Another test week down, another example of how things that I thought may be bothering me really aren’t. Granted I didn’t think I was having any major adverse reactions to any of these seven foods, but I did keep an open mind to the possibility. In the end though, I think eggs passed without a doubt but I also think it is proving that the minor gluten issues were just that, issues and not being caused by something else.
The transition date was supposed to be Sunday, 2/16, unfortunately I was feeling a bit under the weather and I had forgotten to buy eggs on Saturday, so Sunday was just a pure detox day. The Virgin Diet Book actually wants there to be a two day gap between each of the testing elements, so I actually haven’t been doing these transitions correctly. Since I haven’t been seeing anything truly adverse, gluten being the one potential exception, I don’t think it’s that much of a problem though. Either way I felt the need to do somewhat of a more pure detox, so I ate the standard fully cleaned up Virgin Diet. I was still completely drained of energy, but that turned out to be something totally unrelated to diet, as it turns out I had a pretty decent infection going on as a result of my surgery.
Monday morning started up with my jaw pretty swollen, which had me calling my doctor to get more antibiotics (which I’m still on). The bad news is that can mess with your system. The good news is I could now test if some of my gut irritation from gluten was in fact carry over from antibiotics or something to do with the gluten.
I wish I could say I came up with some neat dishes to try to incorporate eggs gradually into my diet. That’s not what happened at all though. Instead I made eggs the two ways that are most convenient: fried and hard boiled. On mornings that I had the time I made a nice kale and egg scramble. That’s really nothing more than taking some fresh kale, sauteing it in a pan and then pouring a scrambled egg on top. If you do that on a relatively low heat (like 3-4 on your burner) and a cover on, then the kale steams itself and it’s just a one pan job. For days I didn’t have time for that I just boiled two eggs and brought that along as my afternoon snack along with a heaping pile of raw carrots and tomatoes.
Although my jaw was pretty swollen and I couldn’t really open my mouth that well, I still decided to move forward with trying the fried egg on Monday morning. As I ate it I felt no ill effects, but I thought I could detect a little bit extra saliva as I was eating it. Maybe my body was just missing the eggs, maybe I was just hungry and hadn’t eaten anything besides shakes for breakfast in over a month and a half and forget what that feels like, or maybe it was my body “protecting me.” As the day wore on I felt no ill effects from the eggs at all, that was even after I had a hard boiled egg in my salad for lunch too. I was a bit fatigued from the infection so I can’t say for sure whether that was the eggs or the infection. However since I was no longer fatigued as the week wore on and the infection subsided, I’m chalking that up to the infection, not the eggs.
Each day I ate two eggs, usually hard boiled. I didn’t feel any problems from them at all. Likewise while I am on even stronger antibiotics than before, I didn’t have any of the intestinal problems, minor as they were, that I had during the gluten week. Again, this makes me lead more towards the idea that I actually have somewhat of an adverse reaction to gluten. Another interesting trend I’ve found is the whole weight fluctuation matter.
Back when I did the Paleo week experiment I had a sudden collapse of my weight in one day, like three pounds. I had the same thing happen on the Virgin Diet, which led to the question of which food element that I eliminated had caused the change. Besides inflammation during the week of surgery and excessive water weight that would creep up for a day or so at a time, I haven’t had a similar weight fluctuation until the gluten week started again. That week was dairy week, but by the end of it my weight had settled back down. It wasn’t until gluten week that my weight skyrocketed again, almost by three pounds, and held it there for the duration. As soon as I switched to egg testing the weight started coming off. I was once again in an inflamed state, due to the infection, but even with all that going on things leveled off at the lower level again. I may see a similar effect with some of the other foods, but it is clear that gluten is either causing me to retain excess water or causing inflammation. I believe it is likely the latter, or a combination of the two, because that knee sensation I discussed having during gluten week went away as well during the egg test week.
Next week is on to soy. I am similarly uninteresting in how I intend to pursue it. Soy sauce is probably the biggest source of my soy exposure, since I don’t eat tofu regularly. So I’m going to be reincorporating that into my diet, especially on sushi meals. I’m also going to try to eat some tofu meals to see if I have any negative reactions to that as well.