The basic rules of the diet are no sugar, no gluten, no wheat, no dairy, no soy, no alcohol, and nothing fermented. Instead, the goal is to focus on eating 60% vegetables, 20% protein, 10% carbs, and 10% good fats.

That said, it’s not an easy diet to adhere to in our sugar and flour-laden culture and there are many potential potholes to fall into for those who try. I should know, I’ve fallen into most of them since I started this diet in 2007. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if some were actually named after me.

A few weeks ago I began offering private coaching sessions to help people implement the diet, and what I found is that the major mistakes people make seem to be universal. Which is why I thought it would behoove (love that word!) us all to call them out, so that if any of these sound all too familiar, you can climb out of that pothole and get back on the road to recovery immediately.

1. Swapping Pastas:

Pasta is yummy. When you decided to go on the Candida diet and therefore gluten-free, you were probably thrilled to discover that you could substitute regular pasta for rice pasta. It’s not quite as good but once you get used to it, it still does wonders to scratch the itch for a bowl full o’ carbs. It’s easy and quick to make and it feels familiar, so if you are anything like I was when I started this diet, you probably started cooking it every night, or every other. This diet thing ain’t so bad, you’re thinking as you scarf down the spaghetti or the penne or those squiggly ones whose name I forget. However, you are headed down the wrong road.

Rice pasta, though gluten-free and “legal” for this diet, is stripped of all nutrients. It’s also still just a carb, and a bowl of it will spike your blood sugar like nobody’s business, especially if you don’t eat it alongside a protein. In other words, party time for the Candida. Eating rice pasta frequently will seriously slow down your healing, so keep it to no more than once a week max and always eat a bit of animal protein with it to slow down the spike.

2. The “I Love Sugar” Reality Distortion Field (AKA Selective Label Reading or The Carob Chip Debacle):

I am a sweet-tooth. When I first started this diet, my sugar cravings were intense. Like, fetal position I-woulda-eaten-my-own-arm-if-it-were-made-of-sugar intense. As such, I was constantly on the hunt for “legal” options that could satiate me. In the first edition of Ann Boroch’s book Healing MS, she included a recipe for carob-chip cookies that called for unsweetened carob chips (in later editions she eliminated this). So I bought them, and found that they were actually quite delicious straight up, without the cookie. So I started eating them right out of the bag as a snack.

Sure, I read the ingredients on the back. I read that they contained nonfat milk (illegal!), whey powder (illegal!) and that they contained 7 grams of sugar per serving. But hey, if you look at the front, it says “unsweetened”. Therefore, I concluded, the amount of sugar listed on the back must have been incorrect. They must have been referring to some other sort of sugar, some sort that wouldn’t effect me at all. I thought, eh, what’s 7 grams anyway, that’s nothing! And I purposely ignored the serving size, which was 2 tablespoons. “I’ll only eat a few anyway” I said to myself.

However, since I seem to be confessing my ugliest moments here, you should know that I typically ate half the bag in one sitting. So let’s do a little math. There are 18 servings per container. 7 grams of sugar per serving. That’s 126 grams of sugar in the entire bag, so in one sitting I was eating 63 grams of sugar. 63 grams. Do you know how many grams of sugar one should be eating on this diet? 5 grams per day max! Hey, no biggie, I was only eating 12 times more sugar than I should have been. Never mind the fact that I was eating the other half of the bag later in the evening…

So what’s the moral of the story here? No matter how healthy you think something is for you, always read the grams of sugar on the back, and remember to multiply it by the serving size. Reality distortion is not useful in this context. Better to spend a few days in the fetal position and push through the sugar withdrawal than to do what I did and fall prey to supposedly “unsweetened” carob chips, or some other such false god…

3. Indulging in High-sugar Fruits and Veggies:

Just because something doesn’t have a label on it, doesn’t mean you can delude yourself into thinking it’s low in sugar. Well, you could, but that would be dumb. I should know, I’ve been dumb a lot in the past 5 years (see above). Here are some common culprits that novice Candida dieters tend to indulge in, convincing themselves that they are fine because they are nature’s own – sweet potatoes, potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, bananas, coconuts, dates, figs, sweet apples (like Fuji and Gala), pineapple, honeydew, strawberries, cherries, or any of these in the dried fruit varieties (for exact grams of sugar per fruit or veggie, go to www.dietfacts.com). At least in the first three months of the diet, you should stick to low-sugar fruits like organic berries and green apples, lemons and limes, and stay away from the high-carb veggies, choosing green veggies instead. And whatever you do, avoid dried fruits where the sugar content is significantly higher and many include sulfur dioxide, which is bad.

4. Vegetables Shmegetables:

Speaking of veggies, the Candida diet is so restrictive that it’s easy to put all your attention on what you can’t eat and very little on what you can and should. But this diet is not meant as a short-term fad-diet plan but rather a comprehensive revision of your eating habits. A lifestyle revision. As such, it’s crucial to not just take away what you can’t have but add in what you need more of. In other word, veggies. Yes, veggies. Your diet should consist of 60% vegetables. Your cells will be so thankful, they’ll do a little dance and sing your name. And when you do eat your veggies, remember that they are best eaten raw, then lightly steamed or sauteed, then frozen, and last (and best avoided) canned. Throw some organic kale (nature’s ultimate superfood) or organic baby spinach into a smoothie, make a salad, sautee some greens with onions and garlic and a bit of olive oil, make a curry sauce with a coconut milk base, or my favorite, make a soup! I eat tons of veggies in my soups, and you should too. Soups are fast, easy, delicious, and a great way to get lots of veggies in the winter months when salads are too cooling. Pick yourself up a soup book and get started, but remember to buy organic fruits and veggies if you can and substitute heavy cream for canned coconut milk and cow’s milk for unsweetened almond milk (or hemp or coconut).

