Elimination Diet and beyond....

About a month ago I was inspired to try an elimination diet. An elimination diet is diet with the goal of seeing if you have any allergies to foods and to see how they affect you. So no gluten, dairy, chocolate, tomatoes, peanuts, corn, soy, sugar or caffeine. Why would I do this? I had been feeling pretty run down. Sitting at work at 11:00 in the morning craving another coffee is not the way that I want to live. Being wiped by 5:00 at night was not living. A friend of mine was doing it and I was like well if they can do it I can too. It wasn't that bad. The hardest part about it was when I was eating somewhere other than home. No one likes to be the one who can't eat things at another's house when they've invited you over and have taken the time to feed you. This diet lasts for 3 weeks and then you slowly add food back in. I felt pretty darn good after all this and learned I don't have any allergies but I did learn a few things. Sugar and caffeine really give me a headache and I get easily addicted to them. I had a crazy week at work not that long after I was done with this and was drinking coffee again. I stopped after that week and headaches for 2 days coming off of it. This last week I've been really bad about sugar and I find myself craving it more and more. Needless to say I feel the need to get my act together again. When I eat closer to this diet (mainly no sugar and caffeine, with limted dairy and gluten) I feel much better. These are some of my favorite recipes.

Homemade buckwheat pancakes with almond butter and maple berry sauce.

 Three favorite toppings: berry vinaigrette, roasted red pepper sauce, roasted garlic in olive oil.

Salad with strawberries and berry vinaigrette with maple glazed salmon.

 Pina colada ice cream.

The thing about this diet is that I feel like God used it to give me a kick in the butt on a lot of fronts. With more energy I got more done and was able to handle a bunch of stuff including covering a lot at work and tons of house stuff. I realize he used this seemingly small thing to get me ready for what was to come and give me much needed inspiration in my cooking. This "cleaner" eating has bleed over into my looking into greener house cleaning solutions, cosmetics, examining my closet and objectively looking at my clothes and being more creative, and lots of other things. We can be so mindless about things we eat or use on our bodies and it feels good to look into things and find things that are healthier and save you money.