On the Joys and Dangers of Chewing

There are a lot of ways to break a fast, and all of them say one thing: go slow. No, no, SLOWER. My boyfriend and I decided to go as slow as humanly possible off the cleanse. While most sites advocate 3-4 days of entry back into “real” food, we were aiming for more like two weeks. It was a good goal. It didn’t exactly happen, but it was good. What we did do, which made a huge difference, was paying attention to when we introduced things. Spurred on by stories from a friend, we were careful to introduce possible allergens slowly, from veggies to fruit, to nuts, to dairy, to gluten to meat. We’d hoped to add more seafood and poultry to that list before the meat, but it wasn’t in the cards. But I think it’s important that, once leaving the cleanse, you recognize that your body is a clean slate. Pay attention to what happens when you put something inside of it. You may notice a change in your system that you always thought was ‘normal,’ but is, in fact, only associated with one food. If you are able to eliminate that food, your body may work better—you’d have better energy and overall health if you found out peanuts are like poison to you. It might be depressing to find something out like that, but better to know than to be harmed by it, eh?

Here are some websites about food allergies:

http://www.webmd.com/allergies/guide/default.htm
http://www.celiaccentral.org
http://www.foodreactions.co.uk/intolerance/lactose/
http://www.foodallergy.org/allergens/index.html
http://www.foodallergyinitiative.org/section_home.cfm?section_id=15