It’s not easy having an autoimmune disease. Come summer solstice it will be a year I have been on some form of the AIP diet. Currently, I have brought back hard alcohol in moderation (no sugar or juice mixers though) and raw cacao/chocolate (again, no sugar) but otherwise I am fully AIP compliant. This means, no diary, grains, beans, nuts, seeds, nightshades (eggplant, all peppers but black, potato, tomato), and soy. Basically, I cannot eat out unless I cheat with having sweet potato fries fried in canola oil and a grass fed burger no bun. I was cheating a lot once my mom passed away, like once a week, with bread and canola oil and eggs sometimes and also a latte with almond or hemp milk. This threw me off and I was getting used to it, slowly losing balance. I realized lectins were bad for me so I stopped eating chicken and apples which had been staples in the first 10 months. I went into remission when I did this but did not stay in it because when friends visited, I went way off balance, eating and drinking to excess off the AIP diet. So I reigned my diet back in. Full AIP compliant, no cheat days at all. I told myself that I cannot eat like regular people and that I must learn to live like this if I want to stay in remission and possibly heal, which is much more important to me than eating the foods I want. Then I reintroduced chicken and apples, thinking the lectins were not so bad in them and I had a huge flare. Almost as if my body became intolerant of these foods all together, when they once were AIP staples. This happened early in the beginning when I introduced cashews and began to eat them daily. After a few months, they gave me massive stomach aches and I needed to stop. It’s as if the body is always responding in new ways and I have to follow suit.
So basically, I cannot eat the variety of fruits and veges the AIP diet calls for, due to lectin sensitivity. I could cook more veges maybe but I am too lazy to explore this avenue and too traumatized from new flares. So I stick to the same three meals, every day. I am forced to transcend my compulsive eating/food addiction too. I must get used to not using food to eat my feelings, ever. I cannot treat myself with food. I cannot eat out with friends. I can still treat myself with a drink or two at the bar with a friend and at the same time, I am ready to quit drinking alcohol at any time. If I cannot get back and stay in full remission with alcohol involved, I will quit. I also drink coffee and add coconut milk and not sure if this is adding problems or ok. It’s a messy process for me because I am attached to my coffee and coconut milk was a reintroduction that showed up as low level allergy when I got tested but seems to be ok to have. But what if it’s the cause of the recent flares more than the chicken and apples? I cannot tell yet. The reason I cannot tell is because it may be building up like cashews did but I don’t think so because it is not a lectin heavy food. Onward, this is how my life goes now. I may have to give up the coffee and coconut milk. I may have to give up the bourbon on the rocks. I may not.
Basically, a huge part of my life that was once very special and torturous to me, is now coming to an end. For good. Special, because I loved eating out with friends or alone. I was a foodie (on a budget) for sure. I loved caprese salads, indian food, mexican food, thai food, sushi, pizza, and I lived off off hummus and tomatoes. Now, I cannot eat any of it. My fun times and pleasure is gone for good. Torturous, because I have always battled with an addiction to food, so having all that freedom to eat whatever (before I knew I had an autoimmune disease that was causing my skin problem) led to weight gain and suppressing my feelings with food. The high and the low are now gone. My relationship with food and socializing is forced to change. I no longer meet friends for meals. I cook every single meal. I eat the same foods over and over like a pet with her pet food: sweet potatoes, grass fed beef, tuna, salmon, arugula, cauliflower, avocado, brussel sprouts, and AIP oils only. This is my life now. I have lost a ton of weight. I keep losing weight when I don’t cheat. I was starting to over eat my compliant foods but I got that under control now. My body is changing. I am changing.
When my mom got sick with cancer everything changed. I remember automatic writing three years before her diagnosis. The words told me in three years, if I did not do something drastic, I would get a tumor in my colon. But what happened was that my mom had the tumor. I was writing about the wrong person. But I have always felt this spot in my colon that aches. I don’t get it checked out and it is very mild. Been there a long time. My mom slowly stopped liking all food, due to the chemo. Her relationship with food was exactly the same as mine. Food addict and loving food, always over eating and using food to stuff feelings down. I started my AIP diet about nine months before she died. It haunts me how we both stopped relating to food as we were, both forced by illness and my mom’s illness that led to her death and how I predicted the tumor but thought it was about me. This is my life. I have a psychism that is not always totally accurate and I empath so hard core. I don’t always know who the psychic message is referring to, be it through automatic writing, feeling something in my body, channeling something in some fashion, however….
I sit here writing this morning with fresh flares that I think happened from chicken and apples but could be from a build up of coconut milk and booze. Not sure. I will first see if they vanish from removing the chicken and apples and if not, I will have to say goodbye to the liquid pleasures. I will do whatever it takes and somehow learn to find joy in new ways. I am not addicted to booze or coffee with coconut milk but they are pleasurable habits that I indulge in consciously to balance out that fact that I cannot eat hardly anything fun. I am such an imbiber. I am a hedonist. I love the earth pleasures. Life challenges. What my mom went through, that year and a half on chemo….I just cannot imagine. Her strength, her will power, her surrender, her love….
Winter Soil 