Day 5- Meeting with the nutritionist

Another breakfast of brown rice cereal, plain.  I packed cinnamon/Truvia toast for her lunch, along with sugar free jell-o, and chocolate coconut milk.  I know she's not supposed to have the jell-o, but I'm getting desperate.  She didn't like the bread with the soy nut butter, so I decided to toast it instead and she said she would try it.  I packed popcorn and crackers for her snack.

I picked her up at school today, because we had an appointment with the nutritionist.  I was originally going to go by myself, but he told me that I needed to bring her.  He said, "she needs to hear the information and she doesn't need to like me, but she needs to like you."  I packed the home made bread for her for a snack and some carob chips.  I also had a bag full of food that I wanted to ask the nutritionist if she would be able to eat any of it.  She started to eat the bread and now has decided that she doesn't like it. I didn't have anything else but the carob chips, so she ate those.  Not the best snack.

Here are highlights from my session with the nutritionist.  I'll break it down into several posts as our session was 2 hours long:

Although she is very young she’ll need some guidance, but she will come to a point in her life that when she eats something she will not feel good and when she eats the good foods, she’ll feel better.  She’ll naturally gravitate towards the foods that make her feel better.  He recommended the book The Candida Cure by Anne Boroch.  She had full blown candida, was on medication and she cured herself of Candida.  Once she was ‘cured’ she tried to eat sweet potatoes.  The next day, she wasn’t feeling very good.  Some people might be able to handle the sweet potatoes, but not her.  We’re dealing with everyones biochemical individuality.  I asked if that means Jeannette will never be able to have a slice of birthday cake ever again.  He said that wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to her.  One, yes she’ll be able to eat b’day cake, but not the kind I’m thinking of. There are so many more options available with raw ingredients and nut flours and gluten free cakes that are made w/ alternative ingredients w/o the bad stuff.    He then discussed how he doesn’t have Candida, but he eats a predominately yeast free diet.  He mainly follows the paleolithic diet, which is protein, foraging foods: fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds.  He can eat dairy, but he knows it’s not good for him.

     
When we look at nutrition, we should be looking at nutrient density. What are the things that have the highest nutrient density?  There is a chart that ranks all foods as to it’s nutritional value.  Foods like pasta, hamburgers, ice cream rank around 20 - 40.  Now kale ranks 1000 on the ND chart.  For example; you make a smoothie and throw in a few pieces of kale.  Start small and don’t put in too much b/c if there’s too much, she’ll taste it and not like it.  But if I start small, then keep upping it until her palate adapts to it.  I asked what was supposed to go into the smoothie if she can’t have fruit in the first phase.

He said that fruits can be re introduced after phase 1.  She can have berries: blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, acai berry.  It’s all about trying to be creative and trying to introduce new foods.  The American diet is based on heavy carbs, sugar, etc, but there’s no nutritional value.  The body needs voltage and all the raw materials (amino acids, vitamin, minerals, trace minerals) to make new cells.  

      
Another thing is to go on a gluten/dairy free diet. What’s available? Quinoa, amaranth, millet.  Chia seeds are good when making pudding.  The palate is adaptable, we just have to go through the process of new foods. My concern is that when Jarod tries new foods that he doesn’t like, he vomits.  She then emulates that.  He guaranteed that if he made a strawberry smoothie with Kale in it, Jarod would never know.  I said that he would b/c the drink would be green.  He said that he wouldn’t notice if I only put in two leaves of Kale.  Two leaves wouldn’t make a difference in the color.  Over a course of time, you increase the amounts of the good foods and eventually they’ll like it w/o even knowing it.  I asked about how to get my kids to eat raw and cooked vegetables.  He said I have to disguise them.  Eating healthy is an acquired taste.  Once your body goes through the detox of the unhealthy foods and then take you back to McDonald’s for that hamburger, you won’t like it and you won’t believe that you did like it at one point.  The palate adapts.  When we adapt to eating the bad foods, we don’t want to leave them b/c we’ve already adapted to them.  You have to get away from all the foods that are low on the nutrient density chart.  The raw diet is a great thing, b/c it’s high in nutrients and low in calories.  You’ll notice that you start to loose weight.  It’s b/c you’re eating so much healthier.  I expressed my concern about how petite she is currently, and while on this diet, she’ll loose weight.  His response was, “as long as you’re nourishing her body, she will not deteriorate.”  Now if she’s eating and healthy foods are being introduced to her, and she’s eating them, she’ll be fine.  Her clock will readjust.  The key is that she is out of balance and we have to get that back in balance.  The key is, once she’s 18, that’s it. By the time people are 18, they are set in their eating habits. This way, I get a head start in healthy eating.