5. Nut Butter Mania (and other severe quantity distortions):

In 1999, before I knew I had MS, all I knew was that something was very wrong, and in my search for an answer, I happened upon Dr. Crook’s book The Yeast Connection. I did my best to go on the diet then, but in hindsight, it might be more accurate to say I went on an unsweetened almond butter diet instead. The beauty of almond butter (or any of the “legal” nut butters like unsweetened sunflower butter) is that they are primarily fat, so they fill you up quickly, solving the what do I eat problem quite well. And, spreading them on a rice cracker with some stevia or xylitol sprinkled on top is a great way to satiate a sugar craving, as well as making for a really yummy and addictive snack. The problem, however, is that your diet should consist of no more than 10% of this kind of good fat. Too much and you’re sludging up your system and way overdosing on saturated fat. Mine was more like 90%. So eat your nut butter in moderation (as in, no more than two tablespoons a day) like all your foods. Moderation is key. Speaking of which…

6. Getting Caught in a Rut:

Because this diet is so limiting, it’s easy to find a few meals and snacks that work and stick with them. That’s good. It’s impossible to maintain this diet without enjoying what you eat, so finding dishes that work for both your taste buds and the diet is great. However, variation is essential. Most people with MS and other autoimmune diseases have food sensitivities, and eating the same thing every day is a recipe for developing more. Additionally, switching things up will limit the effects of whatever mistakes you may make, like eating veggies that are too high in sugar. If you combine a less-than-excellent food choice with extreme repetition, you’ll end up with a diet that’s not helping you heal at all, and you’ll wonder what the problem is. Plus, when you vary your food you vary the nutrients your cells receive, and that’s always good. Variety, as they say, is the spice of life.

7. Don’t let your partner go on the diet with you:

Seriously. They mean well, of course. They want to show solidarity. And that’s beautiful. However, what most people don’t realize is that sugar is a drug. A really intense drug. And the withdrawal from it will transform your loving partner into a bad, bad person. An irritable person. A cranky person. A person that cannot lovingly support you, because instead they want to join you in the fetal position and cry for brownies. So politely decline their offer, ask them to eat their treats when not in your presence, and accept their calm and still-sugar-addicted love and support. Then, once you’ve mastered the diet, if they’re still interested, you can gracefully show them how it’s done and bring them delicious sugar-free smoothies while they jones, silently thanking yourself for having already made it to the other side.

8. Going out to eat is not synonymous with “Let’s Binge!”:

Even in a restaurant, it’s possible to make sound choices that are within the bounds of your diet. You will probably not be the beneficiary of an entirely organic meal, however, in most restaurants you can eat wisely and not throw yourself far off course. Get a piece of roast chicken. A piece of fish. In a Thai or Chinese place, go for steamed veggies with brown rice. When ordering a dish with sauce, always make sure it’s gluten-free. Lucky for us all, g-free is in full effect these days, so yours will likely not be the first request they’ve had (remember that soy sauce has gluten in it). Make sure your sauce or salad dressing is not dairy based. Whatever you do, don’t order a bowl full of pasta or a heaping pile of cheese on your meal, just because you can. You’ll eat the meal in a few minutes, but regret it for days. Trust me. I speak the truth.

9. One Drink to Take the Edge Off:

No. Don’t drink alcohol ever. If you have MS, alcohol is like pouring acid on your nerves. Even if you’re doing everything else right, one glass of wine or beer or hard liquor can and will set you back significantly. It is multiple sclerosis’s #1 enemy. And incidentally, a close and well-loved friend of Candida, since most alcohol is also high in sugar and beer is just a cup full o’ yeast. In fact, some recovering alcoholics discover that their alcoholism was in part a severe craving caused by systemic Candida overgrowth. So don’t be seduced, no matter how tempting. And if you find yourself at a bar, ask for a glass of water with lemon or lime and think about how relieved your myelin sheath is that you made the right choice and spared it mass destruction.

10. Just One Piece Won’t Hurt, and Anyway I Feel Fine…:

NOOOO!!! Don’t do it!!! It’s essential to remember that when you’re not symptomatic, that’s when it’s most important to remain on the diet, because that’s when your body has the chance to do the deepest healing work. That’s when it has the chance to begin reversing your illness. I know how challenging it is to be so consistently disciplined with your diet. I know you “deserve” a piece of chocolate cake. So do I. In fact, by now I’d say I deserve a visit to Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory, but hey we all know what happened to Augustus Gloop because he couldn’t resist, remember? Do you want to end up getting sucked into the inner plumbing of that wacko’s factory? No you don’t. So let’s stop talking about that right now.

