Auto-immuni(me).2
I planned to begin my journey with the autoimmune protocol diet (AIP) at the turn of the new year, as it seemed the most obvious natural shift from one chapter into the next. Also with the new year, I was about to start working full time again in non-profit immigration law and begin a master’s program in international migration. I remember feeling scared and nervous about embarking on such endeavors at the exact same time as the somewhat drastic dietary changes the AIP calls for.
Only five weeks into my AIP journey, I caught myself realizing how these sentiments completely flipped. Knowing now how good it is possible to feel with mindful-autoimmune eating, it dawned on me that everything I am currently pouring myself into in my work, my studies, and on our farm would be ten times harder if I had not begun my AIP journey when I did.
After one month of AIP, I gave myself the chance to try a non-AIP compliant item (ok, it was coffee) to gauge how it felt in my body to drink it, as it is a beverage and ritual dear to my heart since a very young age (maybe a little too young?). Within a few hours, it was clear that as deeply as I wanted to deny it, as fervently as I had hoped that it would not be true, coffee did appear to trigger an auto-immune response in my body. Shortly after drinking it, there arrived the pain in my left arm that I had endured for almost two years before learning about my autoimmune diagnosis. I wanted to be absolutely positive so I lengthened the test and consumed a regular amount of coffee everyday for five days. The results proved consistent, as the pain in my left arm was soon accompanied by the pains in my shoulders, hips, and knees that I had also at one time grown accustomed to.
Instead of being upset and resistant, I was determined to be objective and feel grateful for the new information. So coffee triggered an autoimmune flare for me. This is something that is happening, beyond my control, but I do have control over how I respond to it. I remembered how before I tried coffee again, when I would only just think about trying it again, I would already begin to miss the multitude of teas and tisanes I had begun to enjoy ritualistically since beginning this experience. Of course, if coffee wasn’t an Autoimmune triggering food for me, I would still be able to enjoy both tea and coffee for long into the future, but knowing myself, I knew that if I was able to drink coffee as I’d like to be able to, the chances of my sticking with any of my newly found favorite teas were slim to none. The impact on the body after consuming something that is an autoimmune triggering food for you, is comparable to waking up one day with a wretched hangover, no energy to do the things you love to fill your day with, aches everywhere, and a clouded sense of cognition. In contrast to a body in the throes of a season of disciplined and gentle AIP eating, a body that has energy to go and go and go, get its hands in every project, feel light and full and glowy, the shock is rather drastic.
A few days on coffee after a month without it was also shocking in the sense that I observed that I had less energy than I do when I don’t drink coffee. Granted, the first few days of a coffee detox won’t feel that way. Once the body adapts and cleanses from the daily energy spike, there comes a more sustained energy that lasts longer throughout the day and into the late evening. In contrast, coffee was giving me more the sense of an energy boost (or caffeine high) than actually giving me energy.
This got me thinking in so many directions. I remembered back to the beginning of when I started to experience chronic inflammation in August of 2022, a season of my life in which I was also consuming almost a liter of coffee a day.
All of this to say, a month in to AIP eating changed so much for me and instead of an intimidating cross to bear, the diet has become a safe place for me and my body. I know if I eat following the AIP, that I live without pain. I know that if I live without pain, every aspect of my life is impacted included but not limited to, my happiness, my energy, my productivity, my mood, my thinking habits, and my outlook towards my own life and future. A few days of experimentation and gaining new information has brought me running back to this way of eating, ready to curl up in her lap and be cared for again. Ready to live a life where I do not have to get used to any pain, I don’t have to push through hours of daily brain-fog, and more than anything- a life where I have the energy and freedom to achieve every single dream, with nothing to slow me down.
