clean eating, elimination dieting, and eczema

There were more than a few comments regarding my husband’s clean eating and eczema from my Monday post. I thought I would go a little more into detail for you all. He infrequently blogs too so you can see a couple of posts he has been doing on his process.

For the five years I have known the guy he has had eczema, bad allergies (even had to have polyp surgery), and an interesting tummy… but he also has consumed a freakton of coffee and sugar from crap foods the entire time I have known him. He knows some of this stuff is related to his diet. For January ’09 he wanted to cleanse and do an elimination diet. I began doing a lot of research and planned a 2-week clean eating program of foods that were not considered likely culprits for allergens, then a series of elimination rounds running 3 days each of introduced foods round-robin style.
Click here to read more.

My main source for the clean eating was the winter cleanse from The New Detox diet wherein I would get 1200 calories a day and he would get 1600 calories a day. I was supportive then and doing it with him. Here is the main book we used.

Click here for a google reader preview of this book.

In this 2009 attempt my husband was curled up in the fetal position for a couple of days withdrawing from sugar and caffeine, then running between slightly stupid and being a bitchy, brat. It was not fun. At the end of 7 days we planned to go out to eat clean at an Ethiopian restaurant. While at dinner he showed me a picture phone image of a giant slice of savory, greasy pizza… he had broken his clean eating program already. I was done. Screw that. I was only doing this diet to support him. He was on his own. He never did any elimination rounds, he went back to his sugar, coffee, and everything else he was originally concerned about.

So here we are Spring 2010. His eczema can be off the charts, his allergies still questionable, his tummy bloat really bothering him… and looming fatherhood on the horizon. I think the baby arriving in a couple of months has been a huge impetus for him to take care of the things in his control like his diet. So he has returned to the idea of clean eating and elimination dieting. He slowly worked on weaning himself off coffee and sugar for about 2 weeks to avoid the fetal position couch monster he was last year. Then he began his clean eating program. We used our chalkboard cabinets to divide foods into no, maybe, and yes categories based primarily on The New Detox Diet again.

He was strict following this for one week (Sunday night to Sunday morning) and the results were an 8 pound weight loss, a svelte non-bloated tummy, some fatigue, some bitchiness, and I really wish I had a picture of the eczema on his hands from before (because they were scary tragic) because his eczema has drastically reduced.

They look almost normal now. It is amazing! The only thing he has changed has been his diet. He still uses the shea and german chamomile mix we picked up from the apothecary that has improved his eczema a little on its own.

So now he is not writing down what he introduces or the duration as he plays with the elimination portion of his diet. He is playing though. His intuition is telling him eggs are the eczema culprit so I know this weekend he is planning to eat huge omelettes on both days in the morning to see if he has a flare up. He experimented on himself with some sugar the other day (office candy) and it did not go well. He played with some coffee and that also gave his tummy some gurgles. Hopefully his hit or miss, non-chalant elimination will provide useful results for his long-term diet. I’ll keep you all posted. If eggs are the eczema answer for him I’ll be sad because the man does love himself a good omelette and muffin but I know how to vegan those out if it comes to that.