I tried to look through some of the NSD advice, I wanted to see if I could get to a personal diet that doesnt feel too far removed from what I normally eat from.
Let me see if I got this right...

Breakfast:
Eggs or egg with salad, Yoghurt

Lunch:
Fried eggs with bacon, cheese

Dinner:
Any steaked meat that is pure meat, including chicken. Cauliflower, Corn, vegetables, pork, salad, beans.

Evening:
Omelet, More suggestions needed.


Drinks:
Water, orange juice, milk, is there any type of soda (Coke, etc) that can be had?

I'd like your input. Also the lack of bread, pasta and sauce hits me the worst. Any easily obtainable replacements? -Are there any shop carried types of bread that can be used? -The shops here carry a lot of gluten-free products, they will still have starch, or?

no corn, corn is starch.

no beans, beans are starch.

i'd add in things like chicken, turkey, fish, seafood.

a lot of other veggies:

greens of all kinds, we've been eating a lot of italian wedding soup made with chicken or turkey meatballs and escarole, a good way to get a good dark leafy green in my diet, much more digestible for me than raw greens. spinach another good green.

other veggies like cabbage and broccoli and brussels sprouts. brussels sprouts are great roasted with a little EVOO and sea salt.

summer squash (zucchini and yellow summer).

fruit: grapes, berries, apples, etc.

i'm low starch, not no starch, so others can help you more here.

i'm also very sensitive to the casein in dairy. so it wouldn't hurt to either have food testing done to see if its just starch you should avoid, or other things. or you could keep a food/symptom diary. but my arthritis symptoms are not directly linked enough to tell the effects by symptoms, that's why i had the blood work done. i'm also a little sensitive to eggs so i personally wouldn't be able to eat that diet.

as for soda, not due to starch, but not really good for our healths in general, so so much sugar, etc. i'll have a little flat ginger ale if my tummy is really bad, but even that has so much sugar. you're better off getting in the habit of drinking primarily water. some fruit juice if you don't have sugar problems like i do, i'm insulin resistant. coconut water has about half the sugar of most fruit juices. veggie juices could be another alternative so long as they aren't starchy root veggies like carrot etc. i drink a lot of herbal teas, some green tea, and for a treat, a little oolong or occasionally black tea. coffee would be ok if you drink that. but my main "beverage of choice" is water.

Cauliflower can also be a bit starchy, especially if you are buying it out of season (imported from cold storage). The same is true of apples. Check the ingredients on the yogurt to make sure it doesn't contain any starch (many do). Gluten-free is not the same as starch free. Actually, gluten is a protein, so it is not a problem on its own. Be sure to check all ingredients on all processed foods. Most of them will contain some type of starch.

NSD is a seriously huge change to a person's diet. We do it because we are suffering seriously huge pain. Half-hearted attempts may lead you to believe it doesn't work. You could just try the low-starch diet and see if that helps. If you don't get enough relief, then you can move to NSD. It took me a couple of months just to find all the sources of starch in my diet, so I'm not sure a one-week trial will do you a lot of good. Some people start off with a fast to help get out of an ongoing flare.

I'm not aware of any easily obtainable replacements; we tend to fix a lot of meals from scratch. Look for recipes that use almond or coconut flour.

--Greg

Greg, well said, especially the second paragraph. It's exactly what I want to tell people who look at me like I'm crazy when I tell them about the diet...or the one I love especially is when they say "I could NEVER do that!" I want to tell them if they understood the degree of pain I was in, they would do it too. It's not a joke, it's not just being uncomfortable, it's not anything like "old age" arthritis which everyone thinks. It's serious debilitating REAL pain from hell. People just don't get it, and I guess I really can't blame them. I would never want my worst enemy to go through what I have gone though.

...Ok I'm off my soapbox. Gilth, Sue and Greg have addressed your food concerns well. If you have any more questions, just ask! It will serve you very well to get iodine and test everything before you eat it. Also, even after cutting starch for the first few months, I felt better, but was still have some minor flares here and there. Since I eliminated dairy, I've been golden! I hope you find NSD as helpful as I have. It has saved my LIFE!

I second Lar84. get some iodine and test, test , test. Use the list that Dragon Slayer placed as a sticky and print it for a quick reference ( I only cut and past the areas I would use).

