Keepin' it Clean

Here's the backstory:

I married a guy from West Texas.  He was born in Slaton, TX, just outside of Lubbock.  He lived there with his parents, also born and raised in the area.  He also spent a lot of his life in Amarillo, TX.  His dad was a cowboy on a ranch, so it was ranch food they ate:  chicken fried steak, chicken and dumplings, biscuits and gravy, mashed potatoes, you get the idea...stick-to-yer-ribs southern home cookin'.

Then he met me.

I was raised by Europeans.  My mother is from France.  My father is a New Yorker, born and bred, to parents from Greece and Spain. 

I will eat anything, as long as it has nothing to do with bleu cheese or hazel nuts.

Craig?  Well.  Huh.  Let's just say being married to him has brought along its challenges as they relate to food.  The man is allergic to everything on the planet except for dogs.  And after reading that statement, you'd think we had dogs, but we don't.  We have five cats.  To which he's allergic.  

So when you take his allergies and couple them with his perception of most vegetables, you get frustrated. I mean I get frustrated. What do you do when you're trying to cook a healthy meal and your husband declares that broccoli smells and tastes like butthole?  What do you DO with that?!?  I have no idea what happened in his life that would allow him to make such a reference, and I'm not sure I WANT to know, but there it is nonetheless.

We've been married for going on 7 years, together for a total of 14 years.  This is what I've been dealing with in that time.  I don't cook with mushrooms (butthole), I don't cook with broccoli (butthole), I don't cook with a lot of things...but I love him, I'll do what I need to do to make sure the man eats.  It's the least I can do.

Recently, though, his allergies had taken on a whole new dimension.  We live in the beautiful town of Austin, TX, which also happens to be the Allergy Capital of the World (we like to tout things like that:  Live Music Capital of the World, Allergy Capital of the World. We're just so awesome).  Every winter, we get to suffer through Cedar Fever season.  And it's no fun.  The majority of the city's population is sick with allergies.  But this winter, it wasn't just Cedar Fever for Craig.  It was Alopecia Areata, also referred to as spot baldness.  The most common type of alopecia areata involves hair loss in one or more round spots on the scalp, and that's exactly what Craig had.  A round patch of hair was just.....gone.  


From Wiki - "The condition is thought to be an autoimmune disorder in which the body attacks its own hair follicles and suppresses or stops hair growth."  

Add to this Craig's family history of gastrointestinal disorders like Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis.  He had been having some major bouts...MAJOR bouts.  He just wasn't well.

And then a friend of ours told us about the book Clean by Alejandro Junger.  She told us we needed to do this program immediately.  So I bought the book.  Immediately.


A lot of what I read wasn't news to me.  We're subjected to all kinds of toxins every day, in our food, in the air, in the things we use to store our food, in our paper towels, in our cleaning products, in the soap and shampoos we use, in our water.  It's incredible.  And incredibly scary.

None of this could possibly be good for us.  None of it.  Its evidence is everywhere:  cancer, allergies, gastrointestinal disorders, depression, obesity.  You or someone you know has had or has at least one of these things.

In Craig's case, he's got two of them.  In my case, I could stand to lose a few pounds.  And I've been trying really, really hard for the last year.  Ask anyone - they'll tell you - I've been trying.  And I've managed to lose 15 lbs from my heaviest weight, which I hit shortly after having my daughter.  But I've hit a wall.  I've done The Metabolism Miracle, I went to a registered dietitian, I do cardio kickboxing at least four times a week and strength training at least once a week.  I've lost 20.5 inches total, so that's awesome. But I've been stuck there since November.  I can't lose weight to save my life, but apparently I might just die trying.  What the hell?

But my reasons for doing this aren't as important as Craig's reasons.  We really needed to get to the bottom of what was causing his body to go haywire.  The crux of this program is to eliminate any potential allergens from the diet for at least a three week period.  To rid the body of all the crap, to reset it, to give it a rest so that it can get back to working the way it was designed to work. Then we'll slowly re-introduce those things that he used to eat all the time. If he has a negative reaction, we know what to cut out of the diet for good.  

Sounds logical. Sounds easy enough, right?  Ha! You fool! Did you forget who I married?!?  The man who would not eat broccoli...