But one more thing…if you go for the treat every time you feel symptom-free, you’ll never reach that next level. So next time you witness your arm reaching for that cookie, do a little intentional hallucination and watch as it turns into repulsive little Candida critters and fungi and oversized parasite cells with evil brows and drool coming out of their mouth because they’re so happy you’re finally going to feed them! See them and remind yourself that you’re not in the business of furnishing their apartment in your gut. No you are not. Now put the cookie down. Slowly. Very good. And to avoid this in the future, order yourself some sugar-free gluten-free muffin and cookie mix from Namaste Foods so you’re not without options next time a craving should strike.

Do you want to be a Goddess (or God) of diet as well? Click here to get the details on booking a private coaching session with me to help you implement the diet with grace and ease and get on the road to health now!

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I’ll be concluding the 5-part series on beliefs soon, but I wanted to take today to address a question I received via email. The question comes from (I’ll call her) Penelope, the wife of a patient of Ann Boroch (Ann healed herself of MS many years ago and now works as a naturopath, helping people with MS and other chronic illnesses heal using diet and supplements.)

The question was:

It’s unnerving to go the homeopathic route because we’re not sure what’s going on.  My husband’s been working with Ann for the past 4 months.  At the start he was really miserable and then seemed to improve.  Now I’m not sure what’s going on.  Is this common with the healing?  Will he have this off and on until he gets to the other side of healing?

I thought this question was deserving of its own post because I think many people feel “unnerved” by straying from the well-trodden path of Western Medicine. I think the saying goes something like “The devil you know is better than the devil you don’t?”

We take comfort in familiarity. When we take a pill, or give ourselves a shot, or receive IV steroids (no matter how uncomfortable that may be and how many side effects we may suffer) we are still doing what we’ve been raised to do and raised to believe in – when you’re sick you take medicine and it makes you better.

However, when it comes to MS, unfortunately the treatments available are not quite so straightforward or successful. The Disease Modifying Drugs currently available simply slow progression in some people and can reduce the severity of flare-ups, but in doing so they inundate the body with chemicals, create many side-effects, and in some people, are completely ineffective.

Healing not managing

What Penelope’s husband is undertaking with the help of Ann Boroch is to fundamentally heal his system. He is on a journey of healing, which is markedly different than the path of “managing”. He has stepped outside the confines of Western medicine and entered into a paradigm in which the belief is that it’s possible to heal, to restore the natural balance and wisdom of the body without the use of drugs.

This is a brave path, because it’s the path less traveled. It’s not the path for the weak or for those who seek instant gratification. It’s not the path for those who believe the majority must be correct. It took a long time for Penelope’s husband’s body to arrive at his current disease state. And it will take some time to heal it. Setbacks are expected. MS is a complex condition.

Setbacks

I experienced many setbacks along my own healing journey, but when I look back on where I was when I began the diet and supplement regimen three years ago and where I am now, I’m so grateful for my own courage to choose that route. The results are amazing.

So for Penelope and anyone else who has chosen this path, remind yourself often that you’re on a journey of healing, not managing, and allow that to empower you and give you strength to endure the setbacks.

If you haven’t yet listened to my interview with Ann Boroch, just enter your name and email in the box with the red arrow at the top right of this page for free access to it, as well as my entire interview archive, including my conversation with Dr. Bruce Lipton.

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When I was younger, I lived my life under the pleasant assumption that if something was available to me – to eat, to wear, to play with – then the adults who run this world must have already made sure it was healthy and safe for me. I believed that this mysterious group of adults was benevolent and all-knowing, and that they had my best interest in mind, of course.

Funny, huh?

We’re Killing Ourselves

The truth is I may still have been navigating my life with this naivete if I hadn’t developed MS and believed firmly in the power of my own body to heal and get back in balance. But something interesting happened when I decided to begin eating for the purpose of healing. I realized that there were nearly no restaurants, delis, or cafes where I could eat a truly healthy meal! And with that realization came the startling understanding that our country’s eating habits were killing us, and there seemed to be a tacit agreement between those of us consuming the food and those of us providing it to do nothing, despite mounting evidence of the dangers.

At the same time, I began educating myself about what a healthy diet really means by exposing myself to naturopaths, nutritionists, and books and articles about what foods help us thrive and heal and live long, vibrant lives. Part of this education involved understanding the incentives that keep our poor dietary habits in place despite the knowledge of a far better way, among them greed, gluttony, and ignorance.

Everyone’s Doing It

Have you seen the recent commercials and print ads for Dunkin’ Donuts? They’ve adapted the slogan “America Runs on Dunkin’”. It’s a brilliant campaign. In four words they are telling you that the whole country’s doing it and you should too, and a donut and a cup of coffee will provide all the energy you need to get through your day. They’re not just approving of this diet, they’re highly encouraging it, and they’re using the social proof of all of America to convince you of its merits. When I see these commercials, it almost makes me want to run on Dunkin’! And I know I won’t be running – or walking – anywhere if I switch to the Dunkin’ diet!

I could turn this into a really long post, citing all the evidence and causal links between our diets and our diseases, but you can find that information easily online yourself. What I want to bring your attention to is how easy and dangerous it is to buy into the logic that because these foods are everywhere, they must be okay. Because they are not okay.

