Health Diary Week 53: Food, Exercise and a Positive Mind

Histamine Elimination: Rice, Potatoes, Repeat

Rice, Potatoes, Repeat

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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:

Week 53 Meals: Potatoes and rice – Very beige!

Alcohol

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

Week 53: Lots of mugs of boiled water

Exercise

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

Mine and Claudia’s most extravagant stay (by far) in South America (1 night, Quito, Ecuador) before heading off to the Galapagos Islands (2008)

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:

Week 53 Results: Weight, BMI and Body Fat

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:

Shoulder and arm pain – ouch. Image: Tumisu, Pixabay

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:

Knotty hair relief hair trim. Image: sille23, Pixabay

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:

MyNutriWeb CPD: Cardiometabolic Health & Plant Based Eating. Images: MyNutriWeb Instagram

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?:

Advertised game: Reduce your brian age! Image: Word Crush

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:

1,000 Likes on WordPress – Thank you 😊

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.

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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.

More from What’s on Watson’s Plate:

• Week 52: One Year Review: Let’s Start at the Very Beginning…
• Week 51: Once Upon a Time… in Watson World
• Week 50: Coming Soon…
• Week 49: My Inner Mermaid
• Week 0: The Starting Point (I’ve got to do this!)