AIP Update: 2 Weeks In

I'm on day 17 of the AIP diet.  Here's an update on how it's going, in case you're thinking of trying it yourself, or maybe are just a weird diet-voyeur.  (No judgment here!)  I'll do it report card-style, because Lisa Simpson is my spirit animal.



Fidelity to the diet: A-

• I have been eating solely meat, veggies, and fruit.  However, I have made mistakes with spices and peppers, like when I used cumin. (I realized last week that cumin comes from seeds).  I have also willingly eaten bell peppers and little bits of tomatoes, which are also on the "No" list, when they've been served in my food.
• Whenever Joe and I have eaten out, we've either gone to bbq places or steakhouses, figuring we have the best shot there of finding food I can eat.  (What a sacrifice!  We even had to suffer through a meal at a Brazilian steakhouse last week.  It's been rough.)
• Speaking of BBQ, I have cheated and eaten BBQ sauce.  That's probably the most added sugar I've had in over two weeks.
• I've patiently picked every shred of cheese out of store-bought salads, and I've thrown away every crouton and egg slice that's come my way.
• I've carried baked sweet potatoes and fruit in my hydration pack during long runs, instead of Honeystinger waffles or Gu Chews.
• I've been in several all-day meetings where they served lunch, and I've either 1) brought my own lunch, aka dried beef, baked sweet potato, and fruit, or 2) scavenged the catering table for deli meat and iceberg lettuce while my co-workers enjoyed sandwiches and dessert.
• I have ignored the persistent food cravings saying, "Just one Coke Zero won't hurt you.  Doesn't ice cream sound great right now?  That Pop-Tart would really help fuel your run on the Powerlines."*

*Note: Since starting this diet and cutting out all added sugar, I've had weirdly specific sugar cravings.  After taking a shower, I thought my towel smelled like a donut.  During a run, I thought I smelled Diet Dr. Pepper.  At this moment, I'd really like to eat a brown Tootsie Pop.

Calorie management for running performance: B

• My first couple runs while on the diet, I felt pretty lethargic.  They've improved since then, maybe because I've started eating sweet potatoes, which have 27g of carbohydrates per cup.  
• This past weekend, I did two moderately long runs: a 3.5-hour run and a 2.5-hour run, both at Bandera.  The first one was a night run, after dinner.  I ate one apple during the run, and felt good the entire time.  The second was a morning run, after a breakfast of vegetables and fruit, and I didn't consume anything during the run.  I bonked hard enough that I couldn't think clearly toward the end, which resulted in this conversation:

          Joe (quoting The Simpsons): "Now, let's all celebrate with a cool glass of turnip juice."

          Me: Have you ever had a tune -- tunip -- tune-up?  What's that word again?

          Joe: Um . . . 

Enthusiasm for continuing on AIP: B

• After the month-long experiment is over, I would like to continue avoiding grains and dairy and only eating whole foods -- for the most part.  I do miss going to Sammy's for an omelet with Joe on Sunday mornings, and I miss trying out different restaurants (usually carb-heavy ones) during our once-a-week lunch together.  So right now I'm thinking those two meals a week could be the exceptions to the rule.  I definitely will let myself eat nuts, spices, and peppers again without restraint once this experiment is complete.
• One AIP website I was reading said something like, "Everyone makes mistakes on the AIP diet.  It's nothing to worry about.  But you do need to start over from scratch when this happens."  Joe and I have had fun joking about that: "Don't worry about the report you messed up.  Everyone makes mistakes.  But you're fired; go clean out your desk."  As far as this diet goes, I am happy to acknowledge that I've made mistakes, and happy to try to do better going forward, but there's no way I'm starting again from day one.

Another note: Strength and conditioning coach extraordinaire Phil reminded me that AIP is about eliminating all causes of inflammation from the body.  Thus, he told me, doing 20 miles of hill repeats is not AIP.  That kind of thing causes stress and inflammation.  So the fact that I'm still running, in combination with the mistakes and exceptions I've made in the diet, means I'm not a perfect model of the auto-immune protocol.  And I'm okay with that.  Overall midterm grade: B.