If you have MS, you’re lucky, because you’ll likely experience acute symptoms in your body within a day or two if you eat the standard American diet versus a healthy diet designed for self-healing and longevity. I can tell you that after three years on a healthy diet, whenever I deviate I feel it. But if you don’t have a chronic illness, you’re damaging yourself just as much, but maybe the cause and effect isn’t quite so fast and obvious. Diabetes, obesity, heart disease, cancer, alzheimer’s. The chances of developing these conditions are all multiplied significantly by eating a poor diet. By eating the American diet.

When Dunkin’ Donuts tells me that America runs on Dunkin’ I believe them. Oh I know it. And that’s the problem. America runs on Dunkin’ but should you?

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Photo by Rachel_R, Flickr

I talk about food a lot on this blog. The importance of a healthy diet, the benefits of discipline, and the ramifications of straying. Today I came across a blog of a nutritional counselor who spoke of a book called Integrative Nutrition by Joshua Rosenthal. Rosenthal offers a very interesting point that deepens and broadens my frequent “eat intentionally” message – the distinction between primary and secondary food:

Primary Food = Career, Physical Activity, Relationships, Spirituality
Secondary Food = What you eat

Rosenthal says that after years in his practice he’s noticed that there are those who eat horribly but thrive, and another group that eat with obsessive discipline and yet struggle to feel healthy. This begs the question: Where does true nourishment come from?

As always, achieving vibrant health is a delicate dance of many factors. But today I want to know how well you are nourishing yourself, and if there are areas of primary or secondary food that need your attention. Subtle shifts can create dramatic change in your health. What needs shifting? What needs nourishing?

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Photo by Ken Mccown, Flickr

I’ve been packing for days. Each day, I box up some of my possessions and my daughter’s possessions and add them to the tower in the corner of my living room. My life is methodically being packaged into a pause. On Wednesday, the boxes will be picked up and put in storage, where they will rest while decisions are being made. I am jealous of them (the boxes). I want a suitable place to rest too. To be not-in-use for a bit. To nestle somewhere cozy, built just for me. To breathe.

I’ve made matters worse by eating cookies. And some other things I’m too ashamed to admit here. By anyone’s standards I’m probably still a beacon of diet discipline, but by mine, I have been bad, and the only reason this matters is because my body knows it. My cognitive abilities are seriously compromised this week. I fake it well, but I feel the difference. It’s as if some cruel fairies have sneaked into my brain in the middle of the night and placed gauze around all the parts that do the thinking. The film of my life is still playing, but I’m sitting too far back and off to the side.

As if these few weeks weren’t all surreal enough.

I guess I thought I should get a free pass for a bit to behave like a person who doesn’t have a chronic illness, you know, what with these massive tectonic shifts happening in my life right now. But turns out no free passes available this week. That could make me feel sorry for myself, but it doesn’t. Apparently I’m enrolled in the master class. If I want to stay well, and do it without the standard MS drugs, there is no circumstance in which it is okay to eat food that is not whole and pure and good. The warrior path is the warrior path, and cookies don’t belong on it.

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But I don’t like leafy greens. So I don’t eat them very often (at least not yet), even though I know I should. And so, the phrase haunts me at every meal.

You see, every time you put something in your mouth, you are either increasing the health of your body, or taking away from it. Every meal is an opportunity to effect real and significant change in your body. Every meal is a point for you, or against you. As people living with chronic illness, the quality of the food we choose is perhaps the most important decision we make, and we make it every day, several times a day. Our bodies only work as well as our individual cells, and our cells only work as well as they can with the nourishment we provide. If that nourishment is poor, our cells will, in the extreme, go haywire, and short of that, they simply won’t work as well as they should.

The Food & Illness Connection

I spend a lot of time reading the posts on various MS pages on Facebook. Hundreds of people post every day, every minute, so reading it regularly teaches me what’s going on for people with MS every day, throughout the country. And one of the things I’ve noticed is that I often see three or four-sentence posts where someone is complaining of a symptom and in the very next sentence they mention the cookies they are about to eat, or the great cake they just had. And I’m amazed at the unfortunate ignorance in our culture (and specifically in our medical system) of the connection between the food we eat and how sick we are.

Food, especially sweets, is a comfort thing for many people. When you have MS, comfort is typically not your primary experience, and eating a few delicious cookies can go a long way to make someone feel comforted or treated, if not satisfied, at least for a little while. So I get why there’s a resistance to acknowledging the food-health connection and why even if a person gets it intellectually, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a willingness to change their diet. Ultimately, I believe it comes down to how much tolerance an individual has for discomfort, because only when that threshold is reached will most people be willing to make a change.

Unless of course we’re riding on the same proactive bandwagon, which I hope we are, in which case making changes toward awesome health is a typical day’s work.

Every time I sit down to eat a meal and I am not eating leafy greens, I am aware that I’m making a decision on behalf of my cells and thus on behalf of my health. The healing journey is a constant evolution, a regular weighing in and assessing of where I can improve, stack more cards in my favor, and be even healthier than I thought was possible yesterday. Leafy greens are one of my last holdouts, but I can feel the seemingly unmovable earth beneath me beginning to shift, to ready itself for the era of the leafy green.

