Amen.
If I followed the diet outlined by our wonderful doctor and elaborated on by Sinclair, I would be disabled by now. I followed their versions of NSD for the first 4 months and my pain just kept increasing, despite strict iodine testing. Finally I fasted and added one food at a time. I wrote everything down and how I reacted. It was a LONG process, but for me it was worth it. There is way too much cancer in my family for me to mess with immune suppressing drugs.
I was more aggressive about adding new foods back in but never more than one at a time (single ingredients), and always several days in between, to make sure I could tell how I was reacting. I found a baseline and very basic "safe diet" that I knew was 100% safe for me to fall back on that I knew could pull me out of a flare within a day.... think greens and meat.... boring, yes, but within a year my 100% safe diet was fairly large and within two years I was eating more of a variety on a regular basis than ever in my life before then.
I could not do canned coconut milk, cabbage and broccoli, things that others ate with no problem. I found that I could handle homemade goats yogurt, but not cow's yogurt. I also still can not handle ANY sugar, including fruit. People often ask me how I can stand never tasting anything sweet, but the truth is that my body processes tons of things as VERY sweet.... my taste buds have changed and things like lobster, crab and nut butters taste extremely sweet to me and leave that craving very much satisfied... don't get me wrong, I used to eat ice cream for dinner on (rare) occasion pre-nsd, and fruit with yogurt was a meal for me several days a week.... (loved me some sweets!) but my health is worth it.
My husband laughs at me because I dance around with food inspired joy pretty much every day. I generally slop up every last morsel and stare sadly at the empty bowl with betrayal in my eyes...... give me nut butters and especially dehydrated kale chips slathered in nut butters and flavorful oils and even I know that I am a comedy routine with my sad dismay when it is all gone (so sad!!!!)
So YES!!!!!!!!! keep it simple.... get your pain to decrease.... it is a slow process for some of us.... you may be bored with your food choices at first... but it is a journey and you will be slowly adding more and more delights to your "safe food basket".....
My diet even a year and a half in was very satisfactory to me, but now that I am approaching 4 years in, I have few complaints about diet. In fact, if you told me I could go off NSD and be pain free, but could not eat the the foods I eat now, I would have an incredibly hard decision to make...
