Candida Diet Update March 2013

The past month was taken up with following a gluten & wheat free diet. That made a huge difference to my well being.  No more bloating or belly ache!

I can only recommend you try it yourself for a while to boost your immune system.

Of course I enjoyed all the wrong foods around my birthday.

… and also got all paranoid afterwards that I might have jeopardized my overall recovery.

What did I do to get back on track?

I forced myself to get into green smoothies making (more about that in a minute).

This is what I typically ate this month (March 2013)

Typical Breakfast:

2 slices of Spelt bread (very low on gluten) with different homemade spreads (tuna & veg, feta & veg or tofu & veg)

Lunch:

1 bowl of Bone Broth, Potato & Vegetable Pie with Feta, millet or polenta with vegetables. Twice a week omelet, meat or fish with veg. Often in the form of burgers, for instance this scrumptious leek and chicken burger with potato and soya flour and fried bell pepper, mangetouts and onion gravy.

Dinner

2-3 medium potatoes with different spreads

What I snacked on:

• Boiled potatoes with homemade spreads; when desperate: cucumber
• 1 slice of gluten free toasted  bread with butter/coconut butter or almond butter
• 2 weekends of mega cheating around my birthday with plum tart, wheaty sugary dairy cheesecake (so good!) and apple crumble with custard… Not that I didn’t try to eat sensibly…

Lifestyle/ Activities:

• Working flat out, 7 hours sleep (too little for me!), 3x exercise classes per week (wed, thur, fri)
• Still way too much stress. Must work on that!
• In an attempt to change that I started doing 10 mins Chi Gong routines on some days (since I was given a dvd with short routines & meditations for my birthday) – haven’t managed to make this a routine yet. But those few times when I did do it, it really helped me to wind down and re-focus my mind from over-drive to calm.

Health Issues:

• 2 weeks into this new candida diet I felt much better. All lower abdomen pain and bloating had disappeared. So I definitely must have had a wheat and gluten intolerance! Gosh, I wish I had investigated that years ago!!!
• occasional thrush is the only sign that my yeast levels are still a bit out of whack.

Fingers crossed the Leaky Gut supplements will sort that out once and for all!

What Supplements I took – A whopping load I know, but it’s gonna heal me, right ?

• Rotating olive leaf capsules (1 x twice daily), oil of oregano drops (once daily 2 drops) and goldenseal capsules (1x daily) every 4-5 days
• Started on higher strength probiotic (50 billion organisms instead of 20 what I was taking before, CustomProbiotics CP1 from Biocare) (1-2 per day)
• L-glutamin, Colostrum, Slippery Elm/Marshmallow Mix to heal leaky gut.
• Extra magnesium, calcium and vit d, cod liver oil and protein powder (whey) after exercise.

Rubbish Restaurant Food triggered Flare ups 

Got whisked away to a nearby Spa hotel for a day whilst our kitchen was renovated.

The nice thing was that we were near the sea, so long walks on the beach and looking at boats ensued.

So far, so good! But it meant mega stress before we left. We had to get the flat looking tidy for when the landlady marched in.

Once at the Spa it was nice though (hadn’t we been right behind the restaurant with its around the clock noisy generator sounds and the mean yeast feeder foods…)

Going away with Candida is not easy!

Here are some of the foods I was eating:  

• Potato gnocci in creamy mushroom sauce, white pasta, white wine, latte, cider, fish and chips…
• and of course a substantial Sunday roast (as you can see in the pic below, oh my!)

What can you do if your choice for breakfast is a ‘fry up with baked beans and sloppy egg on wheaty toast’ or ‘croissants, cow’s milk yoghurt and dried fruit muesli/tinned fruit cocktail!?

Exactly! Not a lot! You eat!

How did the restaurant food agree with me?

I came down with a stinking cold (or die off?) on our departure day and felt rotten for the next day. Big surprise, ay! Had mood swings and minor symptoms like skin irritations for about 1 week afterwards. Happy birthday me, hah!

Getting back on Track with Smoothies

Once back home I craved comfort foods.

