The Crazy Diet

This post was originally published at Get Fit Chicks. It may refer to posts on Get Fit Chicks that no longer exist. Please email me if you run into any of those and I will break the links. More information about the reposting is available here

When I got the list for the crazy diet five years ago, I didn’t know how I was going to manage. The list was long and was of all the things I wasn’t allowed to eat.

Yeah right.

The list was so overwhelming that at first I thought I was going to cry. And spend a lot of time crying. I had to say goodbye to smoothies for breakfast (no yogurt or bananas allowed), hot chocolate (no chocolate allowed), my staple peanut butter sandwiches for lunch (no peanuts allowed), most fruits and anything for dinner that had tomatoes, lentils or beans…So for the first couple of weeks I ate a lot of oatmeal, hard boiled eggs, rice, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, apples, oranges and baked fish and chicken. And that was about it. But then I stared getting creative and doing things like substituting cauliflower for the peppers in one of my favourite curries. I went home for Christmas and got out all of my mom’s cookbooks and combed through them looking for recipes that didn’t have any of the ingredients on the list.

I expanded my repertoire of cooking and started to feel better. I lost a few pounds. It wasn’t an absolute, no cheating – the naturopath promised me I’d see a huge improvement in my issues with fatigue within 4-6 weeks and eventually I’d get to add some things back in. And that one meal or day of eating that didn’t fit with the list wasn’t going to kill me. Literally on day one of week 5 the improvements started. Not long after I got to add small amounts of some of the things back in. On Christmas Day, the list was hidden out of sight and I got to eat whatever I wanted, within reason, and I didn’t feel horrible the next day. For the next year and half I was very diligent with the list and then it gradually fell off, but I knew what the signs where and when I needed to go back to it. Every once in a while I get very fatigued again and go back to the crazy diet for a couple of weeks and then ease back into regular food. And it works.

I pretty much avoid soy when I can (I do like soy sauce with my sushi!) and corn as much as possible and I have a drink every once in a while, but the rest of it can be found regularly in my diet. A side benefit is that I hardly eat any prepackaged, processed foods. Did you know most of those foods have soy or corn or both in some form!

So here’s the crazy diet list:

Corn and Soy products
Fermented dairy products including sour cream, yogurt and cheese
Beans – green as well as fava, kidney, garbanzo etc, Peas and pea pods and other legumes including lentils
Some nuts including peanuts and walnuts, but not cashews, almonds or pecans
Tomatoes and tomato products
Peppers and pepper products, Avocados
All citrus fruit and most tropical fruits including bananas, mangoes, pineapple, papaya etc. Grapes and raisins, plums, prunes, apricots and peaches
Pickles or dried fish
Liver products including liverwurst (EW!)
Yeast concentrates and homemade bread
Meat extracts including bouillon cubes and Worcestershire sauce
Pickled anything/vinegars especially balsamic
Luncheon meats, sausage and any other meat or fish that isn’t fresh or frozen
Beer and ale, wine and any fermented alcoholic beverage
Licorice
Chocolate and cocoa
Cola