Monday, August 6, 2012

Let Them Eat.....Flaxseed and Bran?

In the past few months, I have done a lot of playing around with my diet. I've experimented with dairy-free and dabbled in a pseudo-elimination diet (meaning, I couldn't quite pull it off, I didn't always recall all the foods I couldn't eat and, admittedly, sometimes I ate foods I knew I shouldn't). I did manage to stay almost completely tyramine-free this summer and greatly reduced my sugar intake, trying to ingest only natural sugars from fruits and juices. I did eat sweets on occasion but not nearly as much as I was wont to. Okay, now, what have I learned?  First, that sticking to any kind of diet is hard, annoying and, often, incovenient. Second, that it helps if you think of it as a lifestyle change and not a diet. And third, that caffeine, dairy and sugar are definite migraine triggers for me. I figured out that dairy is a huge trigger and one that I never noticed in all these years of keeping food diaries because I simply just never thought of it as being a possible culprit on the list of migraine triggers. I found that I can eat a little bit of dairy and not get a migraine. However, if I eat more than about one serving of dairy in a day, I will most certainly end up with a bad migraine! This has changed the way I eat very much. I rarely eat cereal anymore and skip the cheese on sandwiches and avoid adding it to pasta, soups, salads and so on. This has taken some getting used to for sure! Caffeine affects me in much the same way as dairy--a little is okay but only a little. No more venti lattes for me! Sigh...   Lastly, sugar, like dairy and caffeine, is okay in limited amounts, but  I have had to severely limit my intake of it. I try not to ingest any sugar aside from the natural sugars in fruits and juices. I love Coke, so, when I go out to eat, I will allow myself to have one, but I never buy it anymore and do not keep any sweets or sugary snacks in the house. I have the occasional candy bar or Twizzlers at the movies or with my kids, but that is it. I didn't even eat cake on my birthday! I ate flax-bran muffins (trust me, they are way more delicious than they sound), which I made myself; the only sugar in them was a small amount of light brown sugar. No migraines after enjoying a few of those!...

No comments:

Post a Comment