Will I see you there, happily eating lettuce bunches? Will I be taking you with me? Or will leafy greens be a staple of your diet someday, just not yet?

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But still, I’m busy, and I don’t always have time to cook. And yet I’m not willing to stray from my diet, because I’ve made a commitment and I realize that my life quite literally depends on it.

So what’s a busy girl with a chronic illness to do?

Well during the last two and a half years I’ve discovered some yummy staples and snacks and substitutes for now-illegal-for-me food that don’t require much prep time and keep me satiated. Most importantly, they keep me away from the harmful foods that would slow or sabotage my healing. Ideally, of course, everything I eat will be as fresh as possible – fresh chicken, turkey and fish, fresh spices, fresh veggies, and very little carbs like rice pasta or bread. The general rule of thumb for eating healthy is that the less “packaged” it is the better. If you simply don’t have the time or money or energy or inclination to eat fresh all the time, keep in mind when purchasing packaged foods that ingredient lists should be short, easy to pronounce, and contain things that are recognizable as real foods. I almost never go to regular supermarkets, and when I do, I skip the entire middle of the store and stick to the periphery where the fruits and veggies and meats can be found. All that said, some of the options below are not necessarily the most ideal, but they’re good ones to keep you on the right track and especially to transition onto this diet. I realize that it’s not enough to just know what NOT to eat (that’s a long, long list and I’ll be publishing it to this site soon). You need to know what TO eat. So here’s a few of my greatest hits and favorite basics. Most of these items can be found in a health food store or sometimes in the health aisles of supermarkets. I am also a big fan of Trader Joe’s and if you are lucky enough to have one within a reasonable distance from you, go at once!

One more thing – by changing your diet you are beginning to sculpt the internal landscape in which health can take hold. You are getting to the root of infection and inflammation, which are at the root of all diseases, by no longer ingesting foods that are toxic, and replacing them with foods that are whole, nutrient-rich, and detoxifying. Let this be your inspiration as you enter the unknown. I can assure you, having been on this diet for 2 1/2 years, that what once seemed daunting and downright impossible (living without pasta?! what?!) is now so natural and normal I cannot imagine that I ever ate any other way.

Sunshine Burgers (original): Get ‘em in the health food store. They are made of cooked brown rice, ground raw sunflower seeds, carrots, herbs and sea salt. You can heat them on the skillet or in the toaster oven in under ten minutes. They’re especially yummy with unsweetened apple sauce (health food store or Trader Joe’s) or unsweetened organic ketchup (health food store). They’re yum! They’re filling! They’re a great solution for a quick meal.

Ground Turkey: (Organic, or at least grain-fed certified humane, no antibiotics): This is tougher to find – some health food stores carry it, I get it from a gourmet food place in my town. I throw the whole thing in a pan, season it with sea salt and garlic powder and pepper, and just eat it as plain ol’ ground turkey. It’s quick, filling, and scrum-didlee-umptous.

Chicken Breast: Bell & Evans makes fully-cooked grilled chicken breasts that are raised without antibiotics or preservatives. They come in a box in the freezer section of your health food store or supermarket. They’re yummy and make a very quick and easy dinner entree – ten minutes to heat and it’s on your plate. You can also get organic raw chicken breast at your health food store or some supermarkets, which is the more ideal option because it’s fresh and not frozen. Raw chicken takes a bit longer to prepare, but you can be sitting down with your meal in under a half hour. And, you can season it however you want and it generally tastes better than the frozen version. I’ll be sharing some of my favorite recipes for chicken in the future.

Unsweetened Almond Milk (original or vanilla) by Blue Diamond or Pacific Foods: Get it in the health food store or health aisle of your supermarket, or Trader Joe’s. If you only make one change, swap out your regular milk for this. Unsweetened almond milk is the healthiest milk you can drink – it wins above soy milk, rice milk, hemp milk, and DEFINITELY cow’s milk, which is the devil’s drink (but that’s for another post). It also tastes really good! You can sweeten it with Stevia drops (more about that below) or add Hemp Protein powder and Green powder to it for a yummy breakfast shake (more about that below too).

Brown Rice: Trader Joe’s makes a blessed organic brown rice that comes pre-cooked and frozen and can be heated to perfection in under ten minutes. The packaging says it can be microwaved, but since that would be blasphemously bad for the food and me, I use a good ol’ fashioned pot on the stove top. I buy many, many packages, stuff them in my freezer, and have near-instant brown rice whenever the urge should strike. Now if you’re not fortunate enough to have a Trader Joe’s nearby (even if it’s an hour away it’s worth the trip once in a while!) you can make a large batch of  brown rice, freeze it, and grab it whenever you want to re-heat quickly and easily. Brown rice is a staple. I couldn’t live without it but I generally don’t have the time to spend 45 minutes cooking it.

Brown Rice Snaps: You can get ‘em in the health food store. They’re made by Edward & Sons and come in various flavors. I like the vegetable kind. They’re great crackers to dip in hummus, baba ghanoush, guacamole, or, one of my favorite snacks that really fill me up – rice snaps with almond butter (see below), sprinkled with Stevia and cinnamon. Yum! Make sure to stick to the vegetable, plain, toasted onion or sesame flavors, the other ones are not legal.

