Nutrition update

Two weeks ago was our 'Week 4' and it was rough, but then we moved on and things were good.  Then Friday she started acting out again-saying mean things, yelling, fighting, defying us.  She failed her comprehension test that I thought she would for sure ace.  We read that story everyday and she knew it back and forth. What the heck?  We've had to fight her everyday this week to get her to do her exercises.  She's doing things intentionally again, knowing that it will hurt our feelings.  Yesterday, I was scared.  As I sat there holding her down, trying to get her to breath and calm down, all I could think of was how I couldn't go back to where we were.  That was our deciding factor in signing her up at Brain Balance.  We couldn't live that life anymore.  So I was scared.  And the what ifs started to pop up.  What if it didn't work?  What if we are just meant to have that life?  What if we failed? 

  I have felt so much pressure from all directions, working against us.  I have given in at times.  Things have started to go backwards.  Last night I was just worn out.  Things had been going so well and having 4 days of our old life was just exhausting and had really caught up to me.  There had to be answer for this though.  There's no way that we had seen so much change and her academics had gone up all by luck?    There had to be an explanation.

  We have really learned so much from our nutritionist, Amy.  She has opened our minds to the fact that foods CAN really alter how you act and have an effect on your brain.  I believe a lot of our success is due to the changes we have made in her diet.  We have been doing everything right but what about food?  Could that be why she's been acting differently?  Nutritionists are trained to blame everything on food.  That's their job . A lot of people might think that way of thinking is ridiculous and that's ok.  But for us, we have adopted the attitude that food does affect your brain.  Last night I had to sit down and try to find what new food we had introduced Into Kalie's diet or if there is something on her mild list that she might be having too much of that could possibly be closer to moderate than mild.  Thursday I found some hazelnut milk at Fresh and Easy.  We still haven't found a white milk that she loves so I thought we would try this one out.  She ended up really liking it so I was giving it her everyday, especially since we had run out of chocolate rice milk.  I had nothing else to rotate it with, but I didn't think it would be a big deal.  Then I thought about dinners.  Everything I had made for the past days had garlic in some form.  Garlic is on her mild list but before we started her new diet I cooked with garlic ALL THE TIME.  Think about it.  How many recipes of yours don't call for garlic?  I could probably count it on one hand.  So I'm starting to think that maybe garlic should be on her moderate list.  Remember, casein (dairy) and gluten were just mild reactions but since she had them everyday they were put on the moderate list. 

I emailed Amy last night and asked her thoughts about putting garlic on her moderate list and avoiding the hazelnut.  She agreed with me and thought it would be a good idea.  We're going to go ahead and do it.  Then we'll be able to see how she acts.  If nothing changes then maybe it's something else that we need to change.  Maybe I need to rotate her meals more.   We won't stop until we are sure. 

I used to think, I can't wait until this diet is over.  There is still some things that I really can't wait to introduce to her again. Dairy is one, corn is another because there is cornstarch in so much.  I think, though, that I will keep doing most of the diet forever.  It really isn't too hard.  There is so much that you can do. It makes sense to me.  It makes sense to me to give her more substance to her snacks instead of just a fruit snack or some crackers so that she doesn't crash during the day and get upset. There is a lot of prejudice when it comes to gluten free or high fructose corn syrup or artificial flavors.  I even had those same prejudices.  We can live without soda though.  We don't have to have candy or dessert after every meal. We can live without all the added stuff in pre packaged stuff.   There are substitutes for those anyways, homemade always tastes better.

 I want to get to where she's not sad that she can't have sugary things and she would choose for herself to have fruit instead or nuts instead.  Food isn't as important to me as having a happy family is.  I hope that with these little tweaks we can begin moving forward again and continue on with success and having a happy, healthy Kalie.