ladylunk -
or anyone interested in food sensitivities/triggers topic.
If not interested in this topic - don't read. It's a very long post!!!
I did a very intense program about 13 years ago (Beyond Dieting by Dr. Charles Bates) that involved "testing" food to determine what sensitivities one might have or trigger foods that would cause you to want to overeat. People that suffered from fibromyalgia also did really well on this program and what it could teach them about the foods they were eating potentially making them feel worse/have worse symptoms.
A little backgground on me. I was almost 30 and did this program to lose weight mostly - a time in my life where again I was at my wits end with how I looked and felt. I was an overeater and it was hard to find a diet where I didn't feel deprived. I love/loved to eat and
never felt there was an emotional reason behind my overeating (like Oprah always seemed to search for on her shows). I had awesome parents, an awesome childhood, never been sexually/physically/verbally/emotionally abused. I felt it was that food simply tasted good and there was so much food available to us that tasted great lol! For me I believe there was also a genetic disposition (if you look at the members of my immediate and extended family). I do have to admit that besides food tasting great (and later realizing that carbs can be addicting), a lot of my overeating was probably out of habit and boredom.
One point that this process made me realize....... We all accept that if we take a new medication that we might experience a side effect from it. In fact , you'll be warned with a long list of potential side effects on the box/written handout about the medication. Lots of times people will think that if they take an herbal, that it's "natural" therefore their bodies should NOT have any problems. Of course, you can have a side effect with an herbal just as easily as taking a Tylenol or Advil. Our bodies are of truly amazing design and we are all different in how our bodies respond to outside things brought internally. Most of us have never even consider that food might/does cause side effects.
So, we all started out on this soon to be very informative journey for ourselves. We began with a pretty severe detox. We had a list of limited foods from most food groups that we ate in any amout we were hungy for, for about 3 weeks, ie meats for protein, rice for carbs, fruits, veggies.
This was even stricter than IP, in that you couldn't eat anything off the list or it would/could "cloud" your results down the road. Dr. Bates encouraged us to get the food on the lists organic and the in the most natural/basic form. For example, the problem with having bread is that if you look at the list of ingredients, there are so so many things put in it that it would be almost impossible to know which of those ingredients is causing the problem if a problem occurred. After this 3 week period we felt extremely "clean". I feel good on IP, I felt the
BEST I've ever felt in
my whole life after this detox.
Most everyone was fine with all those foods on the original list (no sensitivities) and we called these foods our "safe foods". Note: if someone had a problem with a food from that list, Dr. Bates would work with them individually to find which food and that would be removed form that persons list of "safe foods".
After the 3 week detox, we would add one food in at a time and "test" it to see if we had any changes in our "clean" state. He started us off "testing" foods that again were lower on the list of foods that might cause problems for most people. Thus, the biggie foods (dairy, sugar, wheat, etc) were saved for much later in the program. His approach dealt heavy with inflammation as a huge culprit and result to foods that weren't good for us as individuals. The list of problems/symptoms/changes in how you feel while "testing" a food could be just about anything: cravings, headache, mild depression, indigestion, pain, heartburn, insomnia, muscle aches, irritability, fatigue, bloating, weight gain,..... more but I can't recall them all at this time.
It was a very interesting and eye opening process. I viewed this time as an "experiment" rather than allowing myself to feel deprived by all the foods we couldn't eat. And of course, very much like IP, felt pretty crummy for the first week and had no hunger issues to speak of after that. Food no longer was the front seat driver in my life, in fact it was now in the last seat on a big bus lol! This was the first time in my life where the saying "Live to Eat vs Eat to live" was truly fully comprehended. I had no form of sugar or equivalent type additives except for fructose (thru peaches, pears) for more than 4 months and this was so amazing to me and those around me who were aware. Kind of like Ishbel not having "chocolate" for a whole year!
The big triggers tended to be wheat, sugar. Possibly gluten and soy now would be big also (just speculating) since this was 13 years ago.
When we were "testing" a food, we only ate foods from our "safe food" list. Thus, you wouldn't "test" two foods at the same time because you wouldn't know which was causing the problem if there was one and so you'd waste a lot of time backtracking.
So, for example - say I wanted to test a tomato. On day one, I'd have 1/4 tomato along with my other "safe foods". On day two, I'd have 1/2 tomato. On day three, I'd have a whole tomato or maybe even 2 tomatoes just to be sure. If on day one, I had no noticeable symptoms then I would continue to day two. If after day two, I thought I might be having some muscle aches (for example) but wasn't sure I would continue to day three. You'd continue on with the testing if for any reason you were unsure: was I really having muscle aches? maybe the muscle aches were from walking a bunch of stairs that day that weren't in my normal daily life? or maybe I thought I might be coming down with the flu? Whatever caused me to be unsure didn't matter, I would just continue to the next day of "testing" which is when I would increase the amount of tomato I was having. If I wasn't having muscle aches from the stairs or from the flu - if it really was coming from the tomato, the symptom would be more extreme as I increased the amount of tomato I was consuming. Some foods you might have to test for 4-6 days to really determine what was happening, but the normal process was 3 days to test a food.
If the tomato was a "problem" food for
me (if I had any of the above listed symptoms) then I'd note it in my Journal and keep good records about the whole occurrence. It would
not go on my "safe foods" list if I had a problem with it because it would "muddy/cloudy" the "testing" of more foods. However, when everything was said and done and I was done "testing" foods, I could make a personal choice in my life whether I wanted to still eat tomatos (despite what I learned). I would
weigh how much I loved tomatoes against the symptoms I was having from eating it.
So, if my goal in "testing" foods was to find out my "trigger" foods for overeating then I wouldn't eat tomato if I had cravings for other foods.
