Liquid Strength® Fall. "yeast free diet"

After 3 years of trying everything for his "migraine syndrome", my husband is now trying to the "Yeast Free Diet". Allergy tests showed that he has a delayed and very extreme mold allergy. We all hear about people going "dairy free" or "wheat free". The jury is still out as to what if any benefits these diets offer the average person but for some people they can be life altering.

What has been enlightening to me is just how hard it is to eat so simply. Basically, mold/yeast is in anything that is fermented (this means no vinegar, wine, beer, mustard, soy sauce etc.). Mold can also grow in the shells of nuts, in coffee beans, tea leaves,fruit with pits and all melons and berries. Sugar is said to "feed yeast" so all sugar and sugar containing things are out too. That means even dairy products because they contain Lactose, a natural sugar.

Because I am the one who shops and cooks, I have had to educate myself and get creative with our food supplies and menu. Although I am not doing the diet like Kurt is, it is hard to argue with the logic of eating fresh fruits and vegetables and lean protein with no added junk....

We are not the "average" couple/family as it is regarding diet and exercise but this experience has taught me that even we use some products that are not 100% healthy. The first thing to go was the artificially sweetened products. In an effort to avoid sugar, it is easy to ingest a great deal of chemicals. Especially in drinks and yogurt etc. The only natural sweetener that is chemical free is Stevia and very few companies are using it.(Vitamin Water Zero is the only mainstream drink I can think of that currently uses Stevia).

We all LOVE bread/pasta/bagels etc. but the reality is that nobody can argue with the fact that fresh fruits and vegetables are better carbs. They yield myriad nutrients and photo-chemicals that we are only beginning to understand. I am going to share our journey a little with this way of eating. Kurt has a very specific and compelling reason to try this diet. He has spent 3 years battling horrific migraines that he has up to 70% of the time. Very few people need to eat with this kind of rigidity but all of us could steer our diets more along the lines of this kind of eating and be much healthier for it.

I invite all of you to come along on this journey and try to make some changes in how you "feed" your body and your awareness of what is in the food you eat. The next couple weeks I am going to be sharing some samples of the changes we have made and what I see happening with Kurt and with myself. I am curious to see what will happen....

The "Allowed" foods:

Grains:

oats (steel cut only), rice, barley (not malted), potatoes, sweet potatoes,

buckwheat

Fruits:

any kind of fruit besides grapes, melons and berries (up to 2 pieces a day but I am eating more)

Vegetables:

all

All lean proteins

oils:

olive, safflower, sunflower all raw.

Nuts and seeds:

almonds, brazil, cashews, filberts, pecans pumpkin seeds.

It sounds pretty easy but breakfast was really challenging. Kurt has no time and the cafeteria at work is not an option. What we did was buy several boxes of steel cut oats and cage free eggs and basically turned our kitchen into a mess hall.... I hauled down the "lobster pot" and we cooked the biggest batch of steel cut oats I have ever seen. (Steel cut oats must be cooked for up to 45 minutes so you need to plan ahead.) We also "soft boiled" 3 dozen eggs and put them back into their cartons so we could grab them as needed out of the fridge.

For breakfast, Kurt is packing a tupperware container with a the steel cut oats (I cooked some cinnamon with them for flavor and added anti oxidant benefit), two eggs and an aluminum container with unsweetened soy milk or almond milk.

For lunch he eats a salad with whatever he likes with olive oil and lemon. For dinner, I make a typical fish and vegetables dinner. The biggest challenge has been trying to find something to marinade the fish in. I usually use wine and some soy sauce so lemon is all I have left. I toss in lots of herbs and freeze dried garlic and onions.

I would love to see all of you try a day/week of eating like this. It takes a little bit of work but it is not as hard as I thought it would be. After 3 days, you get pretty used to it. I will be checking in and sharing the challenges and what I see happening with Kurt and myself.

Kurt has given up coffee which I have not. The first day he had a headache (not a migraine) but some advil cleared it right up). He is on day 5 and has not had a migraine but I am not sure that it is the diet that has made a difference yet. He said he felt "full in his stomach but still hungry" for the first 3 days. I ate oatmeal for dessert at night. I can't sleep if I am hungry. Kurt has lost a pound (not that he needed to). After a week we will add in nuts which will help him a lot.

Story von Holzhausen