I’ve been doing very well, digestively speaking, with the elimination of yeast from my diet. I was surprised at just how much food is excluded in a yeast exclusion diet. No soy sauce, nothing fermented, and no yogurt. I’m a big yogurt consumer, always have been. For a long time, I thought I was lactose intolerant, but I’d still eat yogurt, because the probiotics were supposed to be good for me. 

When I got the IBS diagnosis, yogurt was one food that I never considered eliminating. I was no longer eating a lot of yogurt in yogurt form, but for a long time I’ve been using Chobani yogurt drinks as my pre-workout fuel for 5 am CrossFit classes. I don’t like working out in a fasted state, and I don’t want to get up early enough to eat a full breakfast before working out, so the yogurt drinks were a perfect compromise. I got some calories, but not so much food that my body couldn’t handle it before a hard workout. 

I went a bit over 30 days with complete yeast exclusion, and then I reintroduced the Chobani yogurt drinks for my pre workout and post workout. (I’d received some advice to do protein before and after working out, and I’ve been doing 2 yogurt drinks for a few months around my CrossFit classes.) 

Now, to be fair, a few days after I restarted the yogurt drinks, I also started my period. And I know that my period has an effect on my digestion. So I gave the yogurt drinks a full two weeks of testing to make sure not to judge them because of the period. But even from the first day that I started drinking them again, I just knew. 

I could feel how they were affecting my digestion from the increase in burbling noises and feelings, but I hoped that maybe that was just from the good probiotics. But further use caused my digestion to head back towards constipation, culminating in a no-fun-at-all episode of vomiting a little less than 2 weeks after I’d reintroduced yogurt. 

It’s possible that the vomiting was unrelated to the yogurt. It’s possible that my period’s influence on my digestive processes impacted the yogurt’s effects. But for now, I’m calling it. No more yogurt. 

I’m going to work at getting my digestion back in order, and then I’ll try adding soy sauce back into my diet and see what that does. I’m crossing my fingers that I can tolerate soy sauce, because I love my husband’s chicken adobo. 

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