Rather than tracking my calories or my weight throughout this diet I have been using a food and symptom journal to keep track of the effect this food elimination has on my symptoms. The journal doesn’t have to be anything fancy. I have a simple form that I use, but a notebook and paper work fine.
It helps to keep track of food eaten, symptoms (including severity), and times of each to recognize trends and differences.
A common frustration people experience with food and symptom journals is that sometimes symptoms will occur right after eating a food, sometimes 4 hours later or 10 hours later or even longer depending on the type of symptom and the part of the body that is affected. This makes identifying trends a real challenge. For example, it may seem that the symptom occurs every morning after having cereal for breakfast when it is really the night time peanut butter cookie you’re reacting to.
Identifying these trends is just as much of an art as it is a science. If you’re having trouble identifying the food-related cause of your symptoms, meet with a Registered Dietitian and bring in as many days worth of food and symptom journals as you can. RDs are trained to weed through the confusion and find trends that may be difficult to identify.
This morning I made a lovely veggie scramble with some whole wheat toast for breakfast. Now generally I would toss some feta cheese in with the spinach, tomatoes, and eggs, but alas, I have said my temporary farewell to dairy. So I decided to try the dairy-free daiya “cheddar-style slices” I purchased.
The front of the package boasts that this product “Melts and Stretches!” so I thought I would give it a chance to go ahead and melt into my scramble.
Once I opened it up, I was definitely skeptical – this was an extremely “fake looking” item somewhere in the texture range of plastic to rubber with an orange color similar to that of boxed macaroni and cheese. It had a smell similar to the “cheese product” that comes with breadsticks or crackers in Kraft Handi Snack packs.
I tossed it onto my eggs still hot from the pan and waited. After about a minute it refused
to melt, so I put it in the microwave for about 45 seconds to give it a boost, after which time it did melt onto the scramble.
The melted texture somewhat resembled a thick Velveeta.
The flavor…was…awful.
I am somewhat baffled that anyone in product development at daiya would have approved this as “close enough to regular cheese” to be passable. This product, for me, was a major disappointment. I ended up scraping off all that I could (I gave my dairy-loving husband a tiny taste just for giggles) and topping the whole thing with some Cajun seasoning to cut the taste. Most of the scramble went down the hatch, but I left behind a pile of melted cheese replica that even my cat rejected.
My search for a palatable dairy-free cheese alternative continues…
I shopped for my first round of dairy-free products today!
Total cost left? $9.20 Total cost right? $12.33
My featured players?
Silk Unsweetened Soy Milk
daiya dairy-free “cheese style slices” *snicker*
Silk dairy-free yogurt alternative
SO Delicious dairy-free coconut milk yogurt alternative
The dairy-free options were definitely more expensive, as you can see by the price breakdown. Next week I plan to go to a different store with a wider variety of options and hopefully better prices. Anybody have any good recommendations for dairy alternatives you like?
For my next experiment I’m going to do something a little different. Rather than having you vote from a selection of diets, I’m opting to trial an elimination of dairy because I’m concerned that my body may actually be telling me to do so.
Here’s why I think thatmay be a possibility:
For the last couple of years I have had an obnoxious frog in my throat in the mornings. Most days, *ahem* I end up *ahem* clearing my throat *cough, ahem* frequently. It’s annoying (I’m assuming you picked up on how annoying just by reading that sentence). In the past, I haven’t made a particular effort to determine what has been inviting my unwelcome amphibian.
The other thing that I’ve got going on is from time to time I get itchy and bumpy along my belt line. For the longest time, I thought I was reacting to the metal on my jeans buttons, but since I started working I wear jeans much less often and I still get this issue on occasion. I have no explanation for this either.
The final piece of evidence that really put the nail in my “you should try eliminating dairy” coffin? I have two close family members who have had similar issues. One has been officially diagnosed with a *ahem* post-nasal drip and *ahem* coughs and throat-clears *ahem* frequently in the mornings. After cutting out dairy, it got better. The second family member dealt with snoring, coughing, and a super-itchy shin rash, all of which improved with a dairy elimination. Darn you, genetics.
