Histamine Elimination: Rice, Potatoes, Repeat

Hi and welcome to this week’s instalment of what’s on my plate, health and nutrition updates and smile-provoking experiences.
What’s New
Well, what a challenging week! I started my histamine elimination diet[1], opting for super strict, meaning only rice, potatoes, salt and sugar[2] on the menu for seven days straight. I’d planned to fast for the first three days, because I felt so yuck after last week’s indulgences. But I soon changed my mind when I realised I’d also have to contend with caffeine withdrawal, since coffee, black and green teas and chocolate were being eliminated. Instead I opted for one meal a day until Thursday.
The worst of the caffeine withdrawal symptoms were over the first five days, manifesting as headaches, fatigue (I kept falling asleep during the day) and some gut discomfort. I’d gradually reduced my coffee intake leading up to the elimination diet, but clearly not enough. In hindsight (don’t you just love it), I should have gone through the caffeine withdrawal prior to starting the diet. Also, this would have helped me cope with the rhinitis, as I caved into taking antihistamines for those five days, because I couldn’t deal with those symptoms on top of the withdrawals.
Food and Nutrition
It was my most boring week ever of food I’m afraid. I literally just ate rice and potatoes all week, with salt added for flavour. I tried adding a little sugar a couple of times because it was ‘allowed’, but decided I wasn’t really into and it wasn’t necessary as I was eating carbohydrates anyway (more info on carbs here). Rice was either brown, white or cracker form. Potatoes were either steamed, baked or oven wedges without any oil. Below is a collage of my whole week’s meals – the top row is what I ate Monday through to Wednesday. The other rows are each day of the week in succession:

Alcohol
No alcohol – just water all week. I tended to opt for a large mug of boiled water, just because it felt more comforting:

Exercise
There was absolutely no exercise. I spent most of my time in bed napping on-and-off:

Weight, BMI and Fat Results
I lost 5.6 lb (2.5 kg) in just one week, taking my BMI down to 29.0 (back to overweight from last week’s return to obese) and my body fat reduced by 2.7% to 39% – lovely. Now, I know my results for the week look pretty impressive, but that’s to be expected given my minimal food intake Monday to Wednesday and my limited diet of just potatoes and rice. I’m not going to lie – of course I enjoyed seeing my numbers drop so much, especially after last week’s gain:

Positive Thinking: What Made Watson Smile
As I said earlier, it was an incredibly challenging week, so it’s nice to look at the positive experiences. Surprisingly, there were quite a few smile-provokers:
Cracking Shoulder:
My highlight has to be when my right shoulder cracked loudly and re-aligned itself correctly after a couple of weeks knowing it wasn’t in the right place (hypermobility issues). The pain had been nearing unbearable – it felt like all the ligaments and tendons in my arm were stretching in the wrong direction when I moved it and I was thinking I’d need to seek medical help. The relief when it realigned was immense – it’s still sore, but I can cope with that:

Knotty Hair Relief:
Recently my hair had become annoyingly knotty on the ends, but I don’t feel comfortable going to a hairdresser salon yet. So, I entrusted Mum with the scissors and said, ‘go for it’. I think she did a decent job, not that I’ve looked at it closely:

More Learning – Cardiometabolic Health:
Yep, more learning for me. This week’s MyNutriWeb continuing professional development was part two of ‘Cardiometabolic Health and Plant Based Eating’. I’m, so loving the increased promotion of plant-based eating for healthy ageing. The key recommendations were not to get caught up on individual nutrients and instead look at dietary patterns. Also, it’s important to choose a diet you feel you can adhere to best. The recommended diets we looked at were Mediterranean, Vegetarian (ranging from vegan to flexitarian) and Nordic:

My Brian:
I don’t have a Brian, but I do have a brain. I was amused to see this game advertising brain health development as it had a key spelling mistake, which didn’t promote any confidence in me that it would improve my brain. Oh, and that below figure of 72 wasn’t my brain age! – Maybe it was Brian’s?:

1,000 Likes – Yay!:
Wow, I’ve reached 1,000 Likes. Thank you so much to everyone who has pressed that Like button, especially to those who read my posts – sometimes you just get Likes without your post being read, with the expectation to return those Likes. Just so that you know, I never Like a post unless I’ve read it first:

I hope you enjoyed this week’s ‘What’s on Watson’s Plate’. Please feel free to follow my bite-sized updates on Instagram or Facebook. See you next Wednesday for another catch up.
References
1. Swiss Interest Group Histamine Intolerance (SIGHI), 2016. Food Compatibility List.
2. Swiss Interest Group Histamine Intolerance (SIGHI), 2020. SIGHI-Leaflet Histamine Intolerance: Dietary Change.
Vodka!!!!!!!!!!! Isn’t that made from potatoes??? Isn’t that awful that that was the second thing I thought of…for you to eat…right after French Fries (chips)? 😂 But I suppose you couldn’t ‘fry’ the potatoes. I don’t know how you did it…but congratulations!! Did you mother just trim your hair? You know I cut all of mine off…watched Rhina on YouTube. She was so good. Spoke Japanese the whole time…but that’s okay…the music was cool. In case you are inspired to cut more hair. You sound real positive and well… so that’s good. Can’t wait until next week…remember…Vodka…the liquid potato;)
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Hahaha😆, vodka used to be my drink of choice and it will become it again when I’m okay to include some booze. Apparently any alcohol can be a trigger to histamine release, so I’ll have to limit how often I have it. I love fries and now that I can use some oil I’ll probably have fries at some point – good shout 👍 Mum just trimmed my hair – I’ve never had short hair – the shortest was shoulder length a few years back ☺
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❤️❤️
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Wow, I am surprised. You did tell me that it is gonna be different lol, but I did not expect it to be so strict. How did eating all carb affect you? Are you allowed to have flavouring such as stock cube or anything like that?
And lol, if I am the owner of the company which developed Word Crush, I would fire anyone who let that adverts happened. Poor old Brian cannot take such humiliation… :DD
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It was a tough week – but it was only super strict for one week at least. It wasn’t great not having as much fibre as usual, if you know what I mean 😳 This week has been miles better – still restricted, but better. Loads of my favourite foods are out for now, but hopefully I can reintroduce some eventually. I don’t think I can use stock cubes at the moment. Rapeseed oil and sweet paprika are my saviours, as I can’t have any preserved sauces and no tomatoes even, so I can’t make it fresh. I’m going to try a carrot and beetroot sauce at some point to have with corn or rice pasta. The next post’s pictures will be more interesting ☺
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Can’t wait to see your next surprise ❤ ❤
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