#autoimmunepaleo

AIP stands for Autoimmune Paleo. The paleo diet eliminates processed foods/sugars, legumes (beans, peanuts), alcohol, dairy, and grains (corn, wheat, quinoa). The elimination of these foods is due to their inflammatory properties. If you're celiac, many of these foods have similar make-ups to gluten and cause reactions even though they are technically gluten free. This is called cross- reactivity.

The Autoimmune Paleo diet takes Paleo a step further. It additionally eliminates night shades (peppers, tomatoes, eggplant), nuts, seeds, white potatoes, and eggs. These foods aren't typically problematic for people without autoimmune conditions, but can cause additional inflammatory responses for people with autoimmune diseases and conditions.

The Autoimmune Paleo diet is not meant to be a permanent diet. It is meant to be a temporary diet that gives the body adequate time to heal and effectively reduce inflammation. AIP paired with probiotics and collagen supplement intake will help healing progress even further.

15.11.2019

Warning, long caption ahead: I wanted to share this story for a while. Some of you may know that less than two years ago I have been diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. I won’t go into great detail about this since it would be a much longer story in which I would explain all the symptoms, some science behind it (at least my understanding of it) and I would definitely need many more characters than this caption allows.  Instead, I want to talk about one of the symptoms of Hypothyroidism, which is weight gain.  Feeling somewhat overweight has been part of my mentality since early teens. Starting with one of my classmates gasping in sports class in seventh grade at the sight of my belly and ending with partners plain asking me to lose weight for them, weight issues have been consistently on my mind. Growing up has brought me some maturity about it and I managed to put a stop to a lot of negative behaviour from my teens like comparing myself with other women (”is she skinnier than I am?”) or general emotional flagellation and guilt after eating.  However, one of the symptoms of Hashimoto’s is weight gain or inability to lose weight. So, basically, my old fear re-igniting. It is my understanding that despite the thyroid supplementation which results in blood test results within the healthy parameters, all autoimmune patients still suffer from one or two of the list of symptoms. In my case, it’s the weight gain.  I have tried everything (within the limits of decency - aka no weird Mexican tapeworm sold by Creed). I was eating under 1200 calories per day, sometimes even 800 (no carbs, no sugars, avoiding potential triggering foods). I was exercising three times a week (not too intensively because it’s not recommended for hypothyroidism). Just trust me when I say that I tried systematically and methodically to work on this. The scale just wouldn’t budge. This resulted in hope loss, emotional overeating (because nothing works, so whatever) and not exercising any more. I would gain 2-3 more kilos, then motivate myself again, then not lose that weight, then binge eating again and so on. You see the circle, right? Today I finally went to a dietician. Telling her my story and calculating together with her, I realized that in less than 2 years I gained 8 kilos. This is clearly no longer a matter of eating one too many crisps when watching a film with my husband once a month or having a second serving of my mother-in-law’s food. There is something going on.  At the end of November, I will have some food intolerance tests done to determine if perhaps one group of foods is causing a leaky gut or triggering my antibodies and slowing down my metabolism. I know the tests are not 100% scientifical, but at this point, this is my last resort. At the beginning of 2020, I should be getting the results and start on an AIP diet (Autoimmune Protocol diet) which will exclude the foods pointed by the test.  Hopefully, this will work and I will see some progress for the first time in months.  Thank you for reading this far, I know this isn’t such a scandalous confession, but it took me a long time to be able to share this with other people.

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Today is my first day on AIP and this is something I wanted to post on this blog, because this is a big part of me becoming a fitter and healthier version of me. 

So, What is Autoimmune Protocol? Long story short, AIP is an elimination diet where you go from a paleo diet and eliminate even more things. The things that are eliminated are foods that most people with an autoimmune disease can react on. For example: Eggs, nuts, all grains, dairy, nightshades (like eggplant, tomato, potatoes) and sugar. You do the elimination diet for 30-90 days and then start to reintroduce foods.

What do I eat? Tbh, I’m still kind of unsure about this part. I know what is and isn’t allowed but how I make dishes based on that is a bit of a trial and error thing. Most of the recipes I find is very American and some of the things are hard to or even impossible to find here in Sweden, so I’m basically making it up as I go. 

Like, I made some sweet potato muffins yesterday, so I had some easy to go breakfast. It was good. But, I need to figure out perfect ratios, so I’ll probably do more until I perfect it and then I might post a recipe. 

Otherwise most recipes I find are kind of nice, but I still need to change them up because the few staples in the AIP pantry is coconut milk, a thing I detest. Its awful and I don’t like it, so I need to figure out how to make it un-coconut-y. 

I will keep updating here with what I make and how it goes. 

But the pasta? The bread? The potato? The foods? Well, I honestly won’t really miss any of those. I quit gluten almost 5 months ago and I felt better. Sure I do miss bread at times. I rarely eat potatoes unless its fries and I can make sweet potato fries instead. And I do prefer those.

But let’s be honest, the sugar will be a huge pain in the ass. Going from eating sugar all day, every day and basically eating candy for dinner to not eat it at all and skip all added sugars in everything. It’ll be hard. But I’ll manage. I do cook most of my food from scratch so it will be good. 

How do I know it helps? I will journal. Bestie gave me an amazing Journal, with flamingos and I’ll post a pic of it here later. I do love it. In that journal I’ll write down all the symptoms I do have, what changes, general mood and such things.

Am I excited? I actually am. Like, its weird, but if it makes my stomach not hate me I’m all for it. Even if it means giving up candy and tomatoes. 

Baby arugula, grapes, grilled chicken, vinaigrette.