As of tomarrow I will have been NSD for 3 months. I will post an update then as to how it has worked for me.

Eat whole fresh food..

Gluten-free products are chock-full of starch. If you want bread, you or your wife will need to learn how to bake it from something quite low in starch such as almond flour. That stuff is expensive, so leave it as a treat. It's not a yeast bread, so it's relatively easy to make (or so says someone lucky enough to have someone else make my occasional almond bread...)

Also someone posted a recipe for bread made out of flaxseed, which got a lot of good reviews.

And I have to agree with gbash's warning about not assuming NSD "doesn't work" just because you give low-starch a shot for a while... getting an optimal diet is trial-and-error and can take a long time. I tried going by rules given in a book for 6 months before realizing I had to figure out which foods will work for ME, rather than which ones worked for someone else. Other people can give very helpful suggestions, but they can't tell you anything that will work for sure.

Two examples off the top of my head: many suggest eat extra eggs, but that was way too tough on my digestion. I turned out to be mildly allergic to egg whites. Also coconut flour baked goods are highly recommended by many, but the stuff I bought locally had too much starch and raised my inflammation (I'm afraid to try other coconut flour now).

Some of us can handle milk, and some can't because of all that lactose. Orange juice may have starch, so I avoid it. I drink water and "sodas" which are made by mixing white grape juice with flavored sparkling water. It is quite good! Also I sometimes make smoothies with white grape juice, homemade lactose-free yogurt, and fruit flavorings (e.g. lemon oil, orange oil, cherry flavoring).

Another treat I have is homemade jello, made from plain gelatin, grape juice, green raisins, walnuts, sometimes yogurt, sometimes extra fruit flavorings (though just the white grape is really good).

If you like hot cereal and don't mind a somewhat runny texture, you can try cooked flaxseed with raisins, walnuts, butter, and flavoring (e.g. vanilla extract). Use twice as much water as flax, low boil for a couple minutes, add the rest to taste.

Hi, gilth:

I'm sorry, but I cannot recommend anything to You. For some reason You came up with a list that hardly resembles our requirements.

If You don't want to do the diet, don't do the diet, but please don't do a fake NSD for one week and then claim "It did not work for me." We have been round the houses with others who are able to fool themselves the diet did not work for them. All it does is add to the noise.

Better to just admit You are not interested in the dietary approach; that is the kind of honesty that we appreciate because it does not seek to deceive others and possibly turn away people who will really be helped in the future.

If I have misread Your intentions, then I am sorry. If You did not study the material well enough and have misstated Your ideas somehow, I apologize again, but I take this matter seriously--seldom personally, but You struck that chord!

Good Luck to You, whatever You try,
John

gilth,

One week is not long enough to give this diet a fair chance to work for you. Also, giving it a half-hearted effort isn't likely going to help you either. I have had huge success with the diet but it has taken me weeks to figure out some mistakes I was making (ex. some lunch meats and canned meat have food starch). If you decided to do the diet, we are here to help but make sure you are commited to making the changes needed to succeed. Otherwise, what is the point.

Teri

Another echo of giving the diet a 'dedicated' try.
Google "auto-immune dietary protocol", that should set you straight for the first couple of months (oh yes indeedy! No weekly timelines in this game!). Later on one would slowly introduce food items back in, to see if they're a go or not.

I surfed the site "The face of Ankylosing Spondylitis" just now, and was so saddened by the stories told, stories we can all relate to in so many ways - but the worst part was that nobody's story I read spoke, or even mentioned, diet as a way to manage their symptoms.

I do understand what Dragon Slayer is saying. It may sound 'harsh', but I also feel so very strongly that the diet-message should, and needs, to reach 'further' than it currently does... not preaching, but to make people aware of the possibility, albeit a very strict & labour-intensive one (for many) of living without regularly taking medication.

I never dieted a day in my life before this time last year. Ate anything I wanted, and then let the sports 'burn away' all the garbage I ingested. Amazing what changes a good dose of pain can bring on Suddenly I was willing to eat anything, or nothing, to be able to 'exist' again, haha. What do you do when you can neither sit, lie down, nor walk!

I just spent 2+ hour in the kitchen cooking chicken & salmon, and washing, chopping, and chopping! spinach, lettuce, cuces, radishes and celery for the workweek starting tomorrow. Time consuming, but oh so worth it