I’ve officially started the elimination diet to try to cure my acid reflux with clean eating! I’m giving up dairy, gluten, eggs, citrus fruits, nightshade vegetables (like tomato and eggplant), and chocolate. It’s going to be a challenge, but I hope it will reduce my symptoms.
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I won’t be blogging this daily. Let’s be real. But I will update you from time to time with my progress and a few recipes.
The diet kicked off yesterday with an arduous meal plan, a trip to the grocery store, and finding a food journal to record my daily ups and downs. I am using this food journal to track everything. I say the meal plan was arduous because I kept wanting to make my normal routine work with this new routine, or at least make a seamless transition. Trust me, there is no seamless way to go from eating Dominos to eating only vegetables and brown rice…eventually you just have to eat the damn vegetables. That was a giant mental hurdle.
After several hours of whining, I finally came up with 6 days of meals to get me started on the right track.
Day 1:
- Breakfast–Fruit and veggie smoothie
- Lunch–Potato soup
- Dinner–Chicken and veggie stir fry (substitute soy sauce for things like chili paste and rice wine vinegar)
Day 2:
- Breakfast–Hot rice cereal with apple, coconut, and peanut butter
- Lunch–Leftover stir fry
- Dinner–Quinoa with potato, onion, toasted walnuts, and asparagus (recipe here)
Day 3:
- Breakfast–Fruit and veggie smoothie
- Lunch–Leftover quinoa
- Dinner–Pesto (without the parmesan) spaghetti squash with sautéed shrimp
Day 4:
- Breakfast–Fruit and veggie smoothie
- Lunch–Spinach salad with berries, walnuts, red onion, and balsamic glaze
- Dinner–Braised pork, sweet potato fries, and steamed veggies
Day 5:
- Breakfast–Hot rice cereal with pear, maple syrup, and cinnamon
- Lunch–Corn taco with black beans, sweet potato, onion, and cilantro (modified recipe here)
- Dinner–Thai lettuce wrap with chicken, carrot, red onion, peanut, and cilantro
Day 6:
- Breakfast–Potato hash with bacon and veggies
- Lunch–Leftover Thai lettuce wrap
- Dinner–Roasted chicken, sautéed green beans, and acorn squash
Dessert/Snack options:
- Banana/Apple with peanut butter and coconut flakes
- Kalamata olive hummus and veggies
- Popcorn
- Nuts
- Corn chex
- Applesauce
Can you tell I really struggled with the snack and dessert options? Anybody have ideas?
I will try to stick to this as strictly as possible, but I have a feeling I will resort to easy stir fry on long workdays. I’m not a cyborg, after all.
So there it is! It’s not perfect, but it’s a start. I’m not a nutrition expert, so if you see anything glaringly obvious that will be detrimental to my success, please let me know in the comments section. Again, I’m doing this for the first time, so there is a large learning curve.
I can’t wait to hear from anyone else who has tried this or who wants to try it!
-Mads
La Petite Pancake 