You asked in another thread about my path to remission -was I aggressive from the start or did I start slowly.
I will try to find a response to this question on the old board and copy it into this thread but here is a short answer to your question.
I started GF in July of 2004. Three weeks later I started DF based on information from the GF Kitchen folks. I was GF/DF for a couple of months w/o getting significantly better so I was worried that changing my diet wasn't going to help. I remember asking over and over again how soon I should expect to see results?! I desperately wanted results - as you know, we feel very bad when we have symptoms. I was adviced to give the diet 6 months - after that if I still hadn't seen results perhaps I was reacting to additional triggers. I wasn't patient enough to wait 6 months for results - had D accidents all the time and just felt completely terrible; could not leave the house w/o having major problems etc.
After going dairy free I had tried some milk substitutes such as soy milk, rice milk, almond milk. I had terrible reactions to the soy milk. I also reacted to the rice- and almond milk - I attributed the reactions to the latter two to carrageenan because Polly had mentioned she reacts to that. So after discovering that I reacted to soy I started focusing on avoiding soy. I still had bad accidents and continuous rumbling and gas galore, explosive watery diarrhea. I decided that I would have to try to eliminate all the triggers that the MIers were avoiding in order to see if I would get better. I felt hopelessly inadequate in figuring out how to do that. I started reading the list of foods/derivatives to avoid when on a corn free diet and I quickly realized I could not begin to remember all those chemicals. It was very overwhelming. Nevertheless I asked myself the question: Do you want to be well or do you want to be sick? What you are doing now makes you sick, so if you want to be well, you have to do what the well people do. I was kind of feeling at a loss as to how to handle it and looked around for my MOMMY - she wasn't there and I thought to myself, Karen, you are a big girl now, you can do it!! If it takes a long time to figure it out, that's OK. If I make mistakes, that's OK, I will learn from them.....
IOW I gave myself a big pep talk and decided I was the only one who could make me well. I would take on the big MI-diet beginning NOW! and I did. It took me several weeks before I realized that the simplest way to do it right was to avoid premade things (things that come in boxes, bags, bottles, jars, etc.). When I read labels I put all things down that had more than 4 ingredients on the list. I went SIMPLE and BASIC. I bought fresh produce, period.
Approx 3 weeks after starting the MI diet (gf, df, sf, cf, yf) I went into remission and stayed in remission for 1 1/2 months. I sabotaged my own remission by introducing some foods that I later discovered were trigger foods too. After taking those out of my diet I have been in remission.
It was not necessary for me to eliminate all grains from my diet in order to go into remission. In fact the first remission was reached on eating large amounts of rice-meals that I cooked in my rice cooker. I added ground meat and sauteed vegetables to brown rice and cooked it in the rice cooker. I then stored the left overs in tupperware containers that I could take out of the fridg and reheat in the microwave oven. This made it easy and convenient. I ate the same meals 3-4 days in a row. Then I made another batch with a slightly different mix of veggies and meat and ate that for the next 3-4 days. For dinner I typically had steak, pork/lamb chops, hamburgers, flank steak, chicken with veggies and or salad and a baked potato.
Roni, this became long - hopefully it will give you some ideas and inspiration to keep working on Emily's diet.
I have a relatively driven or aggresive personality - it came in fairly handy in this case. However, I think you have an equally driven personality - you are extremely dedicated and hard working and I don't doubt for a second that you will find the way to bring relief for Emily. You are well on your way to succeed.
Don't forget to take good care of Emily's mother too
She deserves a little tender love and care.Love,
Karen
