Mamarati

One of you has got to go.

So, I think I’m seeing a pattern of something on day 1. I knew this diet would uncover some things in me once I started reading the information the doctor gave to us and the books she recommended. Once it got into my head that allergy symptoms aren’t all just sniffles, sneezes, watery eyes and asthma attacks, I knew for sure that some of my problems might turn out to be food related.

I know for sure that coffee was a culprit for me. So I’m keeping that out of my diet until who knows when. Maybe next year I will give it another try and see if my body is OK with it again. I mean, it used to be that coffee gave me energy and was something that I enjoyed. But at some point, after drinking it daily for years, the tables turned on me. Drinking it became a routine that I couldn’t ignore. I had to have it, but why? It wasn’t giving me the same energy, and in fact I believe it was just making me feel more drained and lifeless. The headaches that would come on just a few hours after having a cup… the joint aches and soreness. The nonstop time on the toilet. (Last time I challenged it, I stopped counting at 10 trips to the bathroom!) The pain behind my eyes. All of that has been almost completely alleviated since getting the coffee out of my diet three weeks ago.

Except after Day 1 of the diet. I used a couple of “day 1″ (I should really come up with a clever name for our days… there’s a book out there that I want to read called If this is Tuesday, It Must be Chicken) times to try to challenge the coffee back in. I chose this day because it is the day for cow’s milk products and I really need half and half in my coffee. Each time I tried to challenge it in, it was worse.

I chose another day to challenge it in, a day without milk, just to make sure it wasn’t something else. And sure enough, the coffee problems came through.

Now that I’ve thoroughly decided to give it up and I’ve had day 1 without it, something else is still a problem I’m finding. I’ve got the headache, the stiffness in my neck, the aching in my joints, the back pain, tiredness, pain in my face and eyes and my thinking is just not very clear. I can’t “stay on task” as they are always saying about Jacob… I’m all over the place today. Also, and I don’t know if this is a symptom or not, but I have that feeling of needing to pee really bad, but there’s nothing there. This is not a consistent problem for me, but it is recurrent. And I wonder now if it has to do with food. Last night and today is the first I’ve noticed of it happening in at least a few weeks. Who knows.

And so I think that it’s either milk or chocolate. The next few day 1s I’m going to try no cocoa and see how I feel. And if that doesn’t work out, then I can probably suspect the milk.

Right now, though, I think I’m going to go take a nap. I really feel run down.