Valentine’s – I ate Choc Ice cream and drank Champagne & Wine – shocking behaviour 😉

More Candida Unsafe Foods than usually, also lots of stress!

Last Month: All the wrong foods on NYE and on my friend’s birthday. Rest of the month clean diet.

This Month: Wrong Candida foods at five events and the rest of the month super strict diet. Definitely a super stressful month.

Biggest Changes:

Positive:

• Used only soaked grains and seeds in my cooking – agreed better with me.

Negative:

• I slept less. Had late dinners and I felt under the weather and emotionally exhausted. Food wise I started eating spelt bread again and even whole weat pita bread sometimes (gluten & yeast!), ate a lot of oats and also and ate out a few times with.

• Stopped having soup/ broth before lunch, because I either had run out of veg or was in a rush, so ended up eating more carbs because I was more hungry.

• Re-introduced dairy too quickly into my diet (feta, milk and sour creme, basically something dairy with every meal and also in the soda bread and by the spoon)

What I typically ate this month:

Breakfast:

• gluten free Oatmeal porridge

•  or Cabbage stir fry accompanied with chilled cucumber and spelt bread with coconut butter

• or ground brown rice/ millet pudding with rice milk

Lunch:

• gluten free pancakes with stir fried veg and bacon

• gluten free Psyllium & Oat bread with salted butter, Prosciutto and boiled egg or tinned fish in oil with green beans or tomatoes

• or Chicken, leek and cream pasties

Dinner:

• Just look at the amazing Valentine’s menu I was treated to – most of it even super healthy!!! My partner is actually called Valentine believe it or not (Giovanni Battista Valentine but everyone calls him Johnny and we went out for a special Valentine’s meal since it was his birthday as well a few days before…)

• at home I ate more spartan – mostly just spelt & fried onion bread with salted butter, prosciutto or smoked salmon

• or Lentil Stew with white rice and pitta bread

What I snacked on:

• gluten free bread toasted and dipped in flax oil with onion salt with rest from lunch or dinner

What I drunk:

• Water with apple cider vinegar on awakening, ginger tea with breakfast (be careful not to drink this in the evening – keeps you awake), Volvic still water, sparkling water, dandelion tea after dinner

How this affected me:

On my days out I had beer, champagne, white wine, a fruity cocktail, vodka lemonade and decaf coffee. I can already tell you – the experiment backfired!

Although I only had one to two glasses of alcoholic beverage at each outing I felt totally hungover the next 1-2 days, most likely intensified through the copious amounts of antifungals and milk thistle I was taking to help my body expel the baddies and not get a Candida relapse.

On my partner’s birthday outing where we went bowling and munched birthday cake and late night Nachos covered with cheese and spicy chili bolognese and cheap Sour Cream. I even had a beer (my first one in 4 years!).

I hadn’t had dinner because of the sweet cake I had earlier

(lemon drizzle – made it with Xylitol and way too much Stevia – it actually made me nauseous!) so I was ravenous and dug in (while scraping the cheese off as best as I could). But I normally never eat something like that when I’m out and about, certainly not anything spicy or that late or even with dairy sour cream…

I did pay the price for it though – I felt absolutely rotten for the next few days.

Literally hungover and ill. Awful.

I definitely blame a lot of that on the stevia cake – I have never ever felt this rotten after eating normal sugar cake! I’ll take it easy on the stevia (with malitol that is!) from now on.

The harshest thing was my mood dip though.

For two days I felt utterly miserable and depressed. Really devastating. No energy, all doom and gloom. Goodness, I haven’t had this for decades (yes, I’m that old

Lifestyle/ Activities:

• Brisk walks often only once a day, no fitness class; so not enough movement and fresh air – because of that I felt more stressed and physically weaker.

Health Issues this month:

• Several days of feeling hungover or sub par each time after going out that night (also to do with the fact that I took more antifungals and milkthistle to boost the detoxing process.) All in noticeably more Candida.

I started oil pulling again to speed up the die off/ detox process.

Initially just with 1 tbsp of sesame oil or olive oil. That was fine – gave me a super clean mouth feeling and whiter teeth.

Then I ramped it up a notch adding tea tree, myrrh and mint oil to it and after swishing that around my mouth for 20 mins for two days I felt super groggy. Sinus pressure, headache, not being able to concentrate – the works.

It took me a while to realize that what I felt was probably a die off reaction from the oil pulling and not me having a cold. Those symptoms went away as soon as went back to doing the oil pulling just with oil, no antifungals.

Good! I’ve been feeling awful for most of this month, I kind’a have had enough

At the time of writing this I’m feeling fine again, no symptoms. But my birthday is coming up next week, and I don’t want to feel rotten again afterwards. I guess I’ll have to watch what I’m going to eat and drink!

Feeling Rotten from Eating/ Drinking the wrong foods +meds

• After the swanky Valentine’s meal with all it’s sweet rolls and chocolate desserts, wine and champagne I felt surprisingly ok, considering that I had virtually no sleep (noisy neighbours, storm and me drinking coffee late at night…!) I did feel hungover, but then so did my partner. Perhaps that’s normal, and I have just forgotten what that’s like,hah!

• Then after eating sugary cake after dinner at the family do we went to I had a few Candida symptoms popping up the days right after the event, but nothing like as extreme as after the bowling.

• And again after two social events I attended to meet my partner’s awesome new colleagues, where I had some potato wedges, vegetable crisps, plenty of black teas with dairy milk and also on one of the days a fruity cocktail and a vodka lemonade and then at 12am at night a toasted sandwich with pitta bread (wheat & gluten alert!) I once again felt hungover and it took me several days to recover and get back to my usual self and diet.

What Supplements I took:

• Since I panicked a lot about the possible repercussions from eating/ drinking all that sweet stuff I started taking several things for healing leaky gut. Gelatin, Slippery elm, l-glutamin – all very soothing to the tummy, but sadly also pricy – I’ve included the photo above of my latest gelatin concoction: Lemon Coconut Melty Jellies – recipe here if you’re interested.

• On days after sugar intake milk thistle, oil of oregano or olive leaf capsules twice a day, other days no antifungal; soil based probiotics in the morning and evening, the usual multi vit, Vit C, magnesium, chlorella and Evening Primrose and Fish oil capsules

• Also took Swedish Bitters after late meals in the evening.

To recap what I learned/ How this Applies to You:

• It always seems to take me several days after eating/ drinking the wrong foods to get back on track with the diet. It’s a really tedious process, and totally not worth it if you only consume Candida encouraging foods because you feel peer pressured. You should at least enjoy what you eat/ drink and have a great time Better still – don’t do it at all!

• Oil pulling helps to clear your airways, heal any issues you might have with gum or teeth, and therefore is a great asset in the coping with die off symptoms during detoxing or Candida dieting. There’s no need to add essential oils to the mix unless you are feeling good. Otherwise you might feel worse for wear.

• If you regularly overstep the boundaries of the diet like I did this month you quickly get back into Candida territory. I barely got away with it, because I straight away intervened and flushed the excess yeast out of my system in the days after the indulgences. If I hadn’t done that and I hadn’t taken any antifungals I might have felt fine but internally the yeast would have grown without me noticing, until a critical mass was achieved where the scales tip and you’d become ill again. That’s why it is so crucial that once you are symptom free, you still carry on with a sugar and yeast free diet until your immune system is well and truly restored.

• Best to use only pure Stevia to sweeten your foods and only a tiny amount combined with Xylitol. Otherwise Stevia can make you nauseous.

If you’d like to read some of my other Candida Diet Updates to see how certain things affected my recovery then you can view them all at one glance here or just go to the update from last month here.

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