Day 4

Jeannette ate the brown rice cereal again for breakfast.  Again, she had it plain.  For lunch I packed her a soy nut butter sandwich with the bread I had found yesterday, along with some strawberries and chocolate coconut milk.  She had popcorn and the homemade crackers for her snacks.  When the kids got home from school I found an uneaten sandwich in her lunch box, which means all she had was strawberries and chocolate milk for lunch.  When I unpacked her backpack, the popcorn was gone, but the crackers were still there.  When I asked her about the crackers she said that she didn't like them.  Her water bottle was also full.  I had to explain to her how important it is for her to drink plenty of water. It will help with her constipation and fill her up.  She just nodded and said okay.  I ended up throwing away the crackers.  There was no love lost there.  They were smelling up my pantry anyway.

For her snack I mixed her capsules into the skinny water so she'd be able to get them down.  I put in the Ambrotose and the Vitamin B.  They didn't dissolve very well and it left the drink grainy.  I kept mixing and stirring and they wouldn't dissolve.  After a few sips, she kept having to swirl it around.  She did finally get it all down.  Of course, she shouldn't have had the skinny water because it has sucralose and potassium aspartate in it.  Again, I'm still running into barriers trying to get all these supplements into her.  Some dissolve, some don't, some have a horrible smell to them and some you can't take with food.

Tonight for dinner we made pizza.  I used the Chebe pizza 'bread' mix for the crust with soy milk.  We put the homemade marinara sauce on it and then topped it with organic Italian cheese with a combination of regular cheese.   The marinara sauce had a sweetness to it and the dough didn't taste yeast/gluten/dairy free at all.  The only thing I would change is to bake the dough first for a few minutes to get it started.  It came out too doughy when we baked it, so the cheese all melted, but the crust wasn't done.  She also had raspberries and her yogurt with the probiotic.  Again, I know she shouldn't be eating the raspberries and yogurt, but I'd rather her have something healthy in her system than nothing at all.  Even though raspberries are not allowed in phase 1, I know they are good for her.  The yogurt on the other hand is another issue.

All-in-all it was pretty tasty.  Jeannette said that she like the pizza.  My son said he didn't like it, but he ended up eating two pieces of it.  I also had Jeannette help make the pizza.  I read somewhere that if you engage your kids in the cooking process, they are more apt to eat the food that they helped prepare.  I'm going to keep encouraging her to cook with me, so we'll see if that makes a difference or not.

Marinara Sauce
1 Can organic low sodium tomato sauce
1 can organic low sodium crushed or dice tomatoes
1 T organic tomato past
1/2 C butternut squash puree (optional, but adds sweetness-plus a way to get a veggie in the diet)
1/2 white onion
1 T dice garlic
1/4 C McCormick Italian spices
1/2 C Xylitol sweetener
1/8 t salt
1/8 t black pepper
crushed pepper flakes to taste (optional)
1 T Olive Oil

In a sauce pan, heat the olive oil and onion.  Cook until transparent but not browned.  When the onion is almost done, add the garlic and continue to saute. Add the tomato sauce, crushed or diced tomatoes, tomato past, butternut squash puree, Italian spices, xylitol, oregano, salt, black pepper and pepper flakes. Lower heat, and wait for it to simmer.  Once it simmers, it's ready to eat!  Serve with spaghetti squash, meat or as a dipping sauce.  Leftover sauce can be refrigerated for up to 5 days, or frozen for longer.

Day 3

For breakfast today Jeannette had brown rice cereal. Plain. I'm still not sure about this cereal for her.  For lunch I packed her cinnamon toast, the crackers I made, popcorn and chocolate coconut milk.  While she was at school, I made another trip to my new favorite grocery store; Wegman's.  I spent another hour just walking around trying to find some more ingredients for some other recipes I found.  One recipe I found was marinara sauce.  Since I found the brown rice pasta, I thought she could eat the pasta with the sauce.  I bought 6 bags of the pasta.  I was just excited that I found something that was close to actual pasta.  Unfortunately when I got home and was reading the back of the bag, the carb count is 44g per serving.  Not only is the Candida diet sugar/yeast/wheat free, it's also supposed to be low in carbs.  Just when I think I find something she may be able to eat, it turns out to not be the appropriate food for her.  The high carbs are just as bad for her.  Because the carbs break down into sugars, it's just going to keep feeding the yeast.  One other thing I found at Wegman's was a bread mix called Chebe.  They make dinner rolls, pizza dough, bread sticks and cinnamon rolls. I thought we could try the pizza tomorrow night.  Once I got my items, I went to check out and my bill came to another $120.  It gives me pain and anxiety just thinking about how much money I've paid in the past two days on food alone.  If this is any indication of what's to come, it's going to be an expensive lifestyle change; not just for her, but for the entire family.

