Thread: day 14 of our grain free/dairy free/gluten free diet - we're surviving

hard to imagine that we've gone this far with so few hiccups! The biggest challenge was getting my act together as shopper/prepper/menu presenter. The reality is that if food smells good - looks good - and tastes good then you can get my family to eat just about anything, kids included.

Mitchell, age 8, complains the most. He misses his comfort foods and very much resents having to drink 6-8 oz of bone broth with every dinner. I'm trying to dress the broth up as soup, to sell it in another format, and having mixed success. Let's just say at this time if he can see kale in the soup he's going to complain no matter what it tastes like.

Matthew, age almost 10, is the person for whom this diet change is happening - and he's doing fine. He really likes having hamburgers or sausage or bacon for breakfast and is glad to have the cold cereals off the menu. He badly misses ketchup (we're trying to avoid all the nightshade group of vegies as well) but is pretty flexible about eating.

Me? I really struggle to find anything to feed the kids for breakfast since they won't eat eggs, I can't make pancakes or waffles or muffins (supposed to limit almonds and walnuts to 2-3x a week), and the boys plain out refused soup for breakfast the one day I tried. I'm so sick of coconut milk smoothies at the moment I could be sick.... they'd drink them but I'm out of the milk. So tomorrow's breakfast will be a cake like concoction of almond butter - grated apples - some butter - eggs. It's amazingly good! I've made a similar 'bar' using pumpkin instead of the apples, equally good.

Me? My gut is so bloated I've had to wear a whole larger size in pants and want to wear my jammies all day long. I'm trying to up my probiotics to ease the transition. Other than bloating and a TON of work, I'm doing much better than I expected.

Fun to notice how forcing ourselves to not eat grains means we are eating so so many more vegetables!

anyway, that's the day 14 update just in case you were wondering.
Cathy

Well, I do not envy you lady. Not at all.

Keep us informed though on the transition of foods!

No grains and no night shades limits starches to a bare minimum (potatoes are night shades) - hold on there mama!

In case you did not know (but most likely you did with the amount of research you had to do!) - sweet potatoes are NOT night shades, even though they are being called "potatoes". Maybe sweet potatoes pancakes for breakfast?

Also, some time ago somebody posted cauliflower pancake recipe - I think it did not have grains either, just steamed cauliflower, eggs and I think some kind of milk substitute.

Here is to your creativity!

That does sound really hard. I'm sure it will become "normal" eventually. Too bad, though, that you're not feeling healthier because of the diet. That would make it much easier to stick to. Have you noticed Matthew feeling better?

Specific carbohydrate diet is another name for it - it was the gold standard for celiac disease before the current gluten-free diet came into vogue. Supposedly some celiacs cannot tolerate any starches, not just those with gluten in them. Supposed to help all those bowel/gut issues as well like ibd and crohns. Guy Psychiatry (missing a word in that title) and/ or GAPS is another approach to health that uses this diet - they are the ones who insist on the healing qualities of drinking bone broth every day to nourish and heal the gut.

And we're not only supposed to avoid sweet potatoes but ALL legumes as well - allowed only to eat lentils and white beans. So mung bean noodles and all those bean flours go out the window with everything else.

The one thing that I am noticing - wonderful change! is that the arthritis in my dominant hand is just about gone as long as I have the broth every day. Skip a day (like yesterday) and I cannot fully move some finger joints. Drink the broth for a couple of days - full range of motion with only the weakest of weak sore feelings. Supposedly bone broth is high in glucosamine (sp) which makes sense as to why my hand might respond so well.

Matthew is a total wreck right now - scary out of whack. We started him on l-tryptophan as a supplement at the same time as starting this diet to see if we could help regulate mood. He had an extreme reaction, developed serotonin syndrome and ended up in ER and then intensive care for 2 days with irregular heart rhythyms. That passed quickly - but coming off of the overload of amino acid has just wrecked havoc on him, poor baby. Walking text book case of ocd/anxiety/add at the moment.

So with the supplement issue it's been impossible to judge how the diet is working. We were going to try and see if we could go without micro doses of the l-tryptophan for a couple of weeks to judge but he's so off the wall unhappy right now that we just reintroduced the L-tryp. last night.

thanks for your support!

Cathleen, how scary for your son!!!

When you first posted this diet, and all the amazing things you were doing - like making sausage- I couldn't imagine missing anything. I wish this was easier, and I guess after a few days the novelty would wear off.

(((((hugs)))))

Wow, Cathleen, I did not realize exactly HOW restrictive this diet is! Hats off to you for sticking to it!

