Dairy reintroduction day & salad dressing question

[BobbyL]

I finished my whole30 on Thursday. Tomorrow is my birthday and I plan to reintroduce dairy first so we can go out to eat and have a steak, potatoes, and some buttery veggies (all of which have butter added to them).

Question: how does salad dressing play into this? The restaurant we are going to has a really good 1000 island. The three ingredients that I question are the mayo, chili sauce, and relish. Basically, it has added sugar to it just from these three ingredients (no other added sugar).

Is that enough sugar to skip the salad on my dairy reintro day, or do you think it's not enough to factor in?

[GFChris]

To do a proper reintroduction, on each reintro day, we recommend reintroducing only the food item in question at all three meals of the day, keeping all else Whole30 compliant.

 

Adding a ranch salad dressing to your dairy day isn't a great idea, because if you have a reaction, you won't know the culprit. Many commercial mayos are made with soybean oil.

I would suggest either bringing your own Whole30-compliant dressing or skipping the salad.

[HEDGEHOG8]

Glad you asked that question, so sugar should be reintroduced in a day on its own then?

[GFChris]

Glad you asked that question, so sugar should be reintroduced in a day on its own then?

 

If you're following the structured reintro approach, everything you reintroduce should, ideally, be done so on its own dedicated day. Once you reintroduce something, the guidance is to not have it again until all your reintros are complete.

 

You could have a sugar day, or you could do more of a slow roll on sugar (e.g., have ketchup with sugar in it, or straight sugar in your coffee/tea, or sugar in a dressing whenever any of those might happen, not necessarily all on the same day), to see how you respond.

[BobbyL]

So yesterday I decided going into the day it would only be a dairy reintro.  Cooked my eggs that morning in butter rather than olive or coconut oil, sauteed my asparagus in butter rather than a compliant oil, and added sharp cheese to my eggs like I used to do pre-Whole30.

 

That meal hit me like a rock.  Nothing major.  No upset stomach or any other symptoms.  Just a "heavy" feeling in my stomach.  

 

Then we went out to lunch, and my reintro came off the rails.  My wife wanted to do the paired meal, which came with a fried appetizer, a salad, and other stuff. No substitutions.  So I said it's my birthday, I will just do this and then do 4 days of cleanse to make up for it.  So I had a couple of pieces of the fried appetizer (fried onion) and dressing on the salad.  That night, I had ketchup on my ground beef patty and cheese, wrapped in lettuce.  Figured if the day was shot, it was shot.

 

After the lunch yesterday, I had the similar heavy feeling in my gut just like after the breakfast.  But other than that, no issues at all yesterday or today (other than I really enjoyed my eggs cooked in olive oil this morning so much more than the ones with butter and cheese yesterday).

 

So even though I reintroduced a couple of more ingredients yesterday than I meant to, I feel pretty confident based on how I feel today that although none of them really disagreed with me, I'm just simply not a fan of dairy anymore.  I had it at three meals yesterday, and it did nothing for me.  The food didn't taste better at all, and I just felt a little bloated afterwards.

 

I'm going to go 3-4 days compliant now just to get a good cleanse (and because I just simply really like eating this way better now), and I figure later this week we will reintro non-gluten grains (got a taste for some brown rice and also some corn) and see how it goes.

 

But I'm relieved my "off the rails" day yesterday didn't result in anything bad, other than I just don't think I want dairy anymore.