Friday, August 22, 2008

Dietary Specifics

Welcome, Gella and Mybloomnart! I'm glad to hear from you.

Gella, I know exactly how you feel, and that's why I'm thinking that if we band together, we'll be stronger, and beat this thing. My new motto is, "whatever it takes". That's what I'm going to do. I want to wake up in the morning and go to bed at night not thinking about FBO at all. Keep your chin up. I'll post what I eat every day - that will help me stick to it, and maybe give you some new ideas.

Mybloomnart, yes, I agree, this diet is extremely hard to stick to, but the payoffs will be great when we return to our normal lives, and that IS going to happen. Below is my basic diet. I'd like to have more variety, so if you have any ideas for new foods/meals, please share.

Every morning I take my supplements (Probiotics, Earth's Bounty Colon Conditioner, and vit c. with a green drink called Perfect Food). I do the same thing in the afternoon. I recently started back on Colonix, which is a colon cleanse, because I have been on a not so good diet lately, and could stand a cleanse. I used this product in the past and got good results, so I'm trying it again while I transition to the low-carb diet again.

I only drink water (filtered, at least 84 oz a day) and organic decaf green tea. This is one of the hardest things for me to do, because my husband is a coffee lover (I'm an ex-coffee addict), and he makes a whole pot every morning. The first thing I do each morning as I walk into our coffee scented kitchen is dump out what is left in the pot after he leaves for work, so I'm not smelling it all day.

I exercise after I drink my first green drink of the day (about 40 minutes on the treadmill, 6 days a week). Then I'm usually not hungry until about 10 a.m. At about that time, I had been eating raw vegetables, like celery, or broccoli and some raw nut butter - usually almond butter or tahini. Those were great, because they filled me up, and I was able to maintain my weight because the nut butter is very high in calories. Recently I started reacting to the almond butter - it seems to cause inflammation in my gut (I do have leaky gut by the way), so I know I have to find a substitute for that. I use a product called Super Seed by Garden of Life mixed with a little organic flax seed oil as a dip for my veggies now, and it seems to be working out better. Doesn't taste as good as the nut butters, but I'll get used to it. The Super Seed is a mixture of ground seeds that also contains probiotic strains and enzymes, so I think that's why my system likes it better. In the late morning, I cut up vegetables for my serving of fresh juice that I have each day around noon. I juice spinach, cucumber, cabbage (very healing for the gut) a carrot and celery. It's mostly a green juice, but the carrot gives it a little nicer color. I dilute the juice with a little water to keep my blood sugar at a normal level.

I'm not a salad person, so for lunch I make a plate of various vegetables and a half a broiled chicken breast, or piece of fish. Other days I have two scrambled eggs (cooked in olive oil) with onions, peppers, etc. Some days, instead of the meat, I puree some avacado, and add seasoning to it (some organic salsa, etc.) and use that as a dip for my vegetables. I usually don't eat lunch until 2 - 3 p.m. because the juice I have at noon fills me up, and that way, I don't need much for dinner. Dinner can be some more raw veggies, or some sauteed or steamed veggies. This is the best time of year to be on a very veggie diet because the vegetables are so plentiful in the stores.
Our garden is producing lots of juicy tomatoes right now, so sometimes I just go out and pick one and slice it up for a snack. They are so good. I stay away from the carby vegetables such as corn. The cruciferous vegetables, cabbage, broccoli and cauliflower are the best for liver cleansing, and healing of the intestinal tract.

At night, so I don't have to go to bed hungry, I eat a bowl of kefir mixed with Super Seed. I know dairy is supposed to be bad for us and kefir is dairy, but it is so full of good bacteria that it is pretty much a pre-digested food. Regular cow's milk doesn't have the probiotics, so it's hard for the body to break down. As far as I can tell, the kefir doesn't cause me to smell worse, but if I was to drink a glass of milk, I can tell the smell increases, so I stay away from it.

That's pretty much it - a very bizarre diet from the standpoint of the rest of the world, I'm sure. I try to look at my plates of colorful vegetables and lean organic meat and be thankful for it. I tell myself, it's good, nourishing food and I'm lucky to have it. It seems to taste much better when I do that.

I'd love to have more variety, though, and have been experimenting with a few new things. I'll let you know if they are in any way edible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

4 comments:

Gella said...

Hey all, so do we all have leaky gut then? we should all get if you havent already, our food allergies tested. this will speed up the healing process if we stay away from the food our stomach is allergic to. so what antifungal if you are, using? i use nystatin, remember to always rotate your antifungals every 2months the candida gets used to them after a while. another question, is anyone taking anything for healing the gut? like intestiNEW or intestamine? any reveiws? i heard just taking l-glutamine and colostrom is really good for healing the gut. hmm, anyways, im starting my diet on monday, dont worry i havent attempted to start yet, i just have to wait till mum gets the veggies. LL

Ritz said...

Hi Gella:

I have tried Intestinew for my leaky gut, for about 2-3 months, and didn't get good results. Maybe I wasn't on a good diet then, so that didn't help the situation. That was more than two years ago. I used to have burning in my gut when I ate and lots of food passed through me undigested. I healed it with the Earth's Bounty Colon Conditioner and the good diet. Every now and then I feel a little burning there (in the area of my small intestine) and I know I still have to be careful. I think the thing that made the most difference was the cruciferous veggies, especially the cabbage juice. I'm currently looking into another colon conditioner with glutamine because it is essential to have that in your system for healing of the gut. I also tried colostrum in the past - it's a very good product, and should help. Once again, though, I don't think I was eating healthy at the time, and this condition takes the total package of correct diet, supplements, etc. It's not a one-pronged approach that will do it.

I don't use any antifungal product. The diet/green juices, have antifungal properties. I was tested for candida, and was told I don't have it. I also tried the spit test in water a few times and it has been negative each time. I have never been bothered with yeast infections either, so I'm thinking I really don't have a huge candida problem.

As far as food allergies go, I was tested and found out that wheat, soy and cow's milk are the only things I'm sensitive to. I already knew that based on how my body reacted to them. Eating them makes my gut hurt, and my smell terrible. If I've learned anything in the past few years, it's "listen to your body". It will tell you what the problem is if you do.

loubell said...

Hi thank you for posting this information. I have been battling with this for about 10 years and haven't been sure of the cause. I have been getting so much grief from staff at work I finally realised it was the time.
I will use this for diet changes from now on to find the cure. what is the recipe for your smoothie i.e how much of each vege?

Ritz said...

Hi Loubell:

The green juice that I make usually has five things in it. I cut up about a quarter head of green cabbage, a whole cucumber, 4 or 5 stalks of celery, a large handful of baby spinach leaves, and a carrot. I always dilute it with a few ounces of water to keep my blood sugar steady.

If you try it, let me know what you think.