Five Weeks In - DHwRF

I'm five weeks in, as of this past Saturday. So far in that this diet is starting to feel like my normal life now, which is rather crazy.

The awesome news is that I'm definitely feeling some healing. Hurrrrrrray!!

My cold continued into this week, which left me feeling gunky and with a stomach ache in the mornings, I assume from all the drainage. I also had issues with foods causing immediate sharp gas-type pains when I ate them in the evening but not when I ate them earlier in the day. It was rather bizarre.  Overall I've been feeling better and wanted to reintroduce something, but given these evening GI issues, I decided to be careful with what I selected.   So I reintroduced decaf coffee (yaaaaaaayyyy COFFEE!!) and strawberries.  The reasons for my choices were this:  1) I knew from last time I did the diet that coffee wouldn't give me digestive symptoms.  I am only concerned about whether it gives me autoimmune symptoms, mainly brain fog, and my brain fog has been good for many days now.  So I knew I had a good baseline to start from.  2) Our local strawberry patch just opened up and my sons and I bought some strawberries this week.  They looked SO DELICIOUS.  I looked it up, and strawberries are very unlikely to cause any issues (they are allowed on both a SIBO diet and AIP).  So I decided to go ahead and reintroduce them too so I could enjoy the berries with my sons.  Totally worth it.  They were delicious. :)  Neither the coffee nor the strawberries have given me any noticeable symptoms so far.  I'm going to watch the coffee carefully for at least five days, up to a week, to make sure my brain fog doesn't return, but so far so good.

Below is the roundup of my symptoms this week. (If you're just now jumping in and would like to know what in the world I'm talking about, you can check it out here: Digestive Health with REAL Food - Take 2.)

Digestive symptoms:  My only symptoms have been occasional bloating and the sharp gas-like pains I experienced a couple evenings, mentioned above.  Otherwise I've been good.  It's been wonderful.

Reflux symptoms: Reflux hasn't been noticeable.  I've had a couple meals where I felt like my food was staying in my stomach too long, as if it weren't digesting.  I felt bloated and overly full even though I hadn't eaten in quite some time.  In those cases, I took either a betaine HCl pill or an enzyme pill, depending on what I'd most recently eaten, because I assumed that my stomach was having a hard time breaking down the food.  Both times the pills helped.

Autoimmune symptoms: Autoimmune symptoms have been pretty good.  If I let myself wake on my own in the morning, I sleep about 9 hours, which isn't bad.  Brain fog hasn't been bad and word recall is pretty good.  I struggle occasionally but not often.  This aspect of my health is definitely affected by whether I have a cold or some other bug affecting me.

Cravings:  I am really, really craving Mexican food.  Probably because my husband and sons have been eating Mexican a few times lately, and I have to sit around and smell it without getting a taste. Other cravings are about the same as they have been.  I would love some chocolate or a granola bar. Or something crunchy other than banana chips and spinach chips.

Overall, my health continues to improve but seems to be plateauing a bit.  I'm starting to reintroduce some foods, which makes me super excited.  Variety sure tastes great when you get used to eating the same 8 foods over and over and over.

If you'd like to catch up on my past weeks, you can find them all below.

Digestive Health with REAL Food - Take 2
One Week In - DHwRF Update
Two Weeks In - DHwRF
Three Weeks In - DHwRF
Four Weeks In - DHwRF

That's all for now!