This morning I officially started the Autoimmune Paleo Diet (AIP), and I don’t mind saying it sucks. Granted, all the food I’ve eaten, which basically amounts to meat, vegetables, and fruit (minus nightshades, nuts, and eggs), has been delicious. But no matter how much I eat, I just stay hungry. This has always been my experience whenever I’ve given up breads and sugars in the past–it takes a while to get adjusted.

My main irritation is that whenever I look in the refrigerator or cabinets, all I can see are the things I CAN’T eat–things like peanut butter, peanut butter, and peanut butter.

I’m trying to remind myself that it’s not that I CAN’T eat peanut butter and all the other no-noes in the kitchen, but that I’m CHOOSING to not eat them in order to give my body a chance to heal. Last night a friend explained to me that nightshades (one of the forbidden foods on AIP) is anything with a “cap”–tomatoes, eggplants, peppers. Later I read that nightshades can contribute to inflammation in some people, that they can actually cause or exacerbate eczema or contact dermatitis. Having spent the last several months with generally irritable skin and having recently endured a rather disconcerting skin reaction to a change in laundry detergent, I’m really hoping that CHOOSING to cut out nightshades will help. Not that I want to give up ketchup and paprika forever, but I would like my skin back. So here’s to Day One of Good Choices.

Let the healing begin.

Part of AIP is not just avoiding certain foods and eating others, but also “feeding your gut,” which means ingesting nutrient-dense foods and probiotics like bone broth, kombucha, and sauerkraut. (The plan also suggests eating liver and heart, but as my dad said, “No.”) Anyway, I “cheated” and bought bone broth powder last week, and this afternoon I picked up some kombucha and sauerkraut at the local health food store, since the grocery store I went to yesterday didn’t have the brands I wanted.

So this has been today–I’ve eaten two meals and two snacks, run one errand, and–y’all–I’ve taken two naps. For whatever reason–my recent immunizations or the change in diet (did I mention it doesn’t include coffee!)–my body is exhausted. I’m trying to go with it. This is a lesson I’m slowly (slowly) learning, to TRUST my body, to believe that if it’s irritated, there’s a reason, if it’s tired, it needs rest. Sounds simple, I know, but you wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve refused to listen to my body’s messages, the number of times I’ve completely ignored them or insisted on soldiering through.

Of course, I wish my body’s messages were clearer. Like, if tomatoes are contributing to my skin issues, it’s obviously a cumulative effect, since it’s not like I eat one tomato and break out in hives. So I wish I had an internal buzzer that went off or maybe a blinking light that flashed whenever I picked a tomato up, some sort of warning signal that announced, “Danger, Will Robinson, Danger.” OH!–I’ve got it. What if our fingernails turned black when we touched something harmful like a handful of peanuts or even a sociopath?

That would be cool.

This is one of my big gripes about the way the planet earth is set up, that cause and effect aren’t always very clear down here, that we often have to look and look and look some more before finding answers. I realize God and the universe aren’t in the habit of asking for feedback, but if they ever do ask, that’s what I’d say. Like, did you have to make everything such a big mystery? And if tomatoes are such a problem, why did you have to give them a cute little cap and make them so damn tasty?

I mean–a vegetable with a hat–who WOULDN’T want to gobble that up?

Caroline Myss says that a big part of the spiritual journey is learning endurance, and I guess that means you can’t have everything handed to you on a silver platter. Rather, it’s been my experience that anything worth having–mental or physical health, money, whatever–are best enjoyed when they are hard-earned. Then they aren’t taken for granted. Plus, when you’ve had to look and look and look some more, you have more compassion for others who are looking, others who are trying to find their way. When things don’t come easily or quickly, you stop thinking you know everything. Consequently, you go easier on yourself and others. Yes, this is the benefit of long, slow road, the road that makes you stronger, the road that makes you kinder.