While I realize that I have yet to have any "followers", I still feel badly for those of you who have found this blog through a search engine, in hopes of finding recipes for the "Six Food Elimination Diet". It is still my intention to post recipes as I find them. When I researched it myself, I realized how few sites there were out there, that cater to such a diet. My intention was to change that--to add at least one that was well-kept and updated as frequently as life allows.
As I stated in my previous post, it turns out that my son does not need to follow the "-6" diet. However, there have been a lot of factors in our lives over the years, that have led me to where I am today--seriously studying what we eat, and working on changing it.
That also led me to change the name of this blog to reflect allergy diets and clean eating in general. I am a 40 year old mother of three, who grew up eating mostly processed foods. Both of my parents had to have their gall bladders removed, and, for the last six months, I have experienced sometimes excruciating pain that seems to also be gall bladder related. Over the last few years, I have changed the way that I eat, but I still use a lot of processed ingredients. Experiencing these bouts of intense pain has been a real eye-opener for me. Processed foods of ANY sort, are simply no longer acceptable, according to my digestive system.
I haven't been blogging, because I've been reading other people's clean eating blogs, canning blogs, gardening blogs, and allergy diet blogs. I've been pinning my little heart out on Pinterest. What I also have not been doing, is following any of those pins or blogs in real life. Meaning, I have the info, but I have not been putting it to good use. That needs to change, says my body. My brain and willpower beg to differ--how could that beautifully iced tiny little cupcake hurt? Half a bottle of Starbucks cappuccino! Just HALF! Body says NO WAY. After of course, I chose to eat and drink it anyway, and then suffered for it. So, here I am. Not ready to change, but needing to anyway.
Other factors that have led me to the need to change; well, I'll be honest. One of my sons exhibits major ADHD behaviors, and another has been diagnosed with "moderate autism", to the point that he is unfortunately, non-verbal at the age of 11.5 years. I did a lot of research in the past, regarding the diagnoses of my children, and of course, I tried the "GFCF diet". I will even shamefully admit, it worked very well for my 11.5 year old--to the point that he was able to actually speak to me, if only just once. Why try it again if it only worked once, you ask? Because I am sure that if we had been able to actually keep following the diet, it could have done wonders for him. Unfortunately, when his father and I were still married, he was completely against it and continued to feed him gluten-laden processed foods like round buttery crackers (I can't say the name, you know it well), and the very common chocolate-with-white-creme sandwich cookies.
I vowed that once I became a single mom, I would begin the GFCF diet for myself and my children again. I've been a single mom for about a year and a half, and have yet to do that. Granted, we lived with other family members for over a year, and they were not interested in the diet, and we were not in the financial position to make two meals for each time that we ate. Now that we are out on our own, and I control both the menu and the grocery list, I am finally able to restart the diet, and hopefully change my family for the better.
We need to eliminate gluten and casein, refined sugar, and artificial everything. I eliminated HFCS long ago, and we've been successful in staying away from that. I lost 20 lbs from that alone, how scary is that thought?? Never let anyone tell you that HFCS isn't bad for your body, and does not influence your weight!
Now, I personally am not allowed to consume red meat, citrus, eggs, corn, nuts, and caffeine in addition to the above. I think that it's going to be harder for me than it is for my boys.
Another reason that I want to change the way we eat, is that I want to avoid genetically modified foods, and produce grown with pesticides. While I won't be slaughtering my own pigs or chickens anytime soon, I am being more conscious about the meats that I buy. I don't currently have a garden, but I have one planned. We will be moving again sometime soon (hopefully), and I will be able to have a regular garden, as opposed to the container garden that I had initially planned.
Overall, I intend to make my own mixes and flavorings, in addition to growing whatever produce I possibly can. There aren't any health food stores in our town, so I am going to have to do some bulk shopping in a larger city a few times a month, in order to get the GFCF ingredients that I will need. It's going to take a lot of trial-and-error as far as experimenting with substitutions goes, but I really will track my progress here. I only hope that it helps others as much as it helps my family.
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