Post #104: Team Picky

And amber waves of.......inflammation? 

I have a confession: I used to be a self-righteous diet snob. 

I used to make fun (in my head) of the chia seed slurping, quinoa snorting, ancient grain loving, make-your-own-nut-milk types. The hipsters and the raw juice fanatics. The whippet thin ladies in lululemon yoga pants who populated the aisles of Whole Foods. The suit wearing professionals pouring over ingredient lists with laser like focus, paying $8.99 for a package of gluten-free brownie mix that will invariably look (and taste) like sewer sludge. 

I had more tolerance for the true die hard hippies, the kindly men and women who cruised the bulk item section of the local co-op, buying five pounds of organic dried black beans to cart home on their bikes (in the rain. whilst wearing Tevas and hiking socks). 

Of course, there were those with true food allergies, but in my cynical mind, the proliferation of gluten-free fake out foods in every local grocery store was due more to the whims of an upper middle class consumer base obsessed with following the latest diet trends. Gluten, in particular (and now to some extent soy, dairy, and refined sugars) seemed to be the cause of all of our health woes. It was the devil in grain form. 

My bullshit meter exploded. This is the new Atkins, I told myself. People have evolved to enjoy a varied diet, which includes such illicit foods as pasta (gasp!), bread (shock!) and muffins (horrors!!). I scoffed at the people who strove to eat like cavemen, or only ate hot dogs and bricks of cheddar (seriously, I know someone on Atkins who did this), or ate according to blood type. 

Before Crohn's, I used to pride myself on being a "good eater." This meant that I was flexible. Ethiopian food? Vietnamese? Japanese? Greek? Sure! I could find something to eat anywhere. I enjoyed trying new foods. I ordered off the menu without substitution. I could go to a dinner party and eat what was served without hesitation. I could overindulge one day and be fine the next. I wasn't afraid of food. 

I'm not a "good eater" anymore. 

What I didn't account for, in all of my supercilious, judgmental assumptions, was that for some of these people, diet was a last (or maybe for the smart ones, first) attempt at mediating illness. I looked at these shoppers and saw picky eaters, when in fact I might have been staring at sick ones. Like me. 

I resisted changing my diet since my diagnosis. I counted on the medicine and the doctors to make me feel better. In some ways, I am better, but in many ways I am not. As I said in my last post, I was waiting for the turnaround, so it didn't make sense to me to radically alter my lifestyle in the meantime. I ate what I could tolerate, justifying my diet with the oft repeated "diet just doesn't matter with Crohn's" refrain I kept hearing from all of the medical professionals around me. 

Lately, though, my thinking has changed. How can what I eat not matter? When my nurse, talking to me after the doctor had left the room, suggested an anti-inflammatory diet, I took it as a sign. It was time to try something new. 

All of this is to say that next week, I join team picky. 

I'm not going to name the diet I'll be trying, because I don't want to advocate any specific dietary restrictions, and I don't even know if it will yield any positive results in my case. I will say that I won't be eating dairy, wheat, or refined sugar for the foreseeable future. The diet I picked is one with a lot of clinical research around it, and I'm working with a dietitian to map it all out. 

I am of course afraid that this will make things worse, but I play to go about it in a very slow, measured way; I'm also curious to see what effect, if any, this has on my health. 

I figure if I can give the super scary injectable medicine a six month trial run, I can extend the same opportunity to a diet, no matter how restrictive. 

And to the people I was silently judging for buying  6 dollar bags of gluten free pretzels: I'm sorry. I was an asshole. If those pretzels made you feel better, I was in no position to judge your choices. You might see me wandering the aisles of Whole Foods in my yoga pants-please be kind. Also, save me some snacks.