When the kids got home from school I was struggling to find something for Jeannette to eat for a snack.  I remembered the smoothie recipe I found.  It called for Carob powder and soy milk.  Unfortunately, I didn't want this to be a liquid drink, so I made it more into a milkshake.  I ended up using the coconut ice cream to replace the soy milk.  When reading the label on the ice cream, it says that it's made with agave nectar.  Although the agave nectar is still a sugar, it's better then the processed white sugar. I get conflicting information on agave and if it's to be avoided.  In the end, it's sugar and sugar feeds the Candida.  It seems that everything feeds the Candida.  She tried the shake and she liked it.  Unfortunately I can't remember which web-site I found this from, but this was not my creation.

Carob Soy Shake/Smoothie
These are great and can be frozen for a popsicle

1 C unsweetened organic soy milk
1-2 T (to taste) vegetable glycerin
1 t (+/-) stevia powder
1 t guar gum (or other thickener)
3-5 T coconut milk (regular or light)
5 ice cubes
1 T unsweetened carob powder or carob chips
1/4 t vanilla flavoring

Blend on high for a minute or so.  Shake comes out very thick, smooth.  Add more guar gum or flax for a thicker shake.  (As a side note, when I made this, it did not come out thick at all, but I didn't have guar gum.  I used coconut milk yogurt to make it thicker.  It does have some sugar in it, but it helped to make it thicker).

For dinner, Jeannette had the chicken and rice again.  She barely got in a couple of bites, when she excused herself to use the restroom.  By the time she was done, we all had finished our meals and hers was cold.  She said she had lost her appetite.  After dinner, my husband jumped right in and started making the marinara sauce that I found on the web.  Thank goodness for the world wide web!!!

Day 2

For breakfast this morning Jeannette had rice bran cereal with almond milk.  I bought the cereal because the only ingredients were brown rice and brown rice syrup.  I wasn't sure about it because of the brown rice syrup, but I thought it might be okay.  She didn't like it, so we dumped that bowl and she had a bowl plain with no milk.  We forgot to take the vitamins, but she had to get to school.  For lunch today I packed her 3 slices of ham, 2 pieces of cheese and sugar free jell-o with chocolate coconut milk.  After the kids were off to school, I started to do some more research to only discover that she's not supposed to eat cheese and she can't have the jell-o either because it has aspartame.

I had to pick her up at school today to take her to get some blood drawn.  We were having her thyroid tested again to make sure we have an accurate read.  When I got to school, she was at lunch.  When I found her, she had eaten the jell-o, cheese, coconut milk, but not the ham.  When I asked her what was wrong with the ham, she said she didn't like it.  It was stringy.

For the rest of the afternoon, I tried to bake a few things that I found recipes for via different web-sites.  The first one I attempted to make was baked crackers.   I found this recipe Crispy Crackers.  The only difference was that I used sesame oil instead of the macadamia nut oil because I couldn't find that.  When Jeannette came home I had her try them and she said that she like them.  I tried them and they weren't bad.  I felt the sesame oil was a little strong though.  She asked about putting some cinnamon and Truvia on them, so she licked the cracker and I sprinkled some on and she said she liked it even better.  The next batch will have to be the cinnamon/stevia version.  She was still pretty hungry, so I made her some scrambled eggs and uncured organic bacon.

Later that night, I took Jeannette with me to the local health food store.  I wanted to see what other items I could buy that would be yeast free/sugar free/gluten free.  I was able to find the Mary gone crackers that I had read about on a blog.  They had an herb one and a plain one, so I bought both.  They were $4 a box. Yikes!  I also found a huge bottle of vegetable glycerin.  I found that ingredient in a bunch of different recipes.  I also found some wild rice rice cakes.  Jeannette said that she tried them at a friends house and liked them, so I bought one bag.

For dinner tonight Jeannette had the "pasta" that I found for her.  It's brown rice and water.  Although it had the right ingredients, I didn't really pay attention to the carb count.  I wasn't even thinking about that at the time I bought them.  I was just trying to find things that had the right ingredients that she could eat. She had the pasta with her non-dairy butter and some parmesan cheese.  I read on one of the websites that she can eat cheese as long as it hasn't been aged more than 6 months and this seemed to be okay.  Along with the pasta, she had a yogurt with her probiotic in it and a chocolate coconut milk.

I'm starting to get concerned about how I am going to be able to get all these supplements into her body with all these new food restrictions.  I figure a few flubs here and there with the food will be okay.  The yogurt is yoplait and out of all the kids yogurts on the market, it's the one that has the least amount of sugar.  So I justified it.  Jeannette decided that she wanted to try the probiotic alone and not mixed in with anything.  After a few nibbles, she said that it was good, but after she ate the whole teaspoon, she decided she didn't like it plain and wanted it mixed into her yogurt next time.  Darn! I was thinking I might have actually been able to give up the yogurt.  Now what?