If I only had indigestion while testing tomato, then I could decide which was more important to me: eating/loving the taste of tomato or not experiencing indigestion. Or better yet, finding a balance by learning that only a 1/2 tomato at a time didn't cause any indigestion, but if I ate a whole tomato then I'd get indigestion. And I could make the choice each and every time I was presented with the option to have tomato (not while "testing" food though.)
People could take as long as they wanted to "test" all kinds of different foods. And we tended to test only the food that we really liked and wanted to eat in our everyday lives. Why waste the time testing a turnip if you didn't like them lol!
Some interesting results that I experienced....
1. There was a food (and it's funny that I don't recall now what it was) that caused me to become very irritable. The way this was evident was while my husband and I were driving somewhere. Some info first - I am a quicker/more observant/aggressive driver than my husband and usually drive 5-7 mph faster than the speed limit (what I can get away with hopefully without getting a ticket lol). If we're in a hurry to get somewhere, we learned after many years of marriage to have me be the driver. He is more of a "stop and smell the roses" driver; he notices the flowers blooming alongside the road, etc.
Well this one day he was driving and I had this unexplainable super strong urge to put my left hand down on his right leg in order to force him to accelerate. He wasn't doing anything wrong and we weren't in a hurry. I was just annoyed that we weren't going fast enough. Really annoyed! Soo much that it almost felt like there was an invisible force taking my hand against my logical brain to reach towards his leg. Very intense and crazy feeling. Now, I know some of you women might be saying it could just be TOM and you were feeling *****y. Well, that could it explain it too, but I'm not normally a *****y type person with or w/o TOM. If TOM was a concern/unsure, I would have spent more days "testing" that food to be sure; I might have had to test until TOM was completely over, but if the symptom of irritability was coming from the food, it would continue and get worse as a larger amount of the "testing" food was consumed.
2. I learned that the huge trigger for overeating was not sugar as I suspected. When I tested sugar, I added 1/4 cup to my canned peaches (nothing else added) to day one. Added 1/2 cup sugar on day two. Added 1 cup sugar on day three. Shocked no symptoms and no weight gain (which is what we would see if the food was causing inflammation/water retention). So, day four I added 3 cups sugar and still no response (I believe there is about 800 calories = 1 cup sugar). Dr. Bates and I were very surprised and as a side note, I didn't really think wheat would be a problem because I was never one for wanting to overeat breads and things. I loved sweets. So, what could my trigger be??? Well, I had been testing food for about 5 months now (and was getting a little tired of my limited list of foods that I could eat. One day, I was at a friends where she had some homemade salsa. So, I had some corn tortilla chips (pretty basic ingredients) and her homemade salsa that was all veggies that I did fine with "safe foods" list.
A few hours later at home, I was sitting on the couch watching TV. And out of nowhere I had this intense, very strong desire to munch/snack on something - anything!!! One of those moments when you stand in front of the refrigerator or pantry looking for whatever it is you are craving. It was a super huge craving, drove me off the couch and don't remember what I started snacking on, but I wanted to eat and eat and eat. Thus, I learned my big trigger - corn. Yes, corn. Who would've guessed, right? Well, I've always liked corn. I like it as a side at dinner, loved corn on the cob, love Fritos. But a trigger? Hhhmmmm! Duh! (hitting forehead with the palm of my hand)! What is one of the sweetening ingredient in almost all candy/sweets. High Fructose Corn Syrup. ding, ding, ding - the bell went off in my head.
3. My neighbor at the time did suffer from fibromyalgia. After I had went thru the program, I recommended it to her even though her reasons would be to have less pain whereas I wanted to lose weight. She was in to the testing food phase and decided to next test oatmeal. Before this program, she had oatmeal every morning. Oatmeal is always touted as a heart benefical breakfast food (and it very well could be). Well, on the first day testing she had such pain after eating oatmeal that she didn't get out of bed for 3 days. This "healthy" food was not good for
her body. And to think that she had been eating it everyday for breakfast for who knows how long. No wonder she had fibromyalgia symptoms every day. It just wasn't until she was "clean" went thru detox that she could see/feel how bad this one food effected her body. She didn't need to test the food longer than day 1 since her result was so strongly confirmed.
I loved this experience and really found it eye opening. In a perfect world I would utilize all I learned wholeheartedly and feel 100% great everyday and be at a healthy weight for my body. However, it is very hard to truly stay "clean" when you go to restaurants and social gatherings where it's impossible to know all the ingredients added to any meal/food/drink. Mabye if the goal for me had been to lessen fibromyalgia or migraines or something that was so miserable that the "giving" up of certain foods made my daily life more bearable/comfortable by being symptom free, I would have followed what I learned to a "T".
Since my goal, was to learn what my trigger foods were, at some point I allowed those foods back into my life and "gave in" to the cravings and addiction of carb based foods. This was my first real attempt at losing weight (which I did, I think I lost about 65lbs), but over time I continued to eat the wrong foods and gained the weight back. I'm hoping to incorporate some of what I learned about my trigger foods and use it in P4 Maintenance of IP. I'm really absorbing this time around with my IP weight loss that changes HAVE to me made or I will gain the weight back.
Ladylunk - hopefully you were able to glean something from this extremely LONG post. I guess I'd say that it's worth taking a week of your life to determine if you have a sensitivity (or whatever you want to call it) to one of those foods from P3 - if you haven't figured out the problem coming from something else in the meantime.
Maybe you don't have time to do it now or are in denial too much to want to do it now. It can always be done down the road. The symptom you are having of the upset stomach seems strong enough to want to find out the culprit. Even if you learn that the culprit is a food sensitivity, that doesn't mean you can't have that food ever again(if the symptom truly is coming from the food). It just means you have to weigh the pros/cons of having the food in in your life and how much you are willing to experience the consequences.
Let me know if you (or anyone has questions).
Jen
