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Elimination Diet Update!

Written on July 6, 2009 by hollie in Deep and Meaningful Commentary, My experience with an elimination diet, Panic and Anxiety Issues

It’s been barely two weeks (15 days!), and while I’ve screwed up and added things back in too early and accidentally eaten things I didn’t mean to, I feel like I’ve already learned so much!

The biggest thing I’ve learned so far is that I’m not anxious all the time. I was beginning to think that I was. I had so many ailments and sensations every day that didn’t seem to make sense, and I was grouping them all under “ANXIETY”. There were days when I’d feel so awful, I was sure I was just going to end up going completely nuts.

After tracking my food and my feelings and symptoms for the last two weeks, despite the fact that I haven’t stuck to the diet properly all the time, there are three very clear groupings of symptoms that are arising:

1) Specific symptoms that happen after I eat certain foods, which I’m beginning to assume means that I have some sort of mild allergy or intolerance to that food:

- nausea
- gas, cramps, bloating
- heartburn
- headaches
- irritability
- fatigue, an extreme version of “brain fog”
- joint pain and muscle soreness (often the next day)
- eyes feel “hot” (weird one, I know, but it happens)
- lights begin to feel too bright (often occurs with headache, though not painful enough I’d consider it a migraine).

2) Symptoms of panic and anxiety (I have an anxiety disorder, there’s no denying that):

- sense of doom, fear, extreme anxiety
- rapid heart rate, pounding heart, palpitations
- shaking, tremors
- dizziness
- chest feels tight, like the muscles are a band around my body pulling way too tight
- palms begin to sweat, the rest of me gets clammy
- blood pressure shoots up

3) Symptoms of low blood sugar:

- a sort of “shakiness”, a feeling that I could fall into a panic attack at any moment, lacking in physical stability.
- a light and “deep” sort of headache
- hyperfocus on something I’m working on, so that I’m ignoring a lot of physical signals (like right now I’m working on this post without having eaten breakfast yet – I’m resisting stopping to go eat, but I know if I don’t, I’ll end up in trouble soon….)
- strangely: repelled by the idea of eating, nothing sounds good, I don’t know what I want, and I’m too busy to think about it, and get annoyed by anyone asking me to eat (see last item!).
- irritability (heh!)

Part of the problem with having an anxiety disorder is that you become hyper-attuned to your physical state. A person without an anxiety disorder will often ignore strange or unaccounted for physical symptoms, or feel unafraid of them, finding them annoying at worst. They only “panic” and feel fear or real worry when something serious happens, like that abdominal pain doesn’t go away in a few days and the doctor says they have appendicitis. In other words, they have (generally) reasonable responses to bodily sensations.

Someone with an anxiety disorder, however intelligent and rational they may be most of the time, can be plagued with an irrational hyperfocus on their body’s sensations. This is especially true with panic disorder, because panic attacks are terrifying, and someone who experiences them on a regular basis will basically go to any length not to experience another one. This is why people with panic attacks often become agoraphobic; they avoid places where they had attacks before. It’s also why they’re especially prone to hypochondria. I have issues with both; my agoraphobia manifests as difficulty driving long distances and difficulty being away from home for long periods, and my hypochondria manifests as a fear that there’s something wrong with my heart.

What I’m realizing through doing this diet, is how the food that I’ve been eating and the way I’ve been eating it have been impacting and triggering my anxiety. Eating things I’m intolerant to cause symptoms that, while not producing a panic attack on their own, contribute to my hyper-focus on my body – asking myself, “What’s wrong? Why do I feel this way? What’s happening?” – and do nothing but increase my own sensitivity to physical sensations, which increases the likelihood of an attack being triggered.

I used to think that I was just anxious 24 hours a day, but when I went on the diet, all the food intolerance symptoms went away. I began to actually feel good most of the time. I realized I wasn’t anxious all the time; I was anxious some of the time, and I was very likely reacting to my food the rest of the time.