The Weekend + Day 1 on the Candida Diet

Saturday - I spent part of the day trying to bake a few different things for Jeannette to eat for her new diet.  I made bread, brownies, and fudge.  I spent the other part of the day on-line researching sites and trying to find things for kids with Candida.  It’s next to impossible.  There just isn’t that much stuff out there and the stuff I was finding was dated back to 1997, and some of those links listed weren’t even accessible.  It’s been quite frustrating.  I did find some recipes, so I printed a bunch out so that I could take them w/ me to Wegman’s.  

I went to Wegman’s and just wandered around to look for some of these ingredients.  I spent at least an hour there and had to ask about a few things that I had no clue what they were.  Ingredients like vegetable glycerin, coconut oil, flax gel, vitamin C crystals, arrowroot, almond flour, quinoa flour, brown rice flour, and carob powder, just to name a few.  The little container of Stevia I bought was $12 for a jar.  Ouch!


This is completely a whole new world for me.  I never thought I would be that person who has to buy all these gluten free, peanut free, dairy free foods, but here I am.  I feel like I’m at the worst of the spectrum.  Now no yeast. That is so hard.  The only thing I can say is that thank goodness there is so many more things available to people these days that are forced to be on these diets.  If this was 10 years ago, I wouldn’t be able to find half this stuff.  The downer is the cost of these foods.  I spent $162 on top of what I already spent the other day.

Sunday - I spent most of the day experimenting with different recipes and made a bunch of different things so that Jeannette would have some things to eat today.  Jeannette was up before me and got herself some cheerios and milk for breakfast.  Not the right thing to be eating on day one of her new diet.  She did try some of the foods that I had made on Saturday.  Most of them were a bust, but some of them she liked.  I'll have to get creative with some of the things she didn't like.  She didn't like the bread, the brownies were okay, and she liked the fudge.  She liked the brownies even better with the fudge on top of the brownies.

She tried some other things today.  She tried coconut milk.  She didn't like it.  I think that was because I bought cultured coconut milk.  It's much thicker than non cultured coconut milk.  I had no idea.  When it came pouring out of the bottle in a gelatinous manner, I knew something wasn't right.  The look on Jeannette's face as I was pouring it was priceless.  It was a "what the heck is that" look, and "don't make me drink that."  After the coconut milk, she tried the brown rice cereal I had found.  She said it was okay.  For lunch she tried the bread I made the day before with some soy nut butter on it.  She didn't like it.  She licked the soy nut butter off the bread and left the bread behind.  I then made some bacon, so that it could last her for the upcoming week.  Next we tried deli ham.  I had purchased the Hormel, nitrate/nitrite, preservative free lunch meat.  I thought it would be okay for her to eat.  She rolled it up, ate it and said she liked it.  While she was eating it, I read the ingredients on the back more closely and it contained sugar.  No wonder why she liked it.  She then had a slice of Kraft American Cheese (processed).  I know I need to find something better than that.  

For dinner we grilled some chicken.  I made brown rice, and the Chebe dinner rolls I found at Wegmans.  She had raspberries and yogurt with her probiotic in it.  I tried one of the rolls and it was edible, but had this funky texture in the center.  It was almost gel like.  Jeannette said they were okay as long as she put the dairy free butter on it.  She did eat the chicken, but used regular ketchup (no high fructose corn syrup).  I know it still has some sugar in it and I know she shouldn't have eaten it, but she did.  She had the almond/chocolate milk that I was able to put  her vitamin A in.  For dessert, Jeannette had the fudge.  

All-in-all it wasn't a horrible day.  She didn't keep telling me that she was hungry every hour like she normally does.  I'm just going to have to take it one day at a time.  I'm most concerned as to what I'm going to pack for lunches and what she can have for snacks.  I read somewhere that popcorn was okay, but it will have to be plain with no butter.  

I just don't know how Jeannette is going to handle this.  She understands what has to happen and that she's having to be on this diet and eat different things.  How do you try to explain to a 7 year old about why she has to eat these things.  Even though today wasn't so horrible, there are going to be some painful days ahead.   When her body really starts going through sugar withdraw, I'm afraid to see what will happen.  This is a horrible analogy, but it's all I could think of.  This diet to Jeannette is like taking heroine away from an addict.  Jeannette's addiction is the sugar.  The body craves it until it's fed. The yeast in her body is craving and wanted to be fed the sugar.  For a girl who has been eating carbs since she was 2, this is going to be an uphill battle.

After speaking to my sister about this new diet of Jeannette's, she made an excellent point.  My kids have a very limited palette.  All I need to do is come up with 5 or 6 different things that I can get her to eat and just keep rotating them around during the week.  My kids don't have high expectations when it comes to food and they are used