Day 18 - ALCAT test results

To catch up those of you who maybe didn't read my first blog entry, I'm undertaking a restorative cleansing diet the goal of which is to rid my body of yeast, heavy metals, and toxins as well as to become as healthy as possible.  The food is very restrictive as far as not being able to eat what I normally do and I've introduced a lot of foods that I don't normally eat as a result.  I can no longer eat bread, wheat, gluten, sugar of any kind, oils besides coconut and flax seed oil, or fruit except for green apples.  There are other restrictions as well but those are the big ones.

I believe I mentioned in a previous blog that when I went to see my naturopath before starting this diet, I also had her draw blood for the purpose of taking the ALCAT test.  They take many types of food and test them with your white blood cells to see if there is a reaction.  They then place all the reactive foods into three categories: red, orange and yellow.  Red are foods I'm extremely reactive to, orange are foods I have a moderate intolerance to and yellow is indicative of a mild intolerance.

On my new diet I have been eating some foods very often as they are tasty, easy enough to prepare, and encouraged by Donna Gates and Almine, the two authors I am using as guides.  These are:

Avocado
Coconut
Spinach
Carrots
Flax seed oil
Quinoa
Salmon
Black currant concentrate
Broccoli
Scallions & other onions
Tomatoes
Eggs
Green Apples
Raw almond butter
Sweet Potatoes
Curry
Feta
...and some others that aren't coming readily to mind

In the Severe Intolerance column is:
Avocado
Basil
Beet
Cashew
Coconut
Date
Ginger
Hops
Lentil Bean
Nutmeg
Peanut
Pineapple
Rosemary
Sesame
Spinach
Swiss Chard
Tarragon

So, as you can see, this throws a major curve ball at my diet.  I can't have spinach, coconut or avocado which are the three most prevalent foods thus far in my diet.  I also am moderately intolerant to carrots, chocolate, flaxseed, quinoa and salmon among many other items.  I'm just listing these because they were also major staples of my diet.  And in the mild intolerance category I am restricted from using Black Currant, Broccoli, Curry Powder, Halibut, and limes among many other items I won't list here.  Also all things I was relying heavily upon to supplement my meals.

VERY frustrating to say the least.  So I had a long discussion with my doctor about bringing back in some foods that are not strictly allowed on the diet so that I won't starve to death.  We discussed bringing in brown rice, using ghee and olive oil to cook with, and using millet as my main grain choice instead of quinoa.  I had a big spinach salad the next day because I'd bought so much of it and didn't want it to go to waste, and was mildly surprised to note that I had major stomach bloating and painful cramps afterwards.  This shows me that the test isn't wrong and I really shouldn't be eating spinach.  So I've gone out and bought romaine lettuce instead and had a big salad with that today.  No bloating or cramping.

I'm hoping that now I have the test results to guide my food choices I can get rid of the persistent painful stomach bloating and cramps that I've been dealing with since starting the diet.  I thought they were due to the big changes in my food and possibly the naturopathic medicines I'm taking.

I made a huge pot of Millet & Sweet Veggies 2 nights ago, which is from the Body Ecology book.  I've been using the millet in my egg scrambles in the morning and mixing it with other meals to give me some carbohydrates (much needed, especially on my heavy workout days).  It's very bland in taste but I might not even need to use brown rice because it's almost exactly the same in texture and flavor, and it's also very filling.  I'm also sold on it because for the first time since I started this diet I got through Mike's entire circuit workout yesterday, and I'm attributing that to eating a good source of carbs my body can actually use.  Not only did I get through it, but I felt great afterwards and stayed to do some MMA sparring with them.  Got some bloody knuckles and bruised feet to prove it, too!  Ok, I didn't actually break the skin on my hands but there's streaks of broken blood vessels.  Looks pretty mean though.  :)  And I'm hella sore today, which always makes me happy (in that sick, masochistic way we trainers have).

So my new goal is to slowly incorporate the results of the ALCAT test into my diet.  It's so frustrating that I can't have curry or avocado, two of my absolute favorite foods that I was thrilled were included in the candida diet.  Oh, well it's just another 4.5 months.