Almond Butter: Brad’s Organic, Marantha, or Trader Joes  brand. Get it in the health food store or Trader Joe’s. (Stay away from cashew and peanut butters, which contain mold, and soy butters.) It’s an excellent way to satiate yourself between meals or as a dessert.

Stevia: Okay so sugar is out. And by sugar, I mean honey, agave, all artificial sweeteners like Splenda, Aspartame, all that. But you can use Stevia and the good news it that they’ve recently made it taste better. You can find it in the supplement aisle of the health food store. I use the liquid kind to sweeten my teas, my cream of buckwheat (see below), and my almond milk. It’s an acquired taste but I really like it. It won’t give you the warm heavenly rush throughout your entire body that sugar provides (once you’re off sugar for a while you’ll notice this rush in a way you never could have before) but it also won’t spike your blood sugar, thus keeping your body functioning optimally. You can also buy the powder kind to sprinkle on almond butter and crackers, or anything else you should fancy. I carry a  bottle of Stevia around with me in my bag so I’m not tempted to sweeten my tea with anything else when I grab a cup on the go.

Hemp Protein: Made by Living Harvest. You can get it online, I get mine from amazon.com. It’s great to use for a morning shake with Macro Greens (also from amazon.com), which is a nutrient-rich super food supplement that is essential if you aren’t getting a lot of green veggies in your diet.

Cream of Buckwheat: By Pocono. Get it at the health food store. It takes about 12-15 minutes to make and with a few drops of stevia and some cinnamon, maybe a drop of butter, it’s a delicious hot breakfast cereal that’s totally legal and totally yummy.

Roasted Turkey Luncheon Meat: By Applegate Farms. You can find it pre-packaged in the health food store, Trader Joe’s, and select supermarkets as well. It’s antibiotic-free turkey, no nitrites, and very good. I sometimes just roll up a few slices and snack on it, or else I make a sandwich with Rudolph’s bread (see below).

Rudolph’s Rye Breads: You can find it in the health food store. It’s yeast, wheat, dairy and sugar free and somehow still decent. But don’t overdo it with the bread – you should max out at two slices a day at the most. However, when I began the diet I was eating more than this as I transitioned from my previous carb-aholic self.

Brown Rice Pasta: Your health food store will definitely have some but Trader Joe’s has my favorite kind. You can make this in about ten minutes and it will fill you up, but keep this in mind – a bowl full will still spike your blood sugar and slow the progress of your healing. And, it really doesn’t have any nutritional value in it – it’s like brown rice stripped of the good stuff. It’s a great transitional food to this diet – I ate a ton of it when I started out – but now I eat it very rarely, preferring grains that are much more nutrient-dense like millet. Millet rules! More on that below. Use it to transition but ease up on it as quickly as possible.

Millet & Quinoa: Both of these are totally legal grains that you can make in about twenty minutes and sub quite nicely for brown rice. It’s important to rotate your grains, so you should get in the habit of eating all three of these. Quinoa is good but millet owns my heart in a way that quinoa never could. It’s a little more filling and heavy and it’s sorta like a blank canvas, waiting for whatever seasoning should inspire me in the moment. It’s delish.

Avocados: I like Haas best and you can get them in any supermarket but they’re cheaper at Trader Joe’s (they should be paying me for all this publicity, I really am in love with that store). Avocados win my vote for the most amazing fruit ever. Avocado slices are so yum on their own with a sprinkle of sea salt, or in a salad, or mashed up with some fresh lime juice and salt as gaucamole for dipping with brown rice crackers. Avocado, avocado, I long for thee avocado.

Red Chard: This is one of my favorites. You can get organic red chard in the produce aisle of your health food store, or if you can’t find it there, you can get the non-organic in the supermarket. Pick up some garlic too and a lemon – I like to buy pre-peeled fresh garlic because it saves me time. Wash the chard very well and cut it in two inch width chunks. Cut the garlic cloves in half and throw a whole bunch on the skillet with olive oil. Heat them first, then add the chard, cook until it wilts, then squeeze the juice of half a lemon and sprinkle some sea salt and you have a quick, ridiculously delicious and very healthy green.

Nuts: Pecans, walnuts, almonds, brazil nuts, whoo hoo! Nuts rule. Stay away from cashews and peanuts because they have mold on them, but the rest, go crazy! They are an excellent, nutrient-rich, filling snack.

Condiments: Get your mayo from Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. Salt should be sea salt only, the best kinds are Celtic sea salt or pink sea salt. For soy sauce, the only legal option is Braggs Amino Acids, which is unfermented soy sauce. I don’t love this stuff but I know people who swear by it. You can get ketchup unsweetened in the health food store. Try Annie’s Natural Salad Dressings but only these kinds – garden style, organic green garlic, or Goddess dressing on occasion because it’s so good. For vinegar use Apple Cider Vinegar (raw and unfiltered) by Spectrum or Bragg’s.

Butter: Use Horizon organic butter in moderation or Earth Balance, which is a soy-based butter. I’m allergic to milk and butter so I use Earth Balance, even though I don’t take in any soy in my diet other than this. Every now and then you need to compromise or trade off, and I’m simply not willing to give up the butter taste, so I’ve chosen the lesser of the two evils.

