Candida Diet And My Secret Love Affair With Ben & Jerry

It was one of those aha moments. My candida came back with a vengeance. This time, I also had fatigue and brain fog my morning java could not fix. I was miserable. Time to act. Is this the price I had to pay for my secret after midnight love affair with Ben & Jerry? Is it my beautiful wine and cheese dinner? Do I need to go on a candida diet?
So I did a lot of research. I made a lot of mistakes. But I feel better. And I did it without any medication. Here is what I found the most helpful.
1. Foods You Should Not Eat
“What you don’t eat is much more important than what you eat. In other words, avoid foods that feed candida. Focus less on antifungal foods and fancy recipes that promise to kill the yeast.”
“Avoid processed foods, alcohol, high carb foods and drinks, rice, bread, pasta and hard to digest foods such as beans and legumes. This includes whole grains. Try to minimize these as much as possible.
Other foods to avoid are common allergens especially dairy, wheat, gluten, soy and peanuts”.
Source: Candida Overgrowth Diet : What We Have Learned In 20 Years.
2. Foods You Should Eat
You are basically left with high fats and proteins and a lot of greens and vegetables. Most experts tell you to give up coffee. I am still not there. So I still had my morning coffee everyday. Nobody is perfect. Here is what I have been eating:
- Morning: coffee with coconut oil. No cream, dairy, sugars, etc. That kept me going until lunch.
- Lunch: big salad with olive oil, lemon and some lean organic meat.
- Afternoon snack: 30 organic almonds.
- Another snack: avocado with sea salt.
- Dinner: steamed veggies, asparagus and lean organic meat or wild salmon.
3. Keto Flu
Giving up all these foods was very hard at first. What I have learned is that this is something that happen in many other low carb diets.
People that start Ketogenic diet, call it Keto Flu. Symptoms: “constipation, headache, halitosis, muscle cramps, diarrhoea, and general weakness and rash”.
I personally had strong cravings for foods. Foods I should not eat, especially sugars. The coffee with coconut oil helped a lot, but I think it is more of a mental game. I had to keep reminding myself why I was doing it. These cravings became better after 2 weeks. I also had mood swings that were probably related to the sugar withdrawal.
4. Exercise
The energy on this diet isn’t the greatest. I could function at work but didn’t have a lot of energy to work out. The morning coffee with the coconut oil did give me a few hours of energy I could use to workout. This also helped with my mood swings and cravings.
5. Meditation
Meditation also helped with the cravings. I am not very good at it, but I found that when I had cravings, just getting out of the danger zone (kitchen, breakroom at work), sitting down, taking a few deep breath for a few moments and visualizing myself healthier did work.
