Personal Challenge: The Hypoallergenic Diet

This morning's "approved" breakfast.  Maybe I can do this?

I'm doing it.  I'm doing one of those stupid, pointless diets where you cut everything happy out of your meals and are left only with regret and vitamins.

No gluten, no dairy, no soy, no peanuts or cashews, no corn, no eggs, no sugar (including syrups and honey), no artificial sugar, no refined oils or margarine, no table salt, no caffeine, no alcohol.

The diet is, I believe, intended for people who are having gastro-intestinal issues and don't know why, so they eliminate everything that causes any kind of inflammation in the body and then slowly add things in and see where it hurts.

I have no tummy issues and am not worried about inventing some so that I can make ordering harder in restaurants than it already is (nobody ever puts enough cheese on things, amiright?)  So then why on EARTH am I doing this?

Short answer: thanks, mom.

Last year, my mom went on this diet to try to deal with a persistent skin irritation, and while it did nothing to help with that, it did completely eliminate her seasonal allergies for that summer.

I have pretty bad seasonal allergies (bad enough that for years I got those immunotherapy shots), and anecdotal evidence is super compelling, regardless of its scientific merit.  So I convinced myself to give it a try.

Two weeks of sadness is probably worth three to four months of freedom from itching, right?  Right?  Oh, I hope this works.

Okay, all melodrama aside, this won't be too bad.  This morning for breakfast I made oatmeal with some fruit and cinnamon.  I even ate it out of my prettiest bowl so that I could trick myself into thinking it was a special meal and not a major breakfast demotion from my usual masterful veggie-egg scramble on toast.

Other than the oatmeal, I assume I will consume a lot of smoothies, fruit, veg (roasted as much as possible - raw veggies make me want to give up), beans and rice, and nuts.  My boyfriend did just point out that I can eat some sushi (without soy sauce, of course), so plain sushi will be my special treat!

The plan is to stick with this for two and a half weeks, until Easter.  It's supposed to be a three week cleanse, but I am Mennonite, and we eat paska at Easter and I need my paska or something terrible is going to happen to everyone, so deal with it.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Observe the beauty of Paska
(through the beauty of a vintage-y Instagram filter, of course.)