Out with a whimper

Well, sort of. I ended on a rough note. Let me backtrack to Saturday night... a friend had a big blow-out birthday dinner. I went! I got dressed up fancy(ish)! I drank tea instead of cocktails! I interrogated the waitress and decided on scallops over a lobster & mushroom hash (hold the sauce and hold the potatoes on the hash). It was fabulous. Except that Monday morning I woke up at 4am with an obvious case of food poisoning. I'm pretty sure it was the damn scallops because my husband had the same entree and also had some tummy problems, AND I've had this happen with undercooked scallops before. Damnit! Scallops are so yummy, but I think I'm going to need to pass on them in the future.

Anyway, yesterday morning, I called in sick from work and spent most of the morning in the bathroom. I ate a banana and had some applesauce, but by noon I was really feeling rough. I was feeling shaky and having heart palpitations, and I just wanted to eat something starchy. I couldn't stand the idea of eating any protein and fruit was just making me more shaky. So I cooked up a little bit of tapioca and had it with some coconut milk (no sweeteners). I wasn't going to spend 12 more hours suffering just so say that I was totally 100% clean for 30 days instead of 29.5. Especially since about an hour after I ate the tapioca the shakes and palpitations were gone and I actually felt like eating a little chicken. I've been steadily feeling better ever since.

I'm going to call it as completed though. I lost 7 pounds without any real difficulty and no serious cravings for anything except diet coke. That continues to be the most amazing thing to me, that there are just no internal struggles if I eat this way. I'm going to make a big long post about just that issue... but really given my history with food this is just a revelation!!! I've felt strong and healthy the whole time, no trouble recovering from workouts or keeping up with an unexpectedly stressful month at my job. I hate to say this... but it was pretty easy. Way, way easier than I had thought.

So what now? Well, I want to try dairy products, but I'm going to hold off on them until at least next weekend. Right now I want to let my GI tract heal before I go eating anything different. I need to be able to tell if any symptoms are due to cheese or just residual suffering from the damn scallops.