wheat

PreviLean has been a bit of a miracle for me. I gave up all the foods I am sensitive to and haven’t had indigestion since day three. For the past few years I’ve taken a Prevacid a day, I’d (incorrectly) assumed the heartburn was because of the many medications I take for RA. I’ve also lost four pounds without eating less.

So I’m establishing the fact the PreviLean has been good to me. The test seems to have been quite accurate, the counseling sessions with a nutritionist are amazing and she sends me pages of recipes that include only foods I can eat.

Nothing could be easier, right?

Well, my son had a birthday and he wanted a chocolate hazelnut cake. Why? Because he has great taste, that’s why. I did what any reasonable woman would do. I went on Google Plus and asked for recipes. Anirban Banerjee said he’d just tried a recipe from a BBC website and directed me to it. It looked simple enough and the ingredients were spot on so I gave it a go.

After a few hours of roasting hazelnuts, separating eggs and melting chocolate I had a flour-less chocolate and hazelnut cake that smelled like heaven. You could practically hear an angels harp when you stood over it. I made Alexander’s other favorites for dinner: ribs, tri tip, baked potatoes and corn. Of course none of this is any good unless you add my homemade BBQ sauce. I assure you that you don’t want to know how BBQ sauce is made, it’s sugar, honey and sugary things with a little ginger and garlic.

So we have a favorite dinner that has a few options for me that don’t include sugar and a dessert that a smart woman would skip. I’m not smart.

I could’ve eaten the tri tip and skipped the sugared ribs but I didn’t because ribs are delicious. After having strayed from my PreviLean plan with ribs (sugar is something I’m to avoid) I figured I’d have a slice of cake. It tasted better than it smelled which is something I’d never dreamed would be possible.

The next morning we packed the kids up (plus a friend for Alexander) and took off to have two days on the beach in Ventura. I packed tons of snacks for myself knowing that restaurant eating can be challenging on a good day. Well, when I had a 2pm bloody mary on Saturday good judgement went out the window. Dinner was a PreviLean disaster. It had never dawned on me that anyone would grill swordfish in butter (I’m off dairy). So now my food plan (it’s not a diet) is ruined two days in a row and when the kids want to order room service for dessert I’m feeling defeated anyhow and I order carrot cake that doesn’t even taste that great but I eat anyhow.

Sunday I wake up with a headache and no sense of what I can attribute it to. I’m not hung over, I’ve hardly had a drink. I’m thinking the butter, flour, sugar combo has packed a whallop so I add some Advil into the mix of pills I take every morning. The Advil does nothing to ease the pain so I go off the rails and eat a few bites of my daughter’s burger, bun and all.

I can’t say with certainty that the wheat is what made my head feel like it was exploding but I’m not going to be eating wheat again anytime soon. My headache lasted the whole day Sunday and I’m dutifully back to eating from the green column today.

The big bummer is that four pounds I’d lost. Guess what? I found two of them this weekend.