Experiment of one: AIP

On Saturday, I started the autoimmune protocol (AIP) diet.  So far, my progress has followed the usual steps: 1) start diet, 2) post food pic on Insta, 3) talk about diet with friends.  The next step is clearly: 4) blog about diet.

Seriously, though, a couple friends have asked me to blog about the diet occasionally over the next month, because they're interested to hear about someone's -- particularly, an ultrarunner's -- experience.  I figured that's a good idea, in case it could be useful to someone else.  Of course, there's the caveat that we are each an experiment of one; what works for me might not necessarily work for you, and vice versa.  Here's my story so far:

My reasons for starting AIP
For a year or two, I lived a fairly no-grain, no-added-sugar lifestyle.  I was happy eating the same foods (scrambled eggs, smoothies, carrots and hummus) day in and day out, for multiple meals a day.  Then Joe and I started dating, and things became more complicated -- in a good way.  I wasn't going to serve him a smoothie for dinner when he came over to my place, and I surely wasn't going to turn down whatever he served me at his.  And if we took the girls out for ice cream and everyone else was getting one, it would feel antisocial to refuse . . . It was fun, yet from there it was a shockingly quick spiral into eating 1,500 calorie meals at Carl's Jr. on a quasi-regular basis.

Sometime in the midst of this, my doctor went over some lab results with me, and informed me that one marker, associated with adrenal levels, was outside of the normal range, and he recommended that I try AIP.  Naturally, I blew him off.  I'd heard of the protocol from my strength and conditioning coach, who does it occasionally for a month at a time, and it sounded awful.  No grain, no dairy, no hummus?  No thanks.

However, ever since the Lone Star 100 in February, I have felt like I'm eating junk all the time.  I gained about 5 pounds, and I was unhappy with myself.  Some of my runs have felt terrible, and sometimes it's hard even climbing the stairs up to my apartment.  It's difficult to pinpoint the causes of those last two things: I know I've been racing ultras too frequently; I've suffered from iron-deficiency anemia in the past; I donate blood regularly.  All of those things could be factors in my fatigue.  But I feel like I'm doing what I can about the iron, taking a supplement every day.  So hitting the "reset" button on my diet seemed like the next step in getting healthier and hopefully feeling better.  Of course, I could have chosen a diet that involved moderation, but that's actually harder for me than a strict elimination protocol; for better or worse, I'm kind of an "all or nothing" person.  So for the next month, I'm all in.

Learning curve
Going to H-E-B the night before I started the protocol, I wasn't sure what to get.  Fortunately, I had these little cheat sheets to guide me:

I ended up getting lots of vegetables, some frozen grilled chicken strips, avocados, and fruit.  It's been interesting trying new combinations of foods.  I've found I hate plain avocado, but I really like it combined with cilantro, cumin, and salt, served on cucumber slices.  I have a bland enough palate that chicken and broccoli tastes fine.  And I've just realized that coconut milk isn't prohibited, so I'm thinking about reverting back to my old smoothie ways.

1 avocado, 2 tbs cilantro, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp salt

I have had a couple accidental cheat moments already -- eating guacamole that had some ground-up bell pepper in it (oops), using seasoning that had paprika and sugar (oops) -- but those seem like small errors in the big picture.  I'm really trying to be faithful to the protocol, so that it can give me useful information about what foods make me feel better, and which might have a detrimental effect.

Observations so far
Today is only day 4 of the protocol.  Here are some observations I've made over the last few days, with the caveat that I'm not necessarily suggesting causation.

• My runs haven't been stellar.  They've been slow, and even tiny bumps feel like huge hills.  I've had to stop and walk a couple times.  (Though to be fair, it's as muggy as a steam room here lately, and that could be part of it, too.)
• I've lost 2 pounds.
• It takes a lot of cabbage and grilled chicken to make me feel full.
• I am perfectly happy (so far) eating whole foods and avoiding junk.
• It is so helpful to have an extremely supportive significant other when making a change like this!
• I should use a cutting board, instead of my hand.  (Had to Google "How do you know if you need stitches?" earlier today.)  

So that's my story so far.  I'll report back with an update in a couple weeks.  In the meantime, if you have any good AIP recipe ideas, send them my way!