Alternative Strategies

Last night I was searching the internet for anything that might be relevant to my current symptoms. In the process I stumbled upon a few items of interest:

1. Regular exercise is important for digestive health (e.g. bowel transit time).
2. Drinking plenty of fluids can reduce constipation by flushing out your system.
3. Eating too fast and not chewing food completely can lead to bloating (by swallowing air).

This morning I tried #1 with a 30 minute run before work. Usually I'm not too excited about exercise first thing in the morning, but it was actually quite refreshing. Maybe I'll try this more often.

I also experimented with #3, and was only half-surprised that it took serious concentration to really chew my food completely. I knew I had been eating very fast, but it made me realize that I was swallowing large chunks of food in my haste, and probably swallowing air too. My meals also took much longer to eat, which I suppose is a necessary consequence of chewing more. This could teach me some patience. Even if it's not the core problem, it seems like a good idea anyway.

Gluten and Rice

The past week has been a roller coaster of confusion. After recovering from the pasta/bread incident (and waiting a few extra days), I started experimenting with rice. Unfortunately, I was a little sloppy and also experimented with some corn and candy within the same timeframe. At first it seemed to be okay, but now the bloated feelings are back. And now I don't know whether it was the rice, corn, or sugar. The worst of it could possibly even be attributed to the wheat-based soy sauce I had with the sushi 3 nights ago. However I had some unpleasant symptoms a full day before that, after eating a bunch of candy and some corn tortillas. So it's probably not just the soy sauce, which makes me sad. Maybe I just shouldn't eat a whole bag of skittles in a single sitting...before lunch. I have missed sweets so much that it's hard to submit to reasonable portion sizes when I start eating sugar.

Although my initial temptation is to stop eating all the new things and go back to meat, veggies, and fruit for a while, that means starting over. It seems better to keep the rice experiment going but remove the candy and corn components and wait to see if I start feeling better by the end of the week. If it turns out that I have a problem with rice, I would expect the bloated symptoms to continue or worsen, at which point I would know and could stop the experiment. Otherwise, if I start feeling better in a few days I can assume that rice is okay and it was the soy sauce, candy, or corn that caused a problem. When my belly feels all puffy and sore, it's hard not to run away back to the (maybe) safe haven of my low carb diet. But that's depressing for other reasons. It seems like the lesser of the two evils is to press on and just exercise more self control to really only introduce one new food at a time.