So what foods are problematic? Here’s a breakdown of what I know or strongly suspect so far:

DAIRY: evil, evil, evil.
On June 30th, Greg and I went out for a date night, and I wanted to just enjoy myself so badly, and I’d been so good, and I thought I’d just experiment and eat one meal with dairy and see what happened. Well, within about 40 minutes of eating two kinds of cheese, I began feeling almost all the symptoms of intolerance, as well as the symptoms of lactose intolerance. The next day, I had the worst panic attack I’ve had in six months. This is consistent with my notes from eliminating dairy a few years ago, when I noticed that it took about 12-48 hours for the panic attacks to hit after having it. I don’t know why, but it has happened that way repeatedly, for years, even during times when I didn’t know I’d eaten dairy. Many times during that trial I’d have attacks that hit out of the blue, I’d look back on what we ate, we’d see no evidence of dairy at all, and then we’d dig deeper and find that, oh yeah, that margarine has “milk solids”, or that soy cheese has “milk proteins”.

Dairy just needs to go OUT. Completely. Permanently.

SOY: seems okay.
Doesn’t seem to be an issue in the “light” forms I’m eating it in. Right now I have some small amount of soy in a protein powder I use, and I use soy sauce in cooking. I don’t notice any problems or symptoms of intolerance. I’m still not eating soy meats or other highly processed soy foods, and I likely won’t start for some time. They’ve always made me feel lethargic and nauseous, and I don’t feel like I need to “test” that right now.

WHEAT: okay in small doses, so far.
I need to do more testing with wheat. In small doses, like when wheat is an additive in something (a breading, or croutons on a salad), I don’t notice any food intolerance symptoms. When I eat a lot of wheat, I begin to notice symptoms from group #1. I’m still not sure how much of a problem wheat is, I’ll keep working on that. For now I seem to find myself gravitating toward gluten-free items.

SUGAR: okay in small doses, but hard to only have small doses.
Sugar in general doesn’t seem to give me any symptoms of intolerance, but it HUGELY contributes to low blood sugar issues, which are very triggering for anxiety. I also notice that if I don’t eat a lot of sugar for a few days and then eat, say, a small pastry or cookie (there are some great gluten-free cookies I was trying), that the cravings for MORE sugar become incredibly intense. I think my body really has the habit of using sugar as a mood stabilizer, so it tends to want a little, and then want a lot more to balance out what the little bit did, and then pretty soon I’m just wanting nothing but sugar. Interrupting the cycle with protein, and then sort of dodging the cravings with fruit, seems to help this a lot.

LEGUMES: avoiding for now.
Been working on the other foods, haven’t reintroduced legumes in any way yet.

CHOCOLATE/CAFFEINE: okay in small doses, but like sugar, hard to only have a small dose.
Those gluten-free brownies were wonderful, and after one small piece, I felt FINE. A few hours later, I had several more small pieces, and I felt anxious and sugar-crashy. Chocolate and sugar seem to be things that I could have in small doses if I could just only have them in small doses.

CORN: perhaps the surprise problem food!
I wrote about how I wasn’t going to include corn in the elimination trial, because I just never thought I had a problem with it, but I was beginning to suspect I was wrong. Well, now it’s at the top of my list of suspects, after dairy. Last night we went to Greg’s parents’ house for dinner, and without even thinking about it, I devoured two cobs of fresh corn. I was distracted, I was so focused on not eating dairy that I completely forgot about my intention to continue avoiding corn.

I felt okay for awhile, and forgot about my mistake. Later that night, around bedtime, I noticed my joints were killing me again. I got out of bed to use the bathroom, and just walking from my bed to the bathroom door felt like torture. I was amazed, I hadn’t felt this sore in two weeks. It was awful. My first question was, could corn have cause this? I don’t know for sure, but it’s the only new thing I’d eaten.

So what now?

I’m still avoiding beans. I’ll put those back after I have some stability, and a better idea of whether corn is a problem.
I’m avoiding corn as much as possible for awhile, to clear that out again and reintroduce it later.
I’m comfortable with small amounts of soy.
Sometimes I eat a gluten-free sweet treat (without corn syrup), but I’m working on only eating one or two and then stopping for the rest of the day. Sometimes this treat contains chocolate, but again, only in very small amounts.
I’m trying to eat lots of: VEGGIES! FRUITS!
I’m eating small amounts of meat and fish.
I tossed out the scale, and am now working on getting 30 minutes of exercise every day, and am committed to the idea of using exercise to heal or at least mitigate my underlying anxiety disorder.

I do feel a lot better now than I did when I started. I’m becoming less sensitive to sensations now that I know their probable cause, which has helped me feel more in control of my body. I look at myself more from a data-collection perspective, rather than constantly throwing up my hands and feeling like my body is just melting down all the time.

