Five weeks of clean paleo eating (with mostly gluten free cheats)... down the drain.
It wasn't hard to eat paleo for that long as I was feeling good on a daily basis, including the WODs. Once in a while, I'd crack and eat some sweet-marinated meats or pieces of 75% dark chocolate but for the most part, was pretty good. The few days leading up to vacation was breaking down my will as I'd been working in a stressful environment, not sleeping adequately, and then, to top it all off, the idea of eating stuff I wanted around my birthday/on vacation. Damn it, I was going to relax on vacation!
And it WAS a wonderful vacation! We ate plenty of southwestern (Mexican) food to our hearts' content. I ate desserts! I had wedding cake! And I even had a tres leches cake that wasn't very good and ended up regretting. But it was okay because I was on vacation.
Then, towards the end of last week and at its worse yesterday, it hit me: I have leaky gut. I must have broken down whatever was protecting my stomach from absorbing the stuff I shouldn't be absorbing from eating gluten here and there all week and boy, was I paying for it. I was so uncomfortable and all the stupid GI issues the paleo diet had gotten rid of, was back. The bloating sucked. Who knew that all it took was one week of bad eating to undo five weeks of paleo??
I never realized how super sensitive to gluten I was but even worse, even after I had taken the gluten down a few notches, it wrecked havoc on my stomach and I'm still trying to figure out how many days of eating clean before that leaky gut goes away. Imagine if it took only 1 week to break down 5 weeks of paleo eating, how many weeks of paleo eating will it take to undo a lifetime of abuse?
Nobody said it was easy but at least now, I've learned my lesson and am consciously aware of what it takes. Wish me luck as I try to stay as clean as possible over the next two weeks in Hong Kong...
