Hey Jay,
I can tell you about a diet which worked for me when I started on the NSD. Combining the information from here alongwith the AutoImmuneProtocol, I figured out that pretty much everything was unsafe or fringe, especially if you happen to be a vegetarian as I am.
All I took for close to about 40-50 days was two bowls of boiled vegetables for both lunch and dinner. The vegetables rotated between gourds,zucchini,okra,cabbage,cauliflower and maybe capsicum. 10 days into my diet, I started lettuce/cabbage & cucumber for breakfast. I started this diet after a one day water fast and probably water fasted another 2-3 times(one day at a time) while being on the diet.
Some days into my diet, the inflammation had reduced. When I ended the diet, I was totally inflammation free.(I was inflammation free a lot earlier, but was hesitant to alter my diet which had worked wondrously for me).
I lost more than 15 kgs of weight during this period even as I did minimal work. Energy and muscle devoid, I had to work on my ability to do things and increase my range of motion and also gradually introduce other food groups to my diet. Many roadblocks later(usually diarrhea whenever I introduced new stuff or started consuming larger portions. Diarrhea was always accompanied by weight loss as I used to eat extremely thin for the next 4-5 days), I was ale to successfully reintroduce diary(250 ml milk,150 ml yogurt daily), eggs(1 per day), fruits(5 servings a day) and nuts(soaked almonds,walnuts,figs and currants). I was even tolerating rice and wheat without any inflammation. I woke up with some degree of stiffness but an hour of stretching and simple exercises would set everything alright. All this while my ESR and CRP were below normal levels. Gradually, I was able to put on a bit of weight, though still about 10 kgs short of what I was when I started the diet. Wanting to further increase my weight and my protein intake, I thought on introducing chicken, which(chicken curry) flared me the next morning itself. Unwilling to get back to the diet I first started out with, as I no longer have extra kilos to part away with, I am still struggling with the inflammation despite removing(or so I think) all the starchy and fringe foods I was earlier consuming. If nothing works, I'll go back to do the diet I started with.
The bottomline is - if you've got extra kilos to spare or don't mind losing some, you might consider what worked for me. Though with hindsight, that was a brutally restrictive diet and you could afford to add a few things to it.
I totally second you on lack of support and guidance except through online forums, even though KickAS has done a stellar job. As a fellow Indian, you could PM me your number and we can get in touch with each other.