Another thing to consider – you can always go to a high-end deli or gourmet shop or restaurant and pick up some already-prepared chicken or fish for the next day or two. Chances are it won’t be antibiotic free, which is less than ideal, but it will keep you on your healthy eating trajectory away from processed foods. Whole foods are always a better option than processed foods. So keep that in mind and do the best you can.

Have you tried any of these foods? What do you like? When you consider the possibility of starting on this diet, what feels like your biggest challenge? If energy or mobility are issues for you, do you have a loved one that can help? Do the food options described above seem like something you can reasonably prepare for yourself? Do you believe you have the willpower and determination to maintain a diet like this? Tell me what’s coming up for you.

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I was wrong about that.

Chemicals make food taste flavorful and addicting. That makes people buy it. When people buy it, the companies producing that food get rich. Chemicals also make it so that products can be “instant” – staying on the shelves of the supermarket without spoiling and requiring little to no prep time to make, which, let’s be honest, you and I and everyone else appreciates. You get where I’m going with this? There is a very strong financial incentive to create foods with chemicals, regardless of the fact that these foods are toxic to our bodies. There is very little incentive to do otherwise. Even the produce we buy is chemical-laden, sprayed with toxic pesticides and treated to stay and look fresh on its trip from the farm to your market. We want tomatoes that look red and ripe and we don’t ask how they got that way. We want sugar-free gum and sugar-free soda, but we don’t know much about what’s in there instead, making it taste so good.

Our country as a whole has made a silent, collective decision to operate with the ignorance-is-bliss policy. Only there is no bliss, because everyone’s sick! If you have MS, you cannot afford to continue on this way.

As some of you may already know, diet and supplements are the primary way I treat my MS. I do not take any of the disease-management drugs. For the last two and a half years, I’ve eaten a diet free of sugar, gluten, wheat, dairy, soy, and red meat, and I do my best to avoid any meat raised with antibiotics and produce that’s not organic. It was challenging at first – and still is in some respects – but something magical happened at around six months. My body reset to this new way of eating, and suddenly, when I would eat something with sugar or wheat or dairy, I would feel an overwhelming urge to cleanse my system of it and get back to my pure diet. I could actually FEEL the toxicity in my system when I would stray from my diet and eat a processed food.

If you have MS, regardless of if you choose to treat it with the drugs or not, eating a clean diet is simply essential. It will have a profound effect on how you feel. Your symptoms will improve, your energy will increase, and you will begin to heal your body. Suzanne Somers said it well in her book Breakthrough: Eight Steps to Wellness, which I strongly encourage everyone to read:

“We are what we eat. I realize it’s a cliche, but that’s the bottom line. Good food feed our cells. Cells make up who we are, and reproduce themselves by the billions each day…unless we are in a toxic state. When chemicals and toxins are part of our diet and lifestyle, our cells malfunction and malfunctioning cells are what make us sick and cause disease.

Malfunctioning cells are an umbrella for every disease known to man. … It really doesn’t matter the name given to the disease, the reason you have the sickness is because your cells are malfunctioning.

The toxins in your diet make it impossible for your cells to receive the nutrients they need to be healthy and reproduce. Toxins essentially turn your lights out. You fade away, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Toxins wipe out your hormones, and the process of accelerated aging and disease begins. Toxins will kill you, it’s just a matter of how soon.

To be healthy you have to take your food seriously. Yet, we rarely give it a thought…we are so used to having chemicals all around us. We mindlessly grab that handful of chips, packaged cookies, instant soups, or consume dangerous oils. Trans fats, hydrogenated oils, additives, and irradiated foods are making us sick and killing us.”

I’ll be writing more about Suzanne Somers and the work she’s doing in future posts, but for now I want to just say that she is a true pathbreaker – leveraging her celebrity for an excellent cause, bringing to the public first-hand interviews with cutting-edge doctors who understand how vibrant, kick-ass health can actually be achieved (hint: it has very little to do with allopathic medicine). She’s amazing and I’m gonna call this required reading for anyone who wants to be or stay healthy.

I called the office to speak to the doctor. I said, “Do I have MS?”

She said, “You have lesions in your corpus callosum.”

I said, “Does that mean I have MS?! I don’t know what that means!”

She said, “I can’t tell you that over the phone.”

I said, “I’m in California. I can’t come into the office. But I’m sure you can understand that I really, really, REALLY want to know, so can you please just tell me?”

She said, “I’m sorry but it’s policy that we cannot give results over the phone.” She said it like she worked for the DMV.

I hung up, exasperated. I went back into the training room. My hands were sweaty. I could feel my heartbeat thumping in my chest. I was on the brink of a major anxiety attack. I was also in the midst of experiencing the MS symptom the medical community doesn’t talk about, because the symptom is the frustration with the system itself – a bureaucracy entangled in the mire of malpractice suits, HMO red tape, corruption, and ignorance. Here I was, obviously desperate for an answer, obviously in anguish, obviously wanting to know if my entire life was about to change forever, and my neurologist calmly and coldly quoted policy, clearly more concerned with the liability of giving me such a serious diagnosis over the phone than she was with my emotional experience. This was the first time I truly understood that my doctors’ motivations were not the same as mine. And that this illness would be as much about navigating the deeply flawed system of modern allopathic medicine as it would be about navigating the flawed system of my own ailing body.

