Article’s checklist constructed with reference to material from Erica White’s ‘Beat Candida Cookbook‘.

It’s not really weird at all. I based it on the book because we followed the book. I credit the book because it is mostly from the book with suggestions such as “favorite drinks” coming from our personal experience. The book isn’t however available online (or at least wasn’t when I was asked to share the list we use with GD).

It’s why I recommend people read her book if they actually want to address candida properly. She doesn’t object to this listing being here and we have had conversations about it.

So nothing weird in it at all.
It is Erica’s list with a few personal adjustments, and it does say as much.

At first glance it might look restrictive but if you already have basic healthy eating habits and you understand that ready meals are not really that much like healthy eating then it’s actually not that much of an adjustment. Certainly less than it seems on first reading.

Our diet with this is predominantly fish, eggs and vegetables, nothing special foods about that. If you are a meat eater you can add that to your list, just not over processed meat with additives or that which is in sugary/dairy sauces.

A lot of the time it’s minor adjustments: for example we eat pasta, just we make it wholegrain – which you can buy in all the main supermarkets, no special hunting around needed there. Sure you often have to make your own pasta sauce because most of the bought ones have lots of sugar and vinegar added, but that’s just normal healthy eating, avoiding the added sugar where it isn’t needed and making a pasta sauce is pretty damned simple – chop and fry and onion and add some olive oil and chopped tomatoes. Chuck in other stuff if you want. No special dedicating your life to it, and it takes 15 minutes which isn’t much time to give yourself in order to eat well, it’s just not an instant ready meal.

It does however mean you can’t eat junk food coated in breadcrumbs and fillers or ready meals filled with sugar and dairy. That’s not normal healthy eating though to live off them, sure in a healthy diet you can still eat them once in a while, but they are not good food, just once in a blue moon won’t make you ill. In many cases eating them too often is what has made people ill and this is about combatting illness so you just can’t have that once in a while option until you’re better again.

So if you have lived on ready meals before then yes, you do have to adjust to cooking food for yourself which is something many people seem to have forgotten is actually the more common measure of normal. It all depends on what you think of as normal though. Normal people have to allow a bit of time to cook their meals.

As for the specialist foods you do want – like the cheese free pesto sauce from Sunita which is excellent, on diet and quite common. Since the article is on the web site for “Goodness Direct” which is itself a company which specialises in supplying specialist foods many of which are ideal for healthy eating on this diet, so you don’t have to make your life about looking for it, you’re already here already.

If your house really does have absolutely NOTHING anywhere that is acceptable on the list I strongly suggest if you want to improve your diet and health that you start by looking at eating a healthy diet which includes vegetables and fish and eggs before you even get into worrying about candida. Start with eating a balanced healthy diet and then if you still have health problems see a nutritionalist (you can see them on the NHS if you have digestive problems – just ask your GP) and see if they really think you need to worry about candida. After all vegetables, fish and eggs are definitely considered normal food by most people and are perfectly acceptable on this diet and if your normal diet doesn’t include them, or only includes fish in batter or frozen vegetables in cream sauce, then you probably already have a source of your health issues.

As for preparing meals from scratch – it’s not really in “health nut” territory, it just normal healthy eating practices.

If you still want to see the article on how to eat healthily for “normal people” then i suggest you write it. These were my notes on the healthy eating which I broke down from the Erica White book which helped bring me and my partner into good health. I was asked to share them by the people at goodness direct because I had mailed them asking them for ingredient details to fit with an anti candida diet. I’m sorry that you find them so useless and that you feel it’s not for you, but i assure you I didn’t start out as a health nut, and generally wouldn’t count myself as one now that i’m healthy again. Sure it’s a restrictive diet, but when eating something makes you ill it only takes a basic logic to work out that the smart thing to do is to not eat it.

A few mentally imbalanced cases apart I think what you’ll find is that most of the people you see as health nuts are perfectly normal people who have developed health problems as a result of dietary issues (like thinking ready meals are actually proper healthy eating) and have had to adapt their diet to a selection like this in order to get well again.