I’ll continue with the updates, as more connections are made and more news comes in! Thanks to everyone for their support, both here and in email (and in person!), and all the encouragement I’ve gotten to keep going.

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Elimination Diet | Day #2

Written on June 23, 2009 by hollie in Deep and Meaningful Commentary, My experience with an elimination diet, Panic and Anxiety Issues

Okay, so for those of you counting at home, which I’m sure is everyone no one, it’s now been approximately 36 hours and 12 minutes since I had sugar.

As you can see from this incredibly flattering picture: NO BOILS. My skin is not burning off, nor do I seem to have any rashes or other unsightly blemishes.

Apparently people did exist before there was sugar! THE ARCHEOLOGISTS WERE RIGHT, YO! Man, science really is our friend.

I’m drinking a blueberry and banana smoothie, with rice milk and some vegetable protein powder (no soy).

Here’s what’s going on with me on Day 2:

Mental:

I haven’t had any anxiety medication since the night before Day 1. This is very unusual for me, especially lately. I’d been taking my “as needed” medication almost twice a day for nearly two weeks. The anxiety had been getting very bad, but now I’m wondering if many of the physical symptoms I had wasn’t anxiety at all, but just from something I was eating. Since I got up yesterday morning, I haven’t had those symptoms, and so haven’t taken the meds.

The thing about this though, is that I think my body is physically addicted to the medication, because I feel like I’m having some withdrawal symptoms. I might take some today just to help with that a little bit, but does this mean that if I figure out what foods to eat, I might not need to take it at all, or nearly as much? I sure hope so. Not so much because the meds are that bad, but the symptoms that make me take them are awful. I also have to keep in mind the “three day effect”, where any big change in my life/diet seems to have the effect of stalling anxiety for about three days. If I’m still not feeling like I need meds on Day 5 or Day 10, I’ll be more interested in this data point.

Physical:

I feel strange. I slept horribly last night, in part I think because I hadn’t taken any meds, which usually knock me out and let me sleep deeply. I kept waking up, and then I was really awake at 7:15am when the kids got up. I feel like I need to eat, like my body wants to be FULL of something, but the fruits aren’t helping, and the meat doesn’t help, and the rice doesn’t help. I just want WHEAT. I’m craving a big stack of toast, or muffins, or something like that. The only thing that seems to help a little bit are smoothies, because I can suck them down – everything else, that I have to chew, just doesn’t sound that appealing.

I also feel…..I’m not sure how to describe it….tight. Maybe that’s dehydration? I’ll try to remember to drink a lot of water today. I lost about a pound overnight, but that isn’t a lot of water weight. I feel tired and wired at the same time, which, going from past experience, will likely lead to anxiety later. I’ve felt this way before when I’m not getting enough food, but I don’t think I’m starving here.

Should I start posting what I eat?

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TPS Report #3

Written on June 16, 2009 by hollie in Numbers and Progress, Panic and Anxiety Issues

This report covers the last two weeks or so.

Weight:
I’ve only lost about a pound. I just didn’t feel too concerned about weight these last two weeks, there were other things going on that felt a lot more important (see “Exercise” down below). My cycle came, and arrived on time and ended on time, which was a great sign. While I doubt that losing a pound contributed greatly to the positive change, it was still a welcome sign of possibly bettering health that has kept my morale up.

I still feel strongly that Weight Watchers and other similar programs aren’t helpful for me. I listen to others talk about their WW experiences, and nothing resonates anymore. Instead, what feels good is just what I’m doing: loosely tracking food and weight, and just noticing trends. I feel that changes will come with time, and that it’s this watching that feels important. The TPS Reports are a good way to consolidate what I’m learning.

Food Lessons:
I’ve learned by direct experience what I already knew intellectually: that things made with white sugar (which I just appropriately began to mistype as “shit”), and white flour, cause me to feel bloated and miserable. I learned this during a few days when I was trying to go Paleo. I wasn’t eating any grains, and then when I did, the bloat was astounding. I’d eat two pieces of bread and gain four pounds in a single day. Note that I am NOT attempting to vilify grains, nor to say that people shouldn’t eat them.

