Brain on Overdrive

I woke up this morning with my brain on overdrive. It’s one of the side effects of going to bed with the kids at 8pm for 5 nights in a row – eventually the sleep deprivation goes away and the grey matter starts chugging away.

One part of my brain is focused on rotation diets. I have devised this elaborate, but fairly simple 7 day rotation diet for our family to follow, mostly to help Theo’s body and neurology. The standard recommendation for a rotation diet is 4 days (because apparently it takes about 4 days for any toxins generated by an allergic reaction to clear from the body). At least for our family, 4 days is too complex because it is essentially random. How on earth do I remember if today is day 3 or day 4 and which foods are allowed on that day? Whereas with a 7 day rotation, we all easily get that Tuesday is freshwater fish day, Wednesday is pork day, Friday is chicken day. It turns out there is just one small problem with the 7 day deal – there are not really that many botanic food families. So on any given day the picking can be a little slim.

Here’s my model so far. (gotta love Excel)

What I need to know at this point is how much leeway do we have within a given food family. I know the nightshades are non-negotiable, you can’t have them 2x in a 7 day period and cleanse the toxins (because that would make it 3 and 4 days between them). But what about the “cattle” family? Do I really need to have beef, lamb, goat all lumped into one day or can we have one day eating beef and another eating lamb? In the end, I suppose it all depends on how Theo and my bodies deal with it, but I’m sure there is a rotation diet guru out there who can give me a pretty educated guess as to how strict we need to be.

A subset of the rotation diet part of my brain is trying to work out this week’s grocery list. Because it turns out that just identifying healthy foods for our bodies to eat isn’t enough. Some how those foods have to morph into nutritious delicious meals that the whole family can and will consume. With Bill and I on the 20/20 program from the ProSports Club, this also means eating particular types of foods are prescribed times. Which requires a whole new spreadsheet.