So here I am. This will still be helpful to my practice as a dietitian because I take patients through dairy eliminations if their bodies are having symptoms that may show they’re reacting to it. Unfortunately, I’m having to face the acceptance that my own body might be. For those of you who personally know me (or particularly, know my husband) you know would be a significant change for me. My husband is the Dairy King…I’m convinced I stole him from our well-known Blizzard making friend somewhere along the way. When we started dating, he was delivering ten thousand gallon tanker trucks of milk all over the I-5 corridor and frequently being gifted dairy-laden treats from the farmers he visited. Needless to say, the Parsons family are big drinkers of milk. We tend to go through around 4 gallons per week.
Thinking about cutting out dairy is a little sad. Honestly, I’m actually not opposed to milk alternatives like rice milk or soy milk. I think they’re pretty tasty. I’m more concerned about the dairy that’s in things I love to eat. Hmm…time will tell.
I’ll be starting my two-week dairy elimination Dec 1, so stay tuned to see if my symptoms resolve. I’m kind of crossing my fingers that they won’t (because I don’t want to cut out dairy long-term), but I’ll tell myself the same thing I always tell my patients: “If you do the elimination, at least you’ll know what is causing your problems. Then you’re empowered with the choice of whether to have symptoms and eat that food or not have symptoms and not have that food.”
The choice doesn’t have to be permanent, 100% all the time either. Life is a spectrum. If my problem is dairy, at least I’ll know!
Oftentimes I will have patients with diabetes whose blood sugars are high, and they think, logically, that if they eat very few (or no) carbohydrates, that will help. Unfortunately, they are working against themselves, and here’s why:
The body has what I like to refer to as a savings account of glucose in the liver. When the cells in the body aren’t getting the glucose they need for energy (like when someone skips a meal or when their cells are resistant to insulin), they start complaining all over the body trying to get someone to fix their problem. Word gets to the liver that the cells are starving and he wants to help. The trouble is, liver is a busy guy. He’s got many, many jobs. I often joke that managing this savings account is his “side gig.” He’s not particularly good at it.
In people with diabetes, liver sometimes starts dumping glucose from his savings account into the blood when he doesn’t really need to, and then once he has started…he doesn’t know when to stop. He just keeps pouring and pouring sugar into the blood and before you know it, this poor person who is trying their darnedest to avoid eating carbs in order to get their blood sugars down has a sky-high blood sugar because they haven’t eaten!
It’s the most frustrating thing in the world because it’s totally backwards to what we would naturally think.
Moral of the story: don’t skip meals, and don’t over-restrict carbohydrates! It’s just as important to eat enough as it is to not eat too much to manage blood sugars in diabetes (side note: that’s true for weight loss as well!).
Bonus sub-moral of the story: If you have something frustrating going on with your blood sugars or your weight that you can’t explain, seek out a Registered Dietitian or a Certified Diabetes Educator to help explain all the funky things that your body might be doing without your realizing it! You don’t have to be frustrated and helpless. You can be empowered to better understand your body!
What a great question. I get asked about sugar alternatives all the time and it is one of the more frustrating areas of nutrition for me.
As a dietitian, I am held to practice evidence-based nutrition, which means providing recommendations to patients based on the information that research provides. The tricky part with research is that, darn it, it doesn’t always agree with itself. One study will say something is fine, another will say it will cause you cancer (a great reason not to change your eating habits based on one single news clip, health news article, or Dr. Oz show).
We are only as good as the research that we have, and when it comes to sugar alternatives, I don’t feel that what we have is great. We have a lot of research in some areas, and not as much in others, but I struggle with the research we have because some of it is funded by industries that have a financial stake in the results (think sugar companies or artificial sweetener companies) and the methods aren’t always great assessments of real-life application.
