Could Any of These Foods Be Making You Sick?

This past weekend I attended a dear old friend’s birthday party. I love that she still has afternoon bday parties complete with fun themes. This year’s was “picnic” and everyone brought their fave picnic foods.

And of course cake.

I’ve been rocking out a hard core elimination diet the past few weeks and not consuming any gluten or dairy. I don’t typically eat those foods on the regular but I’ve never 100% eliminated them to see how I really feel and if there is any sort of sensitivity or allergy there (although truth be told all my research says that no one can really digest gluten). I’m verrrry interested to see what happens when I introduce the foods again in another couple of weeks but back to the party…

Abstaining from gluten and dairy wasn’t too hard, I brought my own “Cauliflower Rice Provencal” dish that I made up on the fly (want the recipe? It was gobbled up in 5 minutes flat!) and there were other fun foods I could eat (like ants on a log, genius!), but of course I wanted cake. I always want cake lol.

So I decided I would just eat the frosting. Totally logical right?

So I ate it. And threw away the rest. NBD (no big deal).

About 5-10 minutes later… full blown heart palpitations. I hadn’t had anything weird to eat outside of what I usually have and no caffeine that day. Additionally, I started to feel slightly anxious, jittery and a bit “hopped up”. And it wasn’t comfortable. Or fun.

So what happened? Why couldn’t I just eat a small helping of straight up sugar?

Because I’ve cleaned up my diet (and my body) a whole other notch on the health scale. And when your sh*t is really clean you become even more sensitive. “Awesome!” you’re probably thinking. “That sounds like it sucks”. But actually, it has been kind of awesome. I’ve been feeling much better in general, my head feels clearer, I feel more grounded and calm, and from a pure place of vanity, I think my face is looking better too.

I’ll report more later on how the elimination diet finale {totally JUST like The Bachelor Finale, maybe I’ll even live tweet? 😉 } but you guys, in case the point hasn’t been made totally clear yet by me and the media, what we put in our bodies IS SO UNBELIEVABLY POWERFUL. Those sugary or artificial or packaged foods (even in places you think are “safe”), even consumed just once in a rare while, are really making us feel out of whack, and you may not even realize it.

Want to try an elimination diet yourself? My personal integrative doc, Robin Berzin at Parsley Health did a great simple how-to that on Mind Body Green that you can check out here.

But first I want to hear from you, have you ever had a reaction like the one I’ve described above to a certain food or foods? Have you been successful in eliminating that food? Share your comments and stories below!

And next time, I’ll pass on the frosting. 🙂