Candida Diet - Phase One

The hardest part of any diet is getting through phase one. I seriously admire anyone who diets, for whatever reason, and is successful. It's hard!! So here I am, once again, faced with adjusting what I eat for a proposed physical improvement. The reason I typically give myself for going off of a diet is that I am HUNGRY, which I hate. I eat a lot. And much of that is filler foods, like pasta, bread, wheat. This time, I have help with choosing foods and purchasing them, and that has made the initial couple of days MUCH easier! And I'm not hungry. In fact, I am munching all day long on nuts and whatnot, and eating very fulfilling diet-friendly meals. Ok. The real test will come when our company leaves, my support system, and I am left to fend for myself. I will try to give myself incentive....

Here are all of the symptoms I have, which may or may not be addressed through diet: bloated belly, fluid in the ears and tinnitus, sinus issues, eczema, scalp rash, sneezing, foggy brain, memory issues, focus problems, scattered thoughts and actions....

I will start by reporting that yesterday and this morning my belly had NOT been bloated or upset. So far so good!

Around noon I started getting a little bit of belly upset, which has lasted on and off all day. Just a very minor, I don't know...cramping? Or something. This might (or might not) be die-off, when you get symptoms as the yeast dies off. I also had that hunger that I always get with these diets. It just means that I did not feed myself enough foods that stick to my ribs. I know that I can, as I have had none of this the last two days. I will do better! But I am very nervous about having my support system go away tomorrow. =(

I am eating lots and lots of nuts, rice, rice cakes and salad. The salads taste SO good. My body is LOVING them. My dressing is lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper. I really love it.

A nice bonus to this is that my daughter, who really eats like crap, is eating some better stuff. She LOVED kale chips!! Awesome. She is also enjoying tomatoes a lot lately, with a little bit of salt and olive oil. Yum!!

Bloat, Mope

My belly is bloated. Really, really bloated. What the? There are no other symptoms. I don't feel sick. This happened a few weeks ago, and resolved in about two days. What is going on? My first reaction was that I am having a yeast overgrowth. The last time this occurred that is what I concluded, but what the heck do I know? And why would it be happening now? I looked online for information about yeast imbalance and diet recommendations. Well, it's about as exciting as the GAPS diet, which I tried back in August. That sucked. It sucked! This time I decided that rather than try to suddenly deprive myself of everything on earth that tastes good and makes me feel full, I would consider skipping the "cleanse" part of the diet, even the "stage 1" diet. I went right to the list of "ok" foods. I swear, just reading the list made my stomach start grumbling. There's nothing on it. I would starve inside of a day. I hadn't eaten much for lunch, knowing instinctively that veggies and whole foods would be the way to go. I ended up eating two tomatoes with salad dressing that I made and an apple. Well, that was wrong. Vinegar is terrible. And apples don't make the cut either. I scoured the pantry looking for a snack, and found some pistachios. Nope. They might have mold, which is bad. The hell with this! Dear hubby was willing to adjust his dinner plan to follow the anti-yeast diet. I told him to forget it (with great appreciation) as I would very likely dump the diet in no time anyway. Ugh. So I have made a deal with myself. If my symptoms are still present after two days I will reconsider the diet. Damn I hate diets. But it would be lovely to get rid of this belly, not to mention some of the other symptoms that I have that are listed on the yeast diet website...fatigue....skin issues.....etc.....

Another issue is that I cannot find my way around a kitchen. I don't enjoy cooking, and I can't think of clever ideas for meals. So that makes special diets that much harder. BAHUMBUG.

Though my belly feels a little less tight at the moment. Will eating this bowl of pasta be a really big mistake?