2-part question: upcoming reintroduction/schedule + Ezekiel bread

[K.S.Beemer]

This is my first go at Whole30 and I am fairly shocked to have made it to day 12 (so far). I am 31 and in fair health but since I cannot afford to lose weight, I am struggling to eat enough food to keep it on and therefore already anticipating reintroduction when I will have more options for filling up easily, assuming I can have some grains! I came to Whole30 looking for relief from a number of symptoms that seem related and, I am hoping, are all tied to food--namely low and inconsistent mood/energy, poor sleep/never feeling rested even after sleep, chronic musculoskeletal pain and spinal problems, and most likely hypoglycemia/blood sugar sensitivity. I still am struggling with energy levels and falling asleep at night at this point on day 12. (No tiger blood yet, per se!)

Anyway, the only foods I have really missed terribly are in the morning: cream in my coffee, and toast with butter. I am reading It Starts With Food and about done with the book. One thing I am unclear on (Question 1) is whether one day of reintroduction is really enough to gauge symptoms that are not digestive.... in other words, if things like chronic fatigue and low mood are the issue, wouldn't it take longer for these effects to be noticeable? Would it be another option to do a 3-4 day reintroduction or even longer of one food group before moving on to the next--for example, staged in weeks: reintro week 1 (days 31-37) only have a small glass of wine every other night after dinner--measure effects; move on to legumes the next week--lentil soup one night and peanut butter the next day, etc... It just seems that one day would be pretty tough to measure a reaction to in the absence of a pure allergy! Has this been discussed at all? I want to make the most out of my reintroduction phase of this process, so don't want to even take the "slow role" approach only to realize a few weeks later I have no idea what food is doing what. Don't get me wrong. If one day is truly enough to note these more ambiguous symptoms, I am all about moving more quickly through reintroduction.

(Question 2) is on Ezekiel bread! I want to reintroduce this sprouted bread, because as they talk about in It Starts With Food, sprouted grains are much easier to digest and contain less of the anti-nutrients and gluten in general. The problem is this is the number one food I am anxious to know whether I can eat and I wish this could be the first thing I reintroduce--however, it contains both gluten and GF grains + legumes! So how should I reintroduce it? If I wait until the end and make it the last thing, I am still worried based on only one day of reintroduction per food that I won't know where possible sensitivities lie. 

 

Thank you for your help! Looking forward to some answers on these questions. 

[ShannonM816]

So, first, read this article for tips for keeping weight on during your whole30, and see if it is helpful to you at all:  https://whole30.com/2013/12/keeping-weight-whole30/

For question 1, it is definitely possible that you could experience different effects from foods if you have them more often than you have just having them at each meal for one day. I would really think about how you might want to consume different foods in you life after whole30 when you think about changing up reintroductions.  Are you planning to have wine every day or every other day, or is it more a once a week thing or an occasional thing? If you don't intend to to drink it every other day, you may not get any usable information from doing your reintroductions that way. If you're more likely to have a couple of drinks every Friday, having a couple of drinks one day may be enough to tell you how that affects you and whether that's a habit you want to continue or not. If you like half & half in your coffee every day and cheese on your salads, it makes sense to take a week and have that every day.

I will say, if you extend the time you're testing these things, you probably need to extend the time between reintroductions as well, to give yourself time to get back to feeling good again.

For the Ezekiel bread, I would probably do reintros of each type of food first, so do gluten grains on their own, non-gluten grains on their own, and legumes on their own. That way if you have an issue with any one of those, you know where the problem is. If you do the bread and have a reaction, you won't know what's causing it, it could be any one of those things, or the combination of them.