Rather, my experiment was to eat no grains at all, and then when my system felt “clear”, to eat a few items made from refined white sugar and/or flour. What did I learn? That these refined flour products cause in me:

impressive water weight gain (if I ever have to gain ten pounds in a week, I’ll know how)
muscle soreness the next day (sometimes it’s hard to even get out of bed)
cranky mood (ironically craving the thing that got me into this mess; RAWWWR GET ME A TWIX BAR NOW, YOU MINIONS!)
can contribute greatly to anxiety and/or a panic attack by leaving me feeling sugar crashed and generally fragile (emotionally and physically)
general lethargy and lack of energy
confused, inability to focus, feel frustrated by otherwise simple tasks
constipation (is this why some guy named “Colon Health” just started following me on Twitter?)

If you’d asked me before whether white flour/sugar -based junk caused any of these problems, I of course would have said YA DUH. But there’s a difference between knowing something intellectually because I read it all the time in my perusal of nutrition articles, and really feeling the effect of going without them for awhile and then tossing them back in. The contrast was quite a learning experience.

What would be interesting would be to try the same experiment but instead of breaking the grain fast with JUNK, break it with some whole grains, maybe something delicious whipped up in my pressure cooker. I’ll try that next time.

Exercise:

Unfortunately between TPS #2 and #3 I had a bit of a health scare. My left calf muscle has been hurting for about three weeks now, and I’ve spent the last couple of weeks going to the doctor every few days, while they measure it, palpate it, and draw blood to see what’s going on. Finally he admitted he was flummoxed, and sent me in today for a vascular ultrasound. While I don’t have the results back, I suspect from today’s events that things are fine, and I’ll be able to get back to exercise this week. During this period, the doc didn’t want me working out, getting massaged, or doing anything else that could potentially dislodge a clot. Thankfully I think the scare will be over tomorrow, when I get the call from my doc’s office.

The whole vegan/paleo/raw debate:

I’m still interested in all of these lifestyles, and read about them frequently. I really enjoy the reading, it’s like nutritional sociology. I debate posting things here, because I’m afraid it will come across as endorsing rather than encouraging conversation, but heck, it’s my blog, I should just do what I want, right?

Going into this week:

I’ve realized that dairy is not my friend. I’m still trying to avoid it. I’m currently in discussion with some aliens regarding having all cows shipped off-world.
While my body does seem to do better on a little meat, I’m not sure I’d ever be able to eat paleo (hey! moderation….it’s calling my name…..).
Need to experiment a little more with beans – it feels like they give me heartburn every time, as well as brain-fog and anxiety problems. I’ll need to isolate them a bit more before I can be sure these problems are legume-related.
Hopefully some exercise!

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The joys of juice for breakfast

Written on May 25, 2009 by hollie in Deep and Meaningful Commentary, Raw Foods

This is what I juiced for breakfast this morning: an entire head of romaine, a lemon, two small apples, four stalks of celery, and a chunk of ginger.

I’ve been having this (or a slight variation) most mornings since I got my juicer, and I’ve noticed a few things changing. My taste for vegetables has increased dramatically. You know how in restaurants your meal often has a side of veggies, sauteed with some herbs? Well, I never used to that, and now I frequently do. I’m embarrassed to admit it, and it sounds so ridiculous, but I grew up eating so much sugar that the idea of a side of sauteed zucchini was like handing me a plate of dirt. Drinking fresh green vegetable juice almost every day has really changed that.

I’ve also noticed that if I drink juice first thing, I tend to crave less sugary foods later. An hour after my juice, I’ll be heading back into the kitchen with thoughts of fruit or some brown rice or a salad on my mind. If I eat some Apple Jacks and rice milk for breakfast, an hour later I’m back in the kitchen foraging for a cookie, or some more sugary cereal, or toast with honey.

They key here is not to label JUICE GOOD and SUGAR BAD. The key, at least for my body, is that one thing tends to lead to another. Some days, I just want the Apple Jacks, and that’s okay, and I eat them, and I know that I’ll crave sugar later because of that. But I like knowing that the juice, along with being incredibly good for my body, will give me a head start on making good choices that day. Instead of laying down strict rules for myself, I choose in the moment where I want to aim. This is why I reject diets and eating programs. I think knowing yourself is more important then following rules. As silly as it might sound, juicing fresh vegetables has taught me a lot about myself.

