My Elimination Diet or How To Lose 70 Pounds in 7 Months

So here's the long, complicated story that I alluded to in my previous post, but I will try to keep it short. Those who know me are aware that we have been struggling with food sensitivity/allergy issues for some time now. Specifically, my son was showing signs of being sensitive to something that I was eating and passing through to him via breastmilk. We figured out dairy fairly early on, as once it was eliminated his mild excema and congestion disappeared. Things were fine for a good while but then we began to see occasional streaks of blood and mucous in his poops. As he was otherwise healthy, happy and thriving, the logical explanation was that there was something else that he was sensitive to in my diet. I tried taking out a few suspected allergens and adding some proactive, gut-healing supplements, but the problem continued. In fact, it seemed that the harder we tried to fix the problem, the worse it got. We saw an allergist who did skin tests, all negative. He said it was proctocolitis or allergic colitis (pretty much the same thing). He basically said that because the allergen could be virtually anything, an elimination diet would be too hard and could threaten my health, and that we should switch to hypoallergenic formula (so very totally NOT happening). So 3 weeks ago, I bit the bullet and put myself on a Total Elimination Diet, as per Dr. Sears. That meant that I was only eating chicken, turkey, rice, pear, and potato (which I switched out for asparagus early on). We hit "baseline" (no blood/mucous) a few days after Christmas, and have been steady ever since.

To add to the confusion, we had a pediatric gastroenterologist tell us that it was just dairy and soy, and that I could go ahead and eat all other foods. My own research and my instinct tells me that we need to be cautious in our approach and that I should add foods back in slowly in order to monitor potential reactions.

So far, the "safe" foods are:
rice
pear
chicken
turkey
asparagus
olive oil
banana
blueberry
cranberry
grape (via wine on New Year's)
avocado (testing as of today)

I think that some of my friends, and maybe family, don't really understand why I am doing this. How much easier it would be to put him on formula, right? Well, no, not really - since we would have to special order an ultraexpensive elemental formula that he may or may not even. Imagine if I lost my milk supply while we tried to feed him the formula, and he refused it - then where would we be? What would we feed him? Solids would not provide adequate nutrition for him at this point. Truly, I am a dedicated breastfeeding mom. Research shows that there are numerous benefits for both mother and child with extended breastfeeding. I won't go into that right now, but I will elaborate more in another post. Yes, I'm hungry, and I can't eat a huge variety of foods, so it's hard. Depressing and discouraging at times. But now that we've seen progress and our son's health is improving, it becomes clear that I'm doing the right thing for his health and for his future.