My personal food restrictions

No dairy - well, lactose-free dairy. Hard cheeses have too much lactose for me. I can work around this with things like hard cheeses, sometimes, by using a lactase enzyme pill or two - but if I get it wrong, the results are fairly miserable. Mostly I stick to lactose-free milk and non-dairy alternatives; it's just safer.

No tree nuts - argh! I'm not allergic, so it won't kill me. I'm sensitive, and it makes the inside of my mouth itch, burn, and turn red. This is...not really very pleasant. So far, almonds and filberts (hazelnuts, but come on, they're filberts) have this effect, but probably other tree nuts would move to it if I ate them a lot (both the others were a developed reaction). So I am willing to eat things that may have traces, but I'm not willing to eat the nuts or something in which they're a major ingredient. And since I am reactive to them, I avoid almonds and filberts most carefully...which rules out almond flour and almond milk. Whee! (Peanuts are legumes and are fine, luckily.)

Low FODMAP - this is a complicated acronym for a variety of carbohydrates that can be problematic. I have been doing better since I removed them all and have been gradually trying to reintroduce some of the foods. 

What I know so far about my personal reaction to foods relative to FODMAPs:

• Oligos are probably not a huge problem. I don't know that I can tolerate huge amounts, but I can have a couple slices of wheat bread or a wheat bun now and then; I can tolerate at least small amounts of onion and garlic (enough to cook with); brussel sprouts and I get along fine. This also suggests fructans may not be a humongous problem.
• I don't generally get along with corn or corn oil. (Corn meal MAY be an issue but it was always with the corn oil.) Popcorn in small amounts is okay. This is probably an issue with polyols, though it's also possible it's the oligos. Except the wheat bread is higher in oligos than the corn, so this seems unlikely. I can cross-test the polyols with avocado, which is high in them but not in oligos. Of course, there's also the possibility that I'm reacting to something else not FODMAP-related with the corn. Isn't it nice when everything is predictable? Oh, wait....
• Fructose in moderation is acceptable - one ripe banana every day or two. It's possible that more than that is fine, but I haven't pushed it too far.
• I tolerate small amounts of coconut fine. Hm. That's polyols, though in a MUCH smaller amount than a serving of corn.
• I didn't need this diet to tell me I should avoid lactose (also one of the FODMAPs) - in fact, I have to avoid it more completely than the low-FODMAP diet normally recommends. 

Honestly, I'm not sure if the low FODMAP diet is helping because I actually have FODMAP issues, or if it's helping because it happened to remove a bunch of foods that are an issue. I have a food and symptom tracker, but it's...a little dense. It hasn't quite blamed poor sleep on waking up, but it's come pretty close. Still, it gathers the data, and I can always evaluate it myself. Not that I take the time to do so.

This HAS gotten me eating less processed food, which is probably the more valuable thing it's done.