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I fell off the wagon.....BIG TIME! Lol

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Posted 3/5/2015 4:16 PM (GMT 0)
I was diagnosed with Lyme last Sept 2014. I was really good and strictly stuck to the Lyme diet.....no sugar, no dairy, gluten free, no alcohol. I did not give up my coffee. No way! nono

I stuck to this diet for 4 full months. I did not notice any improvement at all. In fact, I ended up with oral thrush anyway. (I did cheat a little at Thanksgiving....). I lost a lot of weight during this time, which I did not need to do! I just wasn't hungry.

The following month, my LLMD took me off all abx. We just did probiotics and even probiotic enemas... shocked

Still, nothing changed, except the nausea from the abx went away! And I was able to sleep a little better! My appetite returned. I was so sick of the diet. It never helped me anyway! SO....I went nuts and started eating anything I wanted! Pancakes, bagels with cream cheese, pizza, bread, cookies, candy, lots of yummy red wine......just totally crazy! I've been like this for a month now.

I feel no worse! You'd think I feel awful.....NOPE! Couldn't be happier! I put some weight back on, and it feels great!

But, I'm now restarting meds....mepron and biaxin. I've got to return to reality. But I really don't want to. This sucks so bad. It's just frustrating that the Lyme diet does nothing at all for me! If it made me feel better, it would definitely be worth it, but it doesn't!

How important is this stinking diet anyway? confused
Posted 3/5/2015 4:49 PM (GMT 0)
Diet is pretty important, but it's also pretty important not to have these negative feelings about your diet stressing you out. A healthy diet gives you the nutrients you need to heal, and cutting out or limiting certain things that are harmful to your health definitely gives you the edge up on treatment at least.

Only you can decide exactly how you want to eat - it's a constant battle, I know :(

Sometimes the cruel trick though is that eating healthy feels bad at first because your body is detoxing all the junk now that you're cutting it out, and sometimes eating junk feels good at first and takes a while to have any ill effects.

It is incredibly frustrating, I hear you!! Hang in there!
Posted 3/5/2015 4:58 PM (GMT 0)
Wow, Utahgal, see my thread from yesterday "son can't take it - lyme diet" - lots of people jumped in.

I'm going to listen, Trav. and Simela said give him a little break, astroman had some brands to look into and dancing bear had recipes (trav.too)

He has SO had it. I wondered the same thing, but since it is slow growing, and I guess all the bad food "feeds it" every 4-6 weeks when it comes out to feed, in the long run it will hit, maybe not short term.

I read it all in Cure Unknown, that's why I have been so strict with him to get him better faster (and to lose the psychotic teen, terrorizing our house).

I think you should eat healthy most of the time, try to have tasty lyme stuff ( we are all eating it in our house to support him), but then cheat when you really need to. The family cheats, I have not with him,but he is so losing it and hearing you too, I'm going to cut him a break here and there. I think going crazy is a bad idea (like he should not be inhaling a whole pizza as teen boys can do!), but a couple slices now and then may be helpful to the soul! and chocolate and wine in my case.... though my heart and lack of sleep from the wine with my blood pressure does not like it, it takes the edge off my stress every night.

Hand in, it just may take a little more time to feel 100%
Posted 3/5/2015 5:02 PM (GMT 0)
I couldn't tolerate the Lyme diet, either. I lost tons of weight, was so tired and hopeless, and did not feel well.

I eat well -- good food, most of which we raise ourselves. I focus more on adding to my diet instead taking things away. Food can be medicine as well.
Posted 3/5/2015 5:16 PM (GMT 0)
I think the main thing with diet is to stay away from GMO's and pesticides that kill beneficial gut bacteria. Our gut bacteria are so important to proper immune response. So that means stay away from conventional grains/legumes (which are sprayed with glyphosate before harvest to aid drying), conventionally fed meats and animal products (the pesticides they eat will be stored in fatty tissues/products - cream, butter etc.), and conventional seed oils which are all heavily treated with glyphosate.

We eat organic potatoes, sweet potatoes, California white rice (low arsenic), and organic soaked oats. So although we do eat a lot of vegetables and greens, I find we do better with some carbohydrate as well.
Posted 3/5/2015 5:19 PM (GMT 0)
I think I'll try cutting a few things out this time. I always make a healthy dinner. It's mostly the other junk.....and the wine! I've been enjoying 2 awesome glasses of wine a night for several weeks now. It really does relax me. But....I think that I will try to limit it to weekends only.

If I felt better from the diet, it would be a no brainier! It just seems like extra torture to suffer!

Thanks for understanding, encouraging, and not making me feel like an irresponsible failure. I will try to get my act together.
Posted 3/5/2015 5:21 PM (GMT 0)
I need some carbs too - if I try to cut out any food group I'm more likely to ravenously binge on junk, plus I'm just not stable.

Sad thing is I find it easier to digest the junk than a piece of broccoli - pretty frustrating when your stomach only hurts when you eat healthy!

