I'm having some health problems right now, and my doctor and I are working together to try to figure out what is going on. I'm on an "elimination diet": no wheat, no dairy, no sugar, no carbonation, no fried foods. It severely limits my options for eating, which you would think would make me nuts. And sometimes it does. But interestingly, most of the time my response is this: okay, so what
CAN I eat?
Oooh, I've got all the veggies I want (within reason, I must be careful of gas-producing foods), and all the fruits too. Cool, I like kiwis and apples and bananas and pineapple and pomegranates, let's stock up on fruit. And have lots of salads. I can have all the protein I want now that I'm not restricting beef for the colon cancer screen (haven't gotten the results back yet), yay! So salads...and protein...yum. Okay. I can have a *little* bit of dairy--like, salad dressing, or dips, or something minor--if I have a milk pill, but without advanced planning I can't count on having access to those. So, at any time I can easily have a huge salad with a mix of veggies, some grilled chicken or roast beef, and a nice oil-and-vinegar-ish dressing. Then I can have a lovely piece of fresh fruit to top it all off. Yum!
Wait a minute...this is the way I've been trying to convince myself to eat all along, and here I'm having FUN with it??
![faint](https://www.3fatchicks.com/forum/images/smiles/faint.gif)
What's happening here?
When people ask me about how restricted my options are, I just shrug and say, "that's how I'm eating right now" and it's the end of the discussion. No arguments, no tricks, no game playing. I'm excited about figuring out what I
can eat, rather than being miserable about trying to resist what I
can't eat.
It seems an important shift in perspective, and I thought I would share.