As you say, it is important to track what you eat and how you feel. I’ve been doing that since starting this elimination diet. I use the Apple “Notes” app on my iPad, iPhone, and Mac to enter the date as a heading and under that is a time-stamped line to write the notes. All the data gets stored in iCloud, so the latest data is available on any device I use in any location.
I’ve been very precise tracking what I eat and the amount (weigh food on a kitchen scale), visits to the bathroom (and “results” in the bathroom), how I feel after eating foods, and any particular problems whenever they occur. This has been very effective so far. My two experiments to re-introduce dairy had the same horrible effects within 40 minutes of ingestion and I know how long it takes to get dairy out of my system. I may try a couple more experiments to confirm.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep the food diary going, but right now it is incredibly useful. I will definitely keep it going until my next GI doc visit in April and test some gluten re-introductions.
It really will help you. I eat much better when I track.
Some weird things happened to me to help me realize what I needed by doing so. (Example - eating boba balls [tapioca] cured a digestive problem overnight, leaving me a clue in how to help myself through the right natural,starches)
Like gluten sensitive people who go on a trip to Italy, I discovered my problem with gluten wasn’t with gluten. This might help you. Do you know the often-told story of the gluten sensitive person who goes on a trip to Italy? Happens to so many. They get to Italy, and decide, damnit, they HAVE to taste that Italian pasta. They plan that that night, they will be sick and in pain all night, but they just have to try pasta in Italy. They enjoy their meal, go to bed, and figure they will be up around 3 with pain or diarrhea. They wake up the next morning feeling great! What?
And that is when they learn it isn’t the gluten that makes them sick back in America. It’s the enriched, crappy wheat. I have found (even though I rarely eat it) I can digest organic UNENRICHED American wheat. Using Italian 00 wheat flour is also good. To find out if a bag of organic flour in a store is unenriched, look at the iron % on the bag. It should be 2% or less. Adding iron filings to flours and cereals in the USA is a fricken joke. I don’t know who could or should digest that, but it isn’t the kind of iron we absorb anyway. We need to stop “enriching” packaged foods.