The wine was a killer for me too - I got to feel "normal" and I didn't go crazy stressing out at night like I normally do, but it made so many of my symptoms worse despite trying so hard to deny it. I'm forcing myself not to drink until summer, then I might have a little.
Posted 3/5/2015 5:21 PM (GMT 0)
I feel terrible for kids who have to endure this!
Posted 3/5/2015 5:34 PM (GMT 0)
I've been on Doxycycline for the past few months and have found I can eat/drink whatever I want as long as I drink and gargle with some very strong Sage tea soon after eating "The Bad Stuff."

I buy Alvita organic sage tea bags, as I didn't harvest any Sage last year from my garden.

So far, the sage has worked very well. I drink the tea before I go to bed and
gargle with it as needed.
I've had wine, bread..even a Devil Dog :-)

The one time I had a lot of carbs and went to bed without Sage-ing I woke up with a black tongue. Not doing that again...

Give it a try-and PS I sometimes add a big hunk of fresh lemon to the tea if it's for drinking and not gargling.
Good luck!
Posted 3/5/2015 8:09 PM (GMT 0)
I would agree that the diet isn't for everyone. I didn't stick to anything other than a healthy diet when I healed the first time, and this last time my diet changes were due to an allergy to soy & MSG, and the need for a special diet to help heal my adrenals.

Stick to healthy choices, eat organics just as much as you can afford to, and take really good care of yourself..

But, if you are really having issues with Candida, wine really isn't a good choice as it contains a lot of sugar. So limit yourself on that, or switch to something with less sugar.
Posted 3/5/2015 8:41 PM (GMT 0)
Sorry! I can't even make it to the store for that - I really hate snow these days.

Didn't mean to lead you astray homemade baked mac and cheese with buttered crumbs and red wine - oh my!

Oh well, it's beef stew with lots of veggies instead tonight - debating couple of potatoes - a good snow dinner anyway

jealous, enjoy the mac and cheese! :) FEEL WELL TOO, it will make you happy :)
Posted 3/6/2015 2:43 AM (GMT 0)
I know--I hate the stupid lyme diet! Everything you mentioned above Utahgal is what I have pretty much lived off of my whole life! Ive always had a pretty fast metabolism. I too, have lost weight (about 20 lbs) trying to follow the lyme diet but recently took an abx break and went CRAZY also! I picked out one of those cream cheese topped brownies from the grocery bakery and ate every piece of it within like a 4 day period with nice glass of whole milk. Mmmm. Ive also been putting a hurting on some rippled chips and french onion dip! Ohhwwa... it was so good.. while it lasted I suppose.

I will say, I actually do notice a flareup in symptoms though the more I splurge with the S.A.D. (standard american diet) as opposed to when I do eat healthier :-/

I started back up abx yesterday and over the next couple weeks will be adding Zithro & Mepron. Ughhhh....this should be fun for us! shakehead mad sad


-Courtney
Posted 3/6/2015 9:57 AM (GMT 0)
I dont stick to any particular diet. Is it enough if I avoid alcohol and (mostly) sugar? Even though I hit up some chocolate few times a week. Also, strict diet doesnt make me feel better or worse, so yeah
Posted 3/6/2015 11:47 AM (GMT 0)
It's great that the diet helps some people. I wish it helped me. I wonder which symptoms improve on the diet? I hope people will answer that for me!
Posted 3/6/2015 6:49 PM (GMT 0)
Dude,

I was the perfect little dieter, never cheating.

I did a juice fast for a month...didn't help

I did low carb high fat paleo...helped but wasn't good for my thyroid

Then I started adding manuka honey to my treatment for the methygloxyl effect. It made me feel great so I went from 1 tablespoon a day to FIVE tablespoons a day.

Since then I have discovered the work of Ray Peat on the medicinal uses of sugar (high glucose, lactose and fructose, and moderate polysaccharides). Keeping your liver glycogen stores full is important to avoid insulin resistance, but overdoing sugar can also create insulin resistance so a happy balance is good.

I would also like to add that it is lovely to have a healthy relationship with food. I used to get really upset with myself for "cheating" when eating "healthfully" was doing more damage than eating intuitively and loving food.
Posted 3/6/2015 9:34 PM (GMT 0)
I avoid carbs/grains because they make my heart issues flair up. I've cut back on sugar but dark chocolate is so darned good! I eat tons of bacon/meat (I had been a vegetarian since high school) and nuts and fruits and vegetables. If I feel that I need to eat junk food I have my husband make me shrimp instead, it is the ultimate pleasure and takes the edge off, so I don't end up eating a whole bag of sour patch kids.
There has to be something healthy that gives you that satisfaction like a nice caramelized sweet potato.
take a sweet potato wash it thoroughly poke holes all over with a fork. preheat oven to 400 bake for an hour to an hour and a half. When you see black bubbles coming out of the potato it's ready and oh so sweet and delicious, with or without salted butter. It might not be the best thing to eat because of the sugar but it is so satisfying and not nearly as bad for you as some other foods might be.
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