In March of 1996, my doctor put me on a diet like this:
- No dairy (that's milk, cream, cheese, yoghurt, etc.)
- No yeast (bread, among other things)
- No gluten (that's wheat, oats, rye and barley)
- No caffeine (tea, coffee, cola)
- No eggs
- No MSG (lots of Asian food, plus things like stock cubes)
- No preservatives (smallgoods, sausages, lots of stuff...)
And minimal amounts of sugar and fats.
Now, that sounds pretty bad, doesn't it!! For me, it only reduced about 10% of my aches and pains, but it cured about 2/3 of my gastric symptoms (nausea and stuff) and helped a lot with mood swings. Given that it was almost the only thing I've ever found that helps, I think it's great!
It took some getting used to, and I was lucky to have my family around to help me. Things that I'd recommend you do when you start a diet like that:
- Know exactly why you're doing this. Make a list of the symptoms that are helped when you eat right, how much of a difference it makes you feel. It's really important to be motivated or you'll just eat whatever, but getting motivated to eat 'weird stuff' can be a challenge! Read your list whenever you need reminding (stick it on the wall?).
- Get an 'allergy-free' recipe book, so you've got some ideas. You can also visit websites such as http://www.FoodYouCanEat.com/ which have recipes tailored to different allergies on them. This will help you to right away build up a list of recipes that don't contain foods you can't eat.
- Go and talk to a nutritionist or dietician, a health food shop person or a friend with allergies about alternatives to things you can't eat. Websites such as http://www.FoodYouCanEat.com/ may also have lists of these.
- If you like cooking, then ask about different sort of flours. You can get gluten-free wheat flower, rice flour, buckwheat flour and all sorts of other weird stuff.
- Sit down with a bit of paper, the recipe books and
websites, and your imagination and write a list of every
single meal or food you can think of that you CAN eat! Things
that I've thought of:
- Rice bubbles with rice-milk on them for breakfast
- Corn-bread toast
- Corn-pasta with tomato-based sauce
- Just about any sort of stir-fry
- Vegetarian lasagne with corn-pasta sheets
- Most sorts of BBQs
- Kebabs
- Salads with homemade dressing
- Muffins, pancakes, pikelets and biscuits that I've made
- Fruit salad
- Homemade jelly (that's American Jello) for specials (it's got lots of sugar but not much else)...
There's stacks of other things. For me it is definitely worth sticking to the diet ... if I eat something that isn't on it (say, a slice of pizza) then I'm guaranteed to get mood swings, stomach cramps and the rest of the CFS symptoms to get worse.
Of course I fall off sometimes and eat stuff (like that pizza!), but the nice thing about this sort of diet is you haven't lost anything by stopping. You can just pick up again and you start feeling better again.
I found that the 'make a list of things you CAN eat and put it somewhere that you see it often (like the fridge door!)' part was very important. When you first start you keep feeling 'argh, I can't eat ANYTHING!' which isn't true, and having some reminder of all the stuff you CAN eat is important.
The other most important thing is that once you've found stuff you can eat, make sure they're easily available in the house... otherwise it's too tempting to eat something that is easily available!
