No, I Haven't Given Up!

It is about time, I wrote an update about our Feingold Journey. No, I have not given up. We went on vacation and it has just taken a while to get back into the swing of things. If you recall, right before we went on vacation, Elijah had to take an antibiotic that had several additives in it. Then, of course, we went on vacation. With just a few minor adjustments, we were able to stay on the plan about 80% when we were on vacation to California. But, since we are in the elminiation period, between the sickness adn vacation, I decided we needed to go back to square one and stay on stage one for several weeks before introducing salicylates. Currently, we are on week 4 (again!) and he is doing very well. Interestingly, in the meantime, I found another trigger-High Fructose Corn Syrup. While this is not specifically elimintated on the Plan, many members have a sensitivity to it. Feingold only eliminates the chemicals that are most problematic for people. I had noticed after vacation, that he did not seem to be doing quite as well as we were before we left. After some detective work, I remembered that I had bought some frozen bread loaves (to eliminate the possibility of preservatives), but it had high fructose corn syrup. I had also just stocked up on Stauffers Animal Crackers, which also has HFCS. The next week, I elimiated those items and we seemed to be back on track. I am waiting until Spring Break, which is in two weeks to start adding in natural occuring salicylates so I can more closely monitor possible reactions and eliminate outside factors that could contribute to unwanted behaviors, such as just having a rough day at school.

I'm sure some of you are wondering about how we stayed on the plan on vacation. It took some planning, but it was not too difficult for this type of vacation because we were staying with friends and not eating out for every meal. One friend, who knew we were on the Plan, very kindly did some grocery shopping for approved things like sandwhich fixings, breakfast and snack items before we came. That was a huge help. When we ate out, I tried to choose safer options like pasta or hamburgers instead of chicken nuggets. One treat was that In and Our Burger, a California based fast food restaurant, makes their fries from fresh cut potatos and does not use preservatives so we made a special trip to In and Out for Elijah to induldge in fries. Ghiradelli also has an outlet near our destination, so we let him stock up on approved chocolates from there. Finally, I was able to find more approved "all natural" snack brands at Target than I can at our local Target so he got a few special treats. Overall, it was not difficult to stay on the plan, I would just advise not doing it when you are in the first few weeks of the diet.