How Whole 30 prepared me for this journey!

About 3 and half years ago my best friend and her sister in law introduced me to a book called "It Starts with Food." The reason for that was I had been dealing with various blood sugar lows from my husband and his Type 1 Diabetes. I was learning how cooking some things a certain way really effected the way his body reacted. I read the book within about a month and really learned a lot about how food and how our body responds to some of it. As soon as I was done with the book, we as a couple did a 30 day fast called Whole 30. Just meat, vegetables, fruit. No grains, no corn, no beans, no soy, no dairy and no sugars. My best friend and her husband join us for the 30 days. It was difficult at first, mostly because I love bread so much, but it made a huge difference with my seasonal allergies and other intestinal issues. It also helped my husband's diabetes and seeing how different foods effected him.

After those 30 days we slowly introduced other foods to see how our body responded to them. For me dairy and soy were definitely "no no's." Most of the time wheat and other grains weren't that great, but rice seemed to be fine at the time. The 30 days changed our kitchen and our view on eating forever. My mom would joke with us saying we don't have any crackers anywhere. It was true. We had snacks, but not like we did before. Yes, there was times we would not be strict on it for a period of time, but if it was a food that trigger food for us we would certainly pay for it.

Fast forward a year and half later when our little marshmallow was born. She had struggles with taking my breast milk and had a lot of dark mucus in her stool plus red blood. Since I already was lactose free we supplemented with a hypoallergenic formula that was over the counter. Still didn't help. I had already quit breast feeding, because she just hated eating all together and I lost my supply. When we finally got to an amino acid base formula for babies with "multiple allergies" she was a different child. She thrived and finally gained weight. Introducing food was difficult and with her first allergy testing she was allergic to corn, oat, wheat, soy, egg, all nuts. (officially not dairy but I still didn't give it to her because it cause a lot of mucus). She was too young at the time to do food challenges so we just tried to feed her what we could. By the way corn is hidden in EVERYTHING....and they do not put it as an allergen on the package. Thankfully, since I always read the ingredients for "sugar" for my husband, my skills continued as I looked for these 7 allergens.

Since then we have retested and she now only is allergic to egg, soy and all nuts. Because of my whole 30 experience I did limit her wheat for many reasons I do not have time to share. Thankfully she can eat corn...and she loves grits and sausage every morning. With FPIES (Food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome) you typically can not have chicken. For some reason this girl hates chicken most of the time. But loves sausage and will eat it all day long thankfully!

Now skipping head to recently where I was diagnosed with alpha-gal syndrome, meaning I can not eat any mammal meat. Also I had to go even further with the whole 30 and do the auto immune protocol which means getting rid of all nightshade plants too (potatoes, tomatoes, eggplant, all peppers, and most spices.

When we did Whole 30 the first time it seemed impossible to think of cutting out SO much of the food we typically ate. But honestly today I would give anything to have pork or hamburger (just the patty wrapped in lettuce). I never thought I could be on such a strict diet. That is why I am SO grateful I read that book before my daughter was born and before my health went down hill. God was preparing me for what was ahead. He knew that we would have food allergies with our daughter that we would daily have to deal with and he knew that I would have chronic lyme's disease that would effect how I eat. I feel so blessed that through all this...God's hand has been right there next to us even when the storms have been heavy and rough. He gave us a set of armor to help us face the battle that was laying ahead of us.