share my "airitarian" experiences.

I hope to post recipes I make with my allowed foods and pictures of finished meals.

On the plus side, since I am essentially persona non grata at any restaurant, I have saved a ton of money.