So what I end up giving my patients is the information that we do have on all of their choices, and advise them to make a personal decision. Here is what we have so far:
Artificial sweeteners like sucralose (Splenda®), aspartame (Equal®, Nutrasweet), and saccharin (Sweet‘N Low®)
Pros: Do not raise blood sugar significantly (1, 2) do not provide calories. (3, 4)
Cons: Do not occur naturally, some have an unpleasant aftertaste, sucralose may worsen insulin resistance. (5)
What is unclear: conflicting research on whether artificial sweeteners may increase hunger (the first two references say it does, the latter four found it did not) (6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11), aspartame has been linked to increased occurrence of cancer, though in the spirit of full disclosure the methods of this study have been debated. (12)
Stevia (Truvia®)
Pros: Does not raise blood sugar, provide calories, or increase hunger (13), some researchers claim it may have anti-hypertensive, anti-inflammatory, and anti-carcinogenic benefits (14), comes from a leaf that grows naturally.
Cons: The safety of consuming stevia in large amounts has not been well-studied, though preliminary reviews have considered it safe (15).
Agave Nectar
Pros: May have a lower glucose and insulin response than sugar and cause less weight gain than sugar (16), occurs naturally.
Cons: Provides calories, raises blood sugar and can lead to insulin spikes in large amounts, causes inflammation, contains high levels of fructose which may increase BP (17) and worsen insulin sensitivity (18).
Honey
Pros: Unprocessed raw local honey is generally easy to find (albeit expensive), has higher antioxidant content than other sweeteners including sugar (19), occurs naturally.
Cons: Provides calories, raises blood sugar and can lead to insulin spikes in large amounts, causes inflammation.
Sugar (including raw sugar/turbinado sugar, cane sugar, and brown sugar)
Pros: Tasty – that’s about it. Raw sugar and brown sugar have slightly more antioxidants than refined sugar (19).
Cons: Provides calories, raises blood sugar and can lead to insulin spikes in large amounts, causes inflammation, offers empty calories without micronutrient value (20).
So there you have it. It’s unfortunately not as simple as “which is the best sweetener to use?” Your goals, personal convictions, and body all play in to that choice.
Other tips: work on decreasing your use of sweetening agents in general, and don’t put all your sweetener eggs in one basket. In other words, moderate. Small amounts of a few different kinds of sweeteners in your diet is less likely to cause the damage that might occur from getting all your sweetening from one particular source.
Sources (Yes, I know – lazy, linked sources without full citations):
Many recommendations have come out in recent years discussing the benefits of avoiding long periods of sitting. For those of us who work at a desk, that can be tough! While working, it can be difficult to 1) remember to get up, 2) realize how much time has passed since you got up, or 3) get up at all, depending on what your job is!
This one allows you to customize the frequency with which you want to be reminded to exercise, as well as the time frame in which you want reminders (like 8 am to 5 pm, for example). The app sends you an encouraging and/or Jillian Michaels-like reminder (“Don’t you dare think about skipping this one!” or “Come on, no excuses!”) to get up and move on the schedule you set. The app contains a list of exercise suggestions that you can tailor to your preferences. If you choose to do the exercise it suggests, you click a button that says “I did it!” and it will tack it onto an ongoing list of the exercises you have completed that day, complete with estimated calories burned. If you don’t want reminders on certain days, you can skip them for a day.
Pros: Easy to use, customizable exercises/schedule, exercise suggestions, accumulating list of exercises throughout the day is motivating.
Cons: Reminders could be a little less cheesy/condescending, several of the exercises would not be discreet in certain office settings (think jumping jacks and side-lying leg lifts – they have an “Office” exercise pack you can purchase that is supposed to remedy this).
Overall: I enjoyed this app – I liked that it gave suggestions for exercises because, even as an exercise physiologist, I do better with direction. Particularly when I’m in the middle of the work day – I don’t have to come up with exercises on my own!
This app also allows you to customize it with a daily schedule and frequency of reminders. You can skip days as needed. On schedule, the app pops up a reminder that states, “Time to stand up. We want you to live longer!” If you go to the app at that time, you can select between options to skip that particular reminder or to acknowledge that you got up, which the app will track.
Pros: Easy to use, customizable schedule, tracks the number of times and when you get up throughout the day.
Cons: Reminder is the same every time, no exercise suggestions.
Overall: It worked. I enjoyed the other app more, but they both will get the job done!
Diet culture is determined to tell you that you have to be miserable to be healthy.
That couldn’t be more wrong.
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