D-Day!
Actually, D-Day was Sunday, the day I started this eating program: Here’s the backstory. Digestion has always been my issue. It seems like everyone has their “thing”- I don’t get migraines or have allergies. As a kid I never got ear infections, and I never had PMS. BUT, I have a “sensitive” digestive system. When I was young I ate a TON of sugar (we walked to school and had multiple opportunities to buy candy along the way. One time the owner of a deli actually called my parents because he was concerned about the amount of candy I was buying.) Then I went through years of disordered eating, and by the time I was an adult my digestive system was a wreck. I tried different diets and cleanses, and finally, ten years ago, after being tested for parasites, celiac, and food allergies (all negative) I took matters into my own hands and and did Rikki Heller’s anti-candida diet. It was SO HARD. You can’t eat sugar of any kind, including fruit, and including most grains. My withdrawal symptoms were massive (I never had hot flashes while going through menopause, but I did have them when I was withdrawing from sugar). An anti-candida diet is VERY restrictive, made even harder by the fact that I’m vegan. There are a lot of animal products allowed on most anti-candida diets, but since I don’t eat those, I’m even more limited. As a matter of fact I had tried anti-candida diets before and couldn’t stick to them. BUT! Rikki Heller’s program is all vegan. She has somehow managed to put together enough recipes so that you can… survive… and actually thrive on this diet. It took a while, but when I did her diet the first time, I completely fixed all my digestive issues. Things went well for a while. I even started adding things back to my diet, like fruit, some more grains. And then, bread (YUM! Why is bread so delicious???) I still avoided anything with obvious sugar, like desserts, but I let sugar creep in in so many other ways. Honestly, all the long distance running I’ve been doing didn’t help. For my long runs and races I was eating sugary gels and all sorts of things I wouldn’t eat in “real” life. The lines became pretty blurred- if I’m drinking a Coke during races, then why can’t I have a Starbucks drink with “just one” pump of syrup? The thing about me is, I can’t do things in moderation. If you give me a bagel, then I want one every day. If you take away sugar, I’ll get addicted to salty foods. Take away Coke, and I’ll get addicted to diet Coke. In short, I can get addicted to anything where they make more than one. It’s not like you can never eat anything delicious again, but in the book, Heller recommends that you come back to the diet periodically, just for a couple weeks here and there, as a little “touch up.” Oops- somehow, I neglected that part of it. I’m that kid who didn’t wear their retainer and now has to have braces put back on. I’ve known for a while that I needed to do this diet again. I though about starting it in the fall, but, holidays!!! Who wants to be on an extremely restrictive diet over the holidays? Then, we went to Tampa- too hard to do while traveling. Then, my race was coming up so it wasn’t feasible. Then we went to Waco… the truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to manage the diet when I travel in July. But, there will never be a perfect time so I bit the bullet. There are two phases of this diet- first, you kill the candida overgrowth, Then, you heal up the damage that was done to your gut from the yeast. So you’re not allowed to eat anything that could feed the candida, and also have to eliminate anything that might irritate your gut. The very hardest thing for me is… you’re not allowed to have black tea. SOB! The only caffeinated tea allowed is green, and I don’t like green tea. It tastes like grass. But, Heller even has an answer for that! She recommends gunpowder as the least-grassy tasting. This is definitely a hard diet to follow. But I have two mantras. One is, “It’s not worth it.” Anytime I long for my Earl Grey, or my favorite chips, or bread, I tell myself “It’s not worth it.” It’s really not! And that brings me to my second mantra, which I tell myself all day long, “Nothing tastes as good as feeling good feels.” Unfortunately I feel like crap right now (I’ve had a headache since Sunday morning) but all will be well. I know that if I stick to this, I’ll feel so much better… eventually. This is a long post, so I’ll get into exactly what I AM eating later in the week. Are you a “moderator” or an “abstainer”?- I’m 100% an abstainer. Moderation is too hard for me. Top photo by Gustavo Sánchez on Unsplash