Back in the training room, Joseph – in his trademark matter-of-factly humorous way – suggested that since doctors get bossed around so much in medical school, they’re used to it, and respond best to being engaged in that manner, so I might get better results calling her back and forcefully demanding to know my diagnosis. So I went back outside, called her back and did just that, but she continued to evade my questions.

She said, “You have lesions in your corpus callosum.”

So I said, “OK, let me ask you this way, then. If someone has lesions in their corpus callosum, could it be anything but MS?!”

To which she replied, “The chances would be very slim.”

And there I had it. My diagnosis. I had to bully it out of her, but I had my diagnosis. And with that one phrase, I was enlisted into a new and unfamiliar terrain.

I’m recounting this story here because if you’ve been diagnosed with a chronic illness, a huge part of taking control of your life now means navigating the maze of our country’s current medical system. This will be the topic of many, many posts on this blog, but for now I just want to outline some basic flaws in the current system that are working against us as patients within it. I am not a conspiracy theorist. I do believe there are good doctors out there with integrity and soul. My current neurologist appears to be one of them, which is why I continue to see him. But I do think it’s absolutely essential that we educate ourselves about the places where doctors’ motivations may differ from ours, so we can take that into account when making crucial treatment decisions.

1. The allopathic medicine paradigm – which is the standard-of-care in this country – is disease care, not health care. Doctors are trained to treat diseases, not prevent them or to strengthen and balance your body so it can heal. They are trained to treat symptoms with pharmaceutical drugs, and if those drugs give you symptoms, they prescribe more drugs to treat those symptoms. Each part of the body is treated as separate from the whole. Our doctors are not trained to look at our bodies holistically or to believe that healing is possible by restoring the natural balance of the system.

2. Doctors receive no to almost-no training on proper nutrition and the effects of diet on health. Only in the last few years are the more enlightened doctors beginning to get it, a little bit. However, most doctors are abysmally ignorant about what a healthy diet actually consists of, and at worst, they discount that diet has anything to do with your health at all.

3. Doctors are busy. For many doctors – not all of course – their education after Med school is primarily from pharmaceutical reps who are touting the benefits of their drugs. This creates a myopic perspective that does not take into account the many cutting-edge treatment possibilities outside of the well-funded pharmaceutical options.

4. Money. Unfortunately, many doctors prioritize it over integrity. The pharmaceutical companies wine and dine doctors. They sponsor vacations for them. They hold seminars where doctors are treated very, very nicely, and they talk about the benefits of their drugs. They offer discounts and promotions on their drugs, creating financial incentives for doctors to prescribe one drug over another. Meanwhile, Big Pharma’s lobbying power over our government is tremendous, so that regulatory laws are not put in place to stop these practices. At the same time, the FDA continues to block new, natural treatments with proven efficacy from entering our country.

And yet, despite all this, I am still optimistic. The system is so flawed, but there are good, educated, caring doctors out there. And what this information means is that if we want to get well, truly well, we need to educate ourselves. We cannot simply accept what your doctors tell us at face value without understanding the complexity of the system they are inside of. Healing and health and getting well is so much more vast than our doctors have the time, knowledge, understanding, or inclination to teach us. We need to take control of our health by finding out this information ourselves and using our doctors as one tool in our healing tool box, not our only source for information and treatment. If we choose to blindly follow our doctors advice, we are agreeing to be treated by a system that is severely skewed and largely corrupt. You may still choose to use pharmaceuticals to treat your illness, but do so because you’ve educated yourself on all the options first. I am not invested in how you choose to treat your illness. I am invested in making information available to as many people as possible, so that you can make wise choices for yourself and have the best possible chances to heal. I plan to do my best to bring everything I learn to you. Together, if we are willing to do the work, we can and we will get well.

Want more inspiration? Click here to read Freewheelin’ or Wheelchairin’ or go back to the main page to Get Inspired.

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Sugar is a drug. Powerful. Pervasive. Deadly. (If you have cancer, sugar is the fastest way to grow your tumor. If you have a cold, or a virus, sugar is a great way to feed it and stay sick longer.) I have understood in a whole new way the addiction of sugar these past few years. And I can say with certainty that our culture is caught in its clutches. I could go on about sugar for a long time, but let me get back to my point. If health were the prime concern, our nation’s food habits would have been developed very differently.

As someone with a chronic illness, everything I digest matters. I’m one of the few fortunate ones (I mean that both sincerely and sardonically) who actually feels the way unhealthy food effects me almost immediately. This keeps me on track and reminds me, if I slip a little and eat a few cookies at a holiday party, how sick I’d be if my diet weren’t pristine. What’s interesting to me is that my “abnormal” way of eating is actually the diet for health, longevity, and well-being. And if I want to maintain that diet, it’s nearly impossible to do so in public restaurants. Our culture’s food habits create and maintain illness and are in direct opposition to health.

Which brings me back to Food, Inc., which was a fascinating film on many levels. It was particularly disturbing to learn how a handful of uber-powerful companies are controlling what goes into our bodies and how poor the quality of that food is. To eat well in this culture is to be an iconoclast. It’s not easy to do, but the benefits are invaluable. I highly recommend the movie. Check it out.