Kickas.org Forums Treatments, Drugs and Alternatives NSD and diet-related; Simplicity is the key for me

So it's been a year and a half since my first iritis attack, and my journey began. I've learned SO much in this last year about diet and autoimmune. I've tried SO many different diets. With moderate success. But I was looking for even more relief. So I kept cutting back on the things I ate. Which brings to where Im out now. I currently have NO pain. Slightly sore in the mornings, but it goes away within minutes. Ive been eating pretty much only this

Romaine lettuce
spinach
Onions
Salmon
Organic turkey breast.
Grapes
blackberries
Walnuts(soaked for 24 hours)
Apple cider viniger
Olive oil
salt
LOTS of water

That's it ladies and gentleman..lol. Now you may ask do I plan on only eating those things for the rest of my life. No, I eventually want to add more in. But I think it's important for everyone on here to find as close to 100% health as they can before adding in other foods. Whether that's 70 % or 80 %, or like myself 100 %. I see so many posts on here saying NSD not working for me. And when someone asks what they eat. They list 80 things. Things like Mayonnaise, dairy, eggs, spices, tomatoes, hot dogs, deli meat, red meat..ect. All things that could be major triggers.

What Im trying to say is that there's ALWAYS further you can go. Never give up. Theres not some miracle diet. Everyone is different. For instance somewhere along the line I developed an intolerance to chicken. That would give me the worst hip/butox pain. Now on almost every autoimmune diet plan, chicken is on the "safe list" But not for me. I could of been stubborn and blamed my pain on the nsd not working. But I kept digging. Kept trying different things. And after a year and a half I've finally found 100 % relief. I don't think its all diet either. I'm at a very good weight. Work out everyday. Stay happy and positive. People always tell me, every time they see me I have a smile on my face. I think all these factors have led to a virtually pain free life. And not only that. But because I'm eating so healthy, I've never felt better. I have so much energy, I'm never tired. I haven't got sick in over a year and a half. Not even a sniffle.

Anyway though I just want to encourage anybody out there who is struggling to keep pushing. Keep trying new things. Keep eliminating things from your diet. NEVER GIVE UP

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...

That's awesome. Elimination diet has wonder full benefits. I would of never figured out that chicken was affecting me If I wouldn't of started the elimination diet. Like you said. This is a very slow process. It's definitely trial and error. You have to be patient. It's funny too because some people say HOW DO YOU DO IT? How do you only eat those certain things. I could never do that. My answer is, the joy of food cant compare to the pain of AS. So it's actually kind of easy. I'm so thank full to be virtually pain free. When your young you don't appreciate things. Like health. But now that I've had it taken away from me over the last year and half. Giving up certain food to regain it is a small price to pay if you ask me.

Anyway glad to hear you've found a diet that works for you as well. That's awesome

That's inspiring ! I'm gonna do an elimination diet next month have you got any tips or advice ? Thank you for sharing your story !!

Hello Tux and congrats on diet success.

I pretty much did the same when I started with NSD... but diet was very repetitive and very simple. A lot of the same foods over and over... but I had my answer within a month.

After knowing I had success I started adding food back in and testing how I reacted.

Best to you going forward. I would offer the following two suggestions as you move forward...

- fasts of some sort - I do 1 day fasts now.. only apples and olive oil before I go to bed. Used to do 3 days, but too hectic with family and work. I do it once a week now for 8 months. Helps to heal the GI
- Probiotics of some form... supplement, yogurt, sauerkraut etc... helps to maintain healthy balance in GI.

I found the above helped me be a bit less sensitive to starch in long term.

Best to you,

Tim

I think your stories and contributions are very inspirational. I enjoy reading your posts.

Thanks Tim,

I would never be here dancing around if it were not for the early dieters like you who stuck around helping others for so many years.

Well in my case what made it easy was that I really enjoy everything on my list. I LOVE salads. I make one every night. I combine olive oil ACV, and sea salt to make an Italian dressing. Its really good. I look forward to it all day. Grapes have always been my favorite fruit and is almost always safe when it comes to starch content.

So my first but of advice is find the a few things that you REALLY enjoy. That will obviously help.

2nd thing is look at the elimination diet as temporary. Don't look at it as a forever thing. Cause you'll probably give up within a week cause it'll seem to daunting. But if you tell yourself its only temporary you'll have a better chance of success. Imo we all have the power to do things for a period of time that we may not be able to do long term. For instance I've heard of some MMA fighters who abstain from sex for like 6 months while there training. So again keep telling yourself it's temporary.

My third bit of advice is something that you may not be able to do. Depending on how you react to fruit. But one of the main thing that has led to my success is I meet both my salt and sugar cravings. When I'm craving something salty. I go for a salad or walnuts. When I'm craving something sweet I grab my grapes, or blackberries, or maybe some raisins. And also this brings me to another point. When you restrict your diet, food will taste SO much better. Trust me, if you fast for a day or two. Something as simple as watermelon will taste like the best thing you've ever had. So something simple like grapes taste amazing to me now. But it takes time. I had huge cravings when I first began. But it's gotten a lot better over the last few weeks. I can honestly say I really haven't craved pizza, or candy, or all the foods we can't eat. I've finally found contentment when it comes to food.

My last bit of advice is to never "assume" that something isn't affecting you because it's on all the safe lists. Everyone is different. Like I said, I can't do chicken. So don't be afraid to eliminate something. Even if you think there's now way that's what's affecting you. Trust me you never know..lol

Good luck. Also one more thing. Try and stay positive. It's been proven that stress can bring down your immune system for hours. So smile and laugh....a lot..:)

Totally agree my friend. Fasting has huge benefits. I've done it many times before. And I actually do intermittent fasting daily. Where I only eat from about 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm. It's not for everybody. But I have seen huge benefits from it. I give my gut 19 hours to rest. It's definitely not for everybody. But my body has gotten so used it that I don't really even get hungry during work. And ironically I have more energy. Go figure..lol. As far as sauerkraut. I really wanna add this to my diet. But the last time I did I had a flare. I think I took to much. I'm feeling so good right now I don't want to screw anything up you know. But I totally agree. In the long run I really want to add in probiotics. I think the benefits are massive.

Thanks for this post. You have inspired me to get back on the NSD. I was doing so well and then this month I just caved and started adding in bad foods little by little. I was feeling so much better that I just started slipping back into indulging in some comfort food like gluten free pasta.

I really need to get a food journal. I forgot what I ate and when I ate it, and I never know what is causing me pain and what isn't. I've been faithful about staying away from dairy and gluten, though. It's just that darn starch! So hard to avoid, but, no food is worth the inflammation.