What is normal?

Aug. 23, 2014

Three days on food combining, and I’m not sold. I’ve been doing fruit for breakfast, carbs and non-starchy veggies for lunch, and protein and veggies for dinner. The first day, I was amazed – no bloating or discomfort at all, and the next day I was down 1.2 pounds. Yesterday I was back up 1.2 pounds, and today I was the same. Yesterday I had some bloating and gas, and today I had a lot of bloating, quite a bit more gas. During dinner tonight (Mi Cocina – tilapia tacos without tortillas, shredded lettuce & avocado, and sautéed spinach) my stomach started to churn, and I needed to use the bathroom desperately by the time we got home. And the last two days my ribs have been hurting bad again.

The problem is, every “food combining” source has different recommendations, and even the guidelines that match don’t make sense. They say to eat fruit alone, don’t eat protein and starches at the same meal, and no dairy. Most say to avoid onions and garlic, and many say to eliminate nightshades – tomatoes, onions, potatoes, all kinds of peppers. Um, what does that leave for flavor? I can’t gag down kale, chickory and many of the allowed non-starchy-veggies, especially if they aren’t seasoned with onions or garlic. They allow no legumes because they are starch and protein combined, and prohibit more than one protein at a meal. They like grain-like seeds such as quinoa, millet and buckwheat, but those are starch-protein, so how do you eat those?

They say it’s good to combine good fats with all foods, but not very much fat. Yogurt is OK (all cultured foods are good) and many say that yogurt is good paired with acid fruit. What? I thought fruit was to be eaten alone? They say avocados are great, but they categorize avocados as protein, which you can only eat with a vegetable, so that’s your protein meal. Not very satisfying! Same things with nuts. You could eat some of these things by themselves between meals, except that you’re supposed to wait two hours after a fruit, three hours after a starchy meal, and four hours after a protein meal before eating anything else. That pretty much means three meals a day with no snacks in between. This seems too complicated and impractical unless it really does aid digestion and gut health; but I’m more bloated and uncomfortable today than before I tried combining foods!

Now, maybe I just need to experiment with what works for me. Maybe adding natural sauerkraut was too much too soon, considering I recently added another probiotic and a soil-based probiotic/prebiotic, and I started taking plaintain starch. I’ve added all the new things in small doses (for at least two weeks before starting food combing), as they can be a lot for an unhealthy gut, but perhaps I need to back off of some of them and add one thing at a time. I was handling all of them just fine until I started combining foods. Aaaargh!