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Minor miracles

Written on April 6, 2009 by hollie in Deep and Meaningful Commentary

It’s been a few days now. I’ve been doing great. I want to write more, but we’ve been busy all weekend following my 4-year-old daughter having a Day of Hurling, and now my 6-year-old son is sick, and my husband will be in Seattle all day tomorrow. Hard to find the time to update!

Mostly I’ve been listening to myself. I watch what happens in my head whenever food comes up, which is frequently. Often it feels like some kind of hurricane, winds picking up, things flying around, and if you asked me right then the most basic questions, “Are you hungry? What would you like to eat?”, I’d give you this utterly blank look. I think Greg is starting to get used to it. It’s like I have to spend several minutes tuning in. I’m the stomach whisperer.

During these hurricanes, I cling to my stakes in the ground. I rope myself in. One of these is the idea that I absolutely will not put anything on the “can’t eat” list. This isn’t the same thing as telling myself, “You can eat all of that thing you want!” It isn’t an encouragement to start eating. Instead, it’s telling myself, everything is available. My choice isn’t to be made by looking at a mental list of Allowed Food, or Non-Triggering Food, or Low-Cal Food. It’s to be made by listening to myself and then honoring the answer.

Myself is confused a lot of the time, but it’s getting less so.

I had a real moment of clarity (“moment of clarity”? aiyeee, I’m going all bumper sticker on ya’ll) a few days ago when I realized that for this compulsive eating to be healed, I’d actually have to give up needing to be smaller. This has become another stake in the ground, yet I argue with it all the time. I’m pretty sure that if I don’t get small enough to wear this purple dress (purple!) I want from Patagonia, my life will be in ruins. <—- That particular area of my brain doesn’t even try to be rational anymore.

The thing is, you can’t simultaneously tell yourself that you love yourself and then tell yourself that you aren’t capable of being trusted around food and you need some diet book author or program to tell you what to eat your you’ll just EAT IT ALL. I want to have faith in myself, and I think I’m worth that.

SPEAKING OF WHICH: There is, at this very moment, a box of peanut butter bars in this house. Greg went out tonight for some other groceries, and asked if I wanted anything, and I knew I wanted something………yes, I wanted a peanut butter bar. And the look on his poor man’s face, it’s like I asked him to bring me back a baseball bat with which to beat myself. I reassured him that I was feeling very good and this HAD TO HAPPEN SOMETIME, that I couldn’t keep running from peanut butter bars my whole life.

He brought the box home. I had one. I thought I was eating it a little too fast, but then I was reading a book in my Kindle (I won’t tell you which book, you’ll laugh at me), and I frequently eat too fast when I’m reading. Especially about vampires! Woops. Did I say that out loud? An hour or so later I wanted another one. I had the following internal dialogue:

“But….but…..but……”

“Hey, YOU SAID. Everything is available, right?”

“But, this is IT, this is your kryptonite. What if you eat the entire box? What if you eat the entire box, make yourself sick, and then you’re even more anxious than usual all day tomorrow?”

“It’s a risk, isn’t it? Kind of scary, isn’t it? How do I do this experiment and not give in to all these fears? How do I trust myself? I just DO. I just trust. Let’s go.”

“But do you even really want WANT a peanut butter bar? I mean, really, one is enough, right?”

“Apparently NOT, if I want a second one. Just hold it in your hand if you want. Just don’t fear the damned food so much.”

“But what if you want three? And then four? And then seven? And then you go back to the store and buy more, and then your stomach explodes and you die of peanut butter-related injuries, and then your kids find you on the floor and they have to tell their friends what happened, and for the next twenty years they go into post-traumatic fits WHENEVER THEY SEE THE LITTLE DEBBIE LOGO? ”

And then one half of myself rolled its eyes at the other half. If that’s possible.

I got another one. I ate it more slowly. It was very, very good. And at the end I felt a twinge of heartburn. I noticed I felt comfortably full. I looked at the empty wrapper and imagined another one, and it just didn’t give me any thrill at all, or seem necessary or useful.

So, right now, there is a box of peanut butter bars sitting in my cupboard, being neither eaten nor craved. I’m pretty sure this is some kind of minor miracle. I definitely want to check in tomorrow and let you you guys know if I ate the whole box or not. Because if there are still peanut butter bars here on Tuesday, from the SAME BOX, well then I’m calling Oprah. She totally owes me one.

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