Supplements uncertainty added to that... you could write a book about all that! Do you have a blog? Do you have TIME to blog, lol?

Another question for you - which bones do you use to make broth? Bovine? Poultry? Does it matter?

Wow, how scary. Hope things settle down quickly for your boy. I give you lots of credit for pulling this all off, it sounds like a lot of learning and hard work. Along with trying to keep everyone as happy as you can with the new eating style. Neat to hear how your arthritis is so improved.

It is fun to watch how everyone is adapting - last night's dinner was broiled pork chops, kale w/bacon & onion (southern style pot greens but not boiled for an eternity, just 5 minutes), steamed broccoli, and zucchini sauteed with tons of onions, beef broth. Everyone ate without complaining and yes, we were all happily content and full by the end. Dinner is easy compared to a grainless breakfast with anti-egg eaters. If they'd eat eggs I think this would remain relatively doable.

Broth: I'm using the weston price/nourishing traditions style of making nourishing bone broths. I use any kind of organic animal bones, but only one animal-type at a time. Because we raise our own meat (for the most part) and buy beef in 1/2 - 1/4 sides I have access to maybe 100+ lbs of bones a year - our freezer is full of them. Perfect for this! I will also save the carcass/bones from any roast chicken we make and do a batch using those. I'll add any chicken pan juices from the bottom of the roasting pan as well - fabulously delicious! For red meat broths (pork, lamb, beef) I brown the bones in a 425 degree oven till dark brown in 1/2 the places then start at the beginning of the stock recipe.

I fill my crockpot 1/4- 1/3rd full of bones, top off with filtered water, add 2-3 tb cider vinegar (draws/dissolves the minerals out of the bones), a bay leaf, a handful of dried maitake mushrooms and a chunk of astragalus root (both help boost the immune system, optional but nice). Cover and let crockpot along at low temps for 3-12 hours. Then add celery, carrots, onion, fresh herbs and crockpot along for another 3-12 hours. Strain through a metal strainer, then I restrain the broth through cheesecloth to remove the 'floaters' then chill and use. The fat on top, if there is any, is good for you if you've used good organic meat/bones. I have a huge crockpot so I end up with 1/2 gallon of broth per batch.

Irina, one of the doctors helping us with this is a former faculty member from Bastyr, your sister college. She was the head of the herbal study department.

And yes, my bedside is crammed with a zillion diet and cooking books at all times lately! Always desperately trying to figure out what the next day's breakfast could possibly be!

Originally Posted by cathleenc

Irina, one of the doctors helping us with this is a former faculty member from Bastyr, your sister college. She was the head of the herbal study department.

How cool is that!

Thank you for such thorough info on broth making! The only way I new was - "wash the bones - boil. Add some lemon for Calcium leaching and some salt to taste"

That bone broth sounds delicious!

Good luck! SCD was the diet I did when J was first dx'ed with CF way back when in 2001...when all I had was the book. It was a tough diet! I remember losing quite a bit of weight. We did the long-fermented yogurt which was a wonderful thing to be able to add to the diet. Are you doing that? It's delicious for breakfast.

We're lucky in where we live you can get a zillion types of "flour", some of it can get expensive, but there is an amazing variety. Dh's aunt has celiac too, it was extremely bad in her case but no-one was able to put it together and dx her until she was over 50. A common co-complaint with celiac is a genetic b-vitamin something, that makes it so you need a LOT of b vitamin for some reason. I can't remember what it's called or anything, but if you're researching all those minerals etc you've surely come across it.

That is an extremely restrictive diet. ((Hugs)) I would have cried, seriously. I love to cook. Do you have to make sure your bone animals are NOT grain-fed? I think you could do that here, but the butcher would be all like "are you sure you don't mean only grain feed pig?" or whatever.

Can you have corn? The biology/science/etc people I've read don't agree on corn [is it a seed or nut or grain or veggie . . . ]

Originally Posted by ElDucko

Can you have corn? The biology/science/etc people I've read don't agree on corn [is it a seed or nut or grain or veggie . . . ]

I think she is doing "no starch" as well, and corn has plenty of it...

Yikes. That is soooooo hard. I feel your pain. I only did it for myself so I didn't have the added stress of keeping the entire family healthy. It is a full time job! I do know that it takes time. I know that you know that but hang in there. I also agree that if the results would happen sooner it would be much more helpful. When I was doing a similar diet I didn't realize how much it was helping me until I went off it. I did it twice but didn't stick to it long enough for long term healing. Now that I am in a really bad place health wise I am getting ready to do it again. After the results of a few tests I am waiting on I will be on a crazy diet too.

Hang in there. It is the right path. You are amazing!!!