What's eating you?

For the past week, I've been trying a new approach to my stomach ailments: changing my diet. I've gone on a detox diet in hopes that it'll clean out whatever is messing up my system.

List of things I CAN eat:
whole grains
chicken
turkey
fish
vegetables
fruit

List of things I CAN'T eat:
processed food
dairy
beef
pork
salt
sugar
anything that tastes good
oil of any kind

Until I started this diet, I never thought I was ruled by food. However, I am going NUTS!! I do not use salt in my cooking, so I didn't think that would be a big deal. Except that salt is in just about everything. I rely heavily on processed food-quick meals to get my family going. And dairy?! I could care less about milk, but losing my beloved CHEESE is killing me!!

It's also the simple things, like being able to make and eat a simple sandwich. No mayo, mustard, ketchup, or any kind of dressing for me. ICK. Why bother?

There's also a lack of variety. On one hand, it speaks of my inability as a cook, but on the other hand, I've been searching for good recipes with foods I CAN eat, and there's not a lot out there. We've eaten so much rice, I think my kiddos are going to be speaking chinese any day now. My husband even gagged down some mahi-mahi because fish is on my list and I was getting sick of poultry.

Mostly, though, I miss things like the occasional bit of chocolate or sweet treat. I miss the crunch of all the "bad" snack foods. I miss the way carbs fill me up. I miss not having to eat every couple of hours because health foods just don't last as long.

Fortunately, it's only a two week cleanse, and even though I had a day of being "bad" on Saturday (one doughnut, two slices of pizza-hey, I was at work! It was free food!), I am officially done THIS Saturday. I won't go back to being completely bad, and it was nice finding out things like making my husband eat mahi-mahi really won't kill anyone, but dangit, I'm going to eat me some REAL food!