We are not nuts, we have just had to learn that sometimes if you want the food you are eating to stop messing up your health you have to put a bit more effort into paying attention to what you eat and how it is prepared, and that usually means preparing it yourself and not eating the things which have made you ill in the past.

So thanks for calling me a nut, but no thanks, I’m just healthier than I used to be and was asked to share how, as it is I didn’t realise the list was going for publication in the first place and certainly didn’t expect to get called names by strangers for sharing how I got healthy.

If you want to actually understand what this list is about then get Erica’s book out of the library.

Alternatively if you really want to just know about healthy eating for normal people then there are free training courses you can do at places like the link below which will help with the basic grounding in what is and isn’t healthy and normal.

http://www.vision2learn.net/channels/courses/healthy-eating.aspx

You may find this book useful: http://blog.goodnessdirect.co.uk/2011/05/11/brilliant-new-candida-cookbook-available/

it’d be nice to see an article like this targeted at the average person. for example, how about a rating each food so we know how bad it is? i.e., i’m sure eating a bowl of ice cream is worse than an apple. i can avoid desserts but the idea that i can no longer have any fruit of any kind is out of the question.

I can highly recommend this website. It’s by Linda Allen a Certified Nutrition Specialist and Health Consultant.
There is an excellent ebook available, which has some interesting ideas on fighting yeast infections.

http://aboutyeastinfectioncure.com

Personally the best recommendation I could make is to contact Erica White, she is a fully qualified nutritionalist with many many years of experience of consulting, specifically with regard to candidiasis.
It’s a slightly tweaked version of the eating plan she recommends in her book which has ended up being posted here as what my partner and I used to get clean and healthy.

If I remember rightly erica says that although there are small amounts of sugar in tomatos, their being fruits, that they have so much other value that they are worth eating most days if you can.

I know what you mean about restricted diets leaving you more sensitive and cycling foods and not getting into default ruts is something that takes effort, which is the last thing you feel like when you’re not well… i just did the best i could, and tried to open up to new foods I hadn’t considered which were okay.

Whenever my partner or I have had skin problems we’ve tried something a chap in a health food shop recommended – molkosan. It’s lacto fermented whey, sold for drinking but either slightly dilute or neat it seems to do wonders with clearing up any issues on the surface of the skin when applied directly. If the skin is broken or really sore I’d go for dilute as it’s going to sting. It cleared my partners persistant sinusitus too by inhaling some, but I’d seriously not recommend that as I gave it a go and it felt like my face was burning off. However that warning given, if the dermatitus is fungal based it might well help since it would appear to be great at repopulating skin with stuff that fights the fungus. It’s a bit like using topical applications of yoghurt to deal with thrush, but without the fat content to go rancid. True it can feel a bit sticky but we found it worth it. We used to keep a plant mister of it in the fridge.

Only other thought off the top of my head is that my brain fug used to be at it’s worst for us if we didn’t have a balance of omega oils. My partner went from veggie to fish eating and I started taking supplements and we both saw a marked improvement, whether or not your issues with oily fish are leaving you short on omega oils or imbalanced is something else that a properly qualified nutritionalist could address and check out.

Really it sounds like you could do with support from someone with training and experience, beyond just their own anecdotal reports, which is all I have. The nutrition help web site will do consultations online and as you’ll see is heavily weighted to dealing with candida issues … and no, i have nothing to gain from recommending them. Just i know they are reputable and have a successful positive approach to helping people overcome candida.

http://www.nutritionhelp.com/index.php

I have read in other places that tomatoes should be off the menu for an Anti-Candida diet. If they are safe to eat, that is good news for me, as my diet is severely restricted already. This brings me to another point. The diet you outline above would be tricky for me to follow, as the following are off the menu for me (see food intolerances, mentioned above): gluten; pork; oily fish; shellfish; and onions. Coupled with this is the omnipresent worry that affects all people with food intolerances due to a sensitive digestive tract: to over-eat a limited number of foods inevitably results in the development of additional intolerances. Do you have any suggestions?

Thank you for your time.