Self limiting to potatoes?
A belated thanks to those who answered my multivitamin recommendationrequest a few weeks ago. My daughter is doing just fine on the Freedavitalets. 
I had another question. When we started this diet, DD was accepting avariety of GFCF foods. About two weeks ago she abruptly switched torejecting everything (including foods she used to love in the pre-GFCFdays) and self-limiting to Alexia oven fries (GFCF) and potato chips. Iwould be panicking about her nutrition except that she also nurses a coupleof times a day (I am GFCF too so I’m assuming this is safe). Once in a whileshe will accept a GFCF smoothie, but she has to be prodded to actually drinkmore than a few sips of it. Is this kind of self limiting the sign of aproblem? I really cannot get her to eat anything else most of the time, noteven cookies which she used to enthusiastically devour. (although she didaccept a few pieces of white rice toast this afternoon.) Now the last coupleof days she doesn’t even want to eat the oven fries, which had been a staplein her diet. How worried should I be about this? Should I just keep offeringother foods and hope she’ll eventually accept them?
Her GI doctor did prescribe Prevacid in case this coule be a reflux problem,although we haven’t gotten it into her consistently yet, and he ordered someallergy blood tests (IgE, IgA, and IgG) but we haven’t received the resultsyet.
Has anyone dealt with this before or have any ideas? Thanks in advance forany advice.
This post tagged as: white rice, multivitamin, gfcf diet
Shane Dearmond said,
Wrote on December 9, 2006 @ 12:52 am
I dealt with that when my son went GFCF. Self limiting himself tohigh carbs and potatos (fries and chips) meant that he was havingyeast issues. Sure enough he had really high yeast levels. Our kidsseem to be drawn to the foods that they really don’t need when itbecomes obsessive. Possibly try treating her for yeast with over thecounter supplements: Culturelle, ThreeLac, Grape Fruit Seed Extract,Olive Leaf Extract, and I’m sure others can name more for you.
Possibly have her GI doctor prescribe Nystatin with Stevia base(meaning Nystatin compounded into a liquid for and stevia base soit’s not sugary) and see if that helps any. You’ll probably HAVE totake out all chips and junk foods from the cabinets including fries.
Tressie Flatness said,
Wrote on December 10, 2006 @ 7:44 am
I could have written your exact post. My daughter is addicted to Herr’s potatosticks. They are here BEST tool for therapy. She will do anything for them. She is starting to get up alot during the night and has a bad diaper rash- I amsure this is yeast related. My question is what can you do when she won’t eatanything else? I know I am in control of her diet, but she is soooo stubbornand won’t eat. We went through it twice when I refused to give her potatoes andshe lost 4 lbs (she weighs 29 normally). She didn’t eat for 3 days.
Shane Dearmond said,
Wrote on December 10, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
That’s all part of the withdrawl period. I completely took allpotatos and potato chips out of our house and Sasha didn’t eat forseveral days. He would snack on a banana but he literally refused toeat. I didn’t give in and I kept cooking and offering it to him andI would lay his food on his “little work table” in his room and lethim decide when he wanted to eat it. Eventually he did and now he iseating grilled chicken which I thought he’d never eat. I do let himhave GF ketchup though. In the mornings I would make him a blueberrypancake which he normally never refuses but when I took away potatoshe wouldn’t even eat them. A couple of days later he gained his 3lbs back plus some and has been doing great ever since. Most of ourkids are on so many supplements that they do get lots of nutritionfrom them and losing a couple of lbs sounds bad but they’lleventually realize that you are in control and holding out on eatingis not going to make you give in. We had terrible tantrums andkicking episodes but we got through it. It was rough, I’m not goingto act like it was easy at all. I was so frustrated and pulling myhair out and wanted to go outside and scream. But it all worked outin the end. Now that we’re potato and rice free his leaky gut isgone. His yeast is under control and he’s doing great. We still givesupplements and ThreeLac to help with that including Enzymes to helpbreak down the proteins but the potato and rice AND taking away alljuices made the biggest difference.
Wesley Marske said,
Wrote on December 11, 2006 @ 9:17 am
if they start eating one thing only it usually means they do not tolerateit. she is craving it. Try only offering the other things for a day or two (nopotatoe products) see what happens.
Kirby Reisdorf said,
Wrote on December 12, 2006 @ 6:02 pm
Ah, geez…just when I thought this couldn’t get any harder! I guess we willtry going completely potato free. Needing enzymes sounds like a definitepossibility, because the potatoes do come through looking largelyundigested. It could be yeast too since she has a few symptoms that soundlike what I’ve read of yeast overgrowth. She actually started refusing toeat the potatoes (and most other things) about two days ago after we starteda low dose chewable probiotic…but I know that could be coincidence.
Would those things (yeast or potato intolerance) show up on the typical GIworkup? The doctor had ordered five different stool analysis tests involvingintestinal pathogens, “reducing substance in stool,” and a few others…aswell as the IgE, IgA, IgG blood tests. I know I may just have toexperiment…I sure wish there was some test that would definitivelyidentify the problem!