Autoimmune Protocol diet

Alright so I decided to just go forward with an elimination diet to figure out what kind of eating works best for me. I've been doing OMAD (One Meal A Day) for like 3 weeks now and I LOVE it. It's so much easier to plan, shop, cook and clean after only one meal. I can eat a nice large meal with easily staying within my TDEE. I eat it at night so I can just eat and relax after work. Now I'm making that meal an Autoimmune Protocol (AIP) guidelines to see if I have reactions to stuff.

The idea is that once I figure out what I'm allergic to (allergist appointment on Tuesday) and anything I have a reaction to via AIP, I can configure my ideal custom food plan. And that may change once I start training for races, depending on my needs.

For Monday-Thursday dinners, I bought sweet potatoes, chicken, asparagus and frozen cherries.

The first night, I just threw everything in the rice cooker and steamed/ boiled everything/

The chicken was good and the cherries were good but the sweet potatoes and asparagus tasted like crap. Watery garbage! I didn't finish it.

Tuesday I decided to try something different and cook the chicken the same way but pan fry the sweet potatoes and then make the asparagus into a salad with parsley and orange. This time around I used 2 tbs of olive oil for the potatoes and then another 2 tbs of oil for the salad so it was an extra FOUR HUNDRED AND SEVENTY calories!!!! So I had to cut the cherries out this time.

It was good! The sweet potatoes were MUCH better and the salad was AMAZING. The only downside is that shaving asparagus is time consuming and you end up wasting a lot of asparagus in the process. Next time I'd just use zoodles instead of shaved asparagus and see how that is. Also I set my fire alarm off for a long time, pan frying those sweet potatoes. They were good but some of them were pretty burnt. (I am not a cook)

Tonight I'm going to roast sweet potato rounds and the asparagus spears in the toaster oven. My oven is broken and I've been putting off doing anything about it for like 7 months. So toaster oven it is!

Figuring out food

Have you ever noticed that 95% of all nutritional information on the internet is a bunch of bullshit? Nobody seems to know what they're talking about and nothing works for everyone. Well maybe that's the answer? There is no objectively correct way to eat that is optimally healthy for every individual? That seems to be the case but I keep looking.

To me, it seems like a "Whole Foods" type diet is the way to go. No dairy, no added sugar, low sodium, high fiber... I'm a little skeptical of grains. I don't have celiac disease or any other allergy to grains (that I know of) but maybe it makes me feel like crap in other ways??? Hard to say.

I'm thinking about doing an elimination diet (whole30 style) to see if I have any specific foods or food groups that make me feel like trash.

This is NOT related to losing weight. As long as I stay in a caloric deficit, I'll lose weight. It doesn't really matter WHAT I'm eating if I'm only concerned about losing weight.

But I want to find my own optimal food plan for my body and my needs. As I ramp up my triathlon training over the next few years, I want to fuel my workouts effectively and minimize inflammation or digestive issues as much as I can.

And it's important that taking a break from it every now and again is no big deal. I figure if I'm sticking to it 80% of the time, the other 20% is for social/ fun moments in my life and that can be easily absorbed.

I set up an appointment to get allergy tested first, to see if there are any obvious things I should avoid eating. Then I'll try an elimination diet. Then I'll come up with something and tweak it as I go, depending on how I feel.