So I started on bread based snacks mid-morning and mid afternoon. Pretty much on auto-pilot (disaster waiting to happen!)

Not wanting to wait for the disaster to happen, I decided to try my luck at green smoothies in the hope to find a healthy one that filled me up.  If you’re interested you can see my first experiments & recipes here.

What I typically ate last month:

• Super strict no grains/beans/breads/salads regime, small portions, early meals.
• Basically mostly potatoes, light vegetables, feta and small amounts of meat or fish.

If you’re interested in reading details about my diet change then you might like to read my Candida Diet Update from February here.

To recap what I learned:

• Green smoothies are much easier to get into than green juices.

 So glad I found a couple of simple variations that mask the flavour of the greens well without having to put lots of fruit in it. It amazed me how filling they are if you put some coconut milk and ground flax seeds in it.

Smoothies are perfect when you would normally resort to unhealthy snacks.

And when you are really stressed and short of time, they can even replace a whole meal. I view this discovery as a big milestone in my journey to health. I hope it will be the same for you, as you’ll get so much energy from it! Try it!

You might find though that some additions agree better with you than others. For instance I encountered more symptoms from adding cashew nuts or ground almonds to my juice, than desiccated coconut. After over a week of a smoothie every day, sometimes two I was actually starting to feel a bit bloated again.

I think this was my body adjusting to the higher fiber intake and the double dose of probios. Those sensations went away after a few days of me taken a smoothie break for a day and then sticking to no more than 1 smoothie a day (before I had often demolished 2 big glasses in one go and then another one in the afternoon).

•  Spelt despite containing a little gluten, is much easier to digest than ‘normal’ all purpose flour with wheat.

 Hence I now mostly use Spelt flour to bake my yeast free bread.

Also, if you add some fried onions, garlic or cabbage to the batter, you get deliciously crusty & aromatic bread rolls like the ones in the pic above that also have active yeast fighting ingredients! Perfect!

Spelt flour is also lots cheaper than gluten free flour, rises better and tastes great. I even made dumplings with it for a stew, yum!

But why not mix it up a bit? Try some gluten free flours or even mix your own gf-free flour for making pancakes, pastries and things. For instances I made smashing burgers with soya flour recently – highly recommended!

• I’m relieved that millet and polenta seem to agree with me now (That had not been the case for the past 2 years unfortunately. They used to make my IBS/ Candida symptoms much worse.) Have tried oats, too, but not too sure about them. I think I’ll try and stay off them for a little longer (damn, I love eating oats!) Next thing to test for me will be Quinoa! Again a “grain” that I used to react to in the initial stages of the candida diet.

• Changing to a higher probiotic took me at least 3 days to adjust, every time. I felt pretty under the weather at first, thinking the probiotics might not agree with me. Now I’m glad I stuck with them – I feel better than before. (At time of writing this I am taking 2 x 50 billion Custom CP1 probiotics capsules a day.)

So if you’re thinking of ramping it up, I recommend you do this on a Thursday so you can chill at the weekend in case you feel worse for wear.

 So How Does this Apply to You? I believe you can dramatically speed up your recovery!

The take away from this month for me is that even when it feels like you are stuck in your recovery, sometimes you just need to change one thing and that has a huge positive knock on affect on everything.

All of a sudden you break through the resistance and your healing rate speeds up dramatically.

I have noticed that in my own recovery process a few times now, and I recognize the signs here again.

Changing to a gluten free diet, actively avoiding highly spiced foods and taking supplements to address the damage that had been done by the candida in my gut, has removed a blockage in my healing process. And you can do the same for your healing!

You don’t have to do this forever, just long enough to kickstart the healing!

I haven’t even been doing this for very long. Close to 2 months at the most, and I certainly had regular “off days” during that time as well, where I did eat the wrong foods. But it hasn’t thrown me back to square one again, how I had feared.

That should give you hope and inspiration to carry on with your own healthy diet endeavors. Despite any set backs you might be facing.

It will pay off. It really will!

Leave a comment below the sign up box – you are signed up to get my April diet update, aren’t you ? I am curious how you are getting on with your diet at the moment.

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