I have been doing a few different self-tests recently. First I did one to see what sort of effect consumption of a significant amount of sugar at a single sitting had upon me (particularly upon mood and energy). Then I did a water-only fast to again see effects – and they seemed to be minimal.
On Wednesday (4/16) I broke my water-only fast, this included a decent amount of grain based products. The next day I felt pretty miserable (mood). I decided to try a no-wheat diet and see what happened…and I intended to add no-dairy to the list as well – but I had a couple Greek yogurts that would expire in the near future, so I decided to start with only wheat until I could finish the yogurts.
Before letting go of wheat I consumed four slices of whole wheat bread (as sandwiches) Thursday evening (4/17), hypothesizing that if my mood had been affected negatively by grain based products I had eaten Wednesday (4/16) night, that if I ate grain based products Thursday (4/17) night I’d awake fairly miserable Friday morning (4/18).
I awoke on Friday (4/18) feeling mood and energy normative for me. That didn’t bode well for wheat being the issue – but I decided I’d keep going. I realized that it wouldn’t be that hard for me to cut wheat from my diet at this point.
I remained successfully wheat free through Sunday (4/20). On Sunday morning I had some gluten-free brownies – figuring they would probably be safe and in the evening I had a piece of apple pie and succumbed to eating the crust as well. But apart from these two fairly minor breaks I’ve held true and am figuring I will hold true to it for a while longer…maybe until the 11th of April or so – and then begin slowly reintroducing wheat to my diet.
I’m also now working on adding dairy to this list of exclusions. In both cases I am not going to be entirely strict w/myself, but I figure if I can eliminate 95%+ of these components from my diet, that will probably be enough to give my system a rest (if either of these are problems for me) and at the same time increase the intensity of my reaction when I consume them again (which I will probably try to intensify by consuming a decent amount of one of them each at one sitting each spaced out over a few days…similar to the sugar experiment).
As one might guess, this means I am not particularly concerned about cross-contamination. For example, this morning I had oatmeal with flaxseed for breakfast. This likely contains a small amount of cross-contamination.
I’ll try and stick to healthier foods – vegetables, fruits, nuts – in general…and we shall see what happens.
Thus far I have not noticed any significant changes in mood or energy levels. I’ve also been monitoring my Lumosity scores to see if I notice patterns of improvement or deterioration based on these different tests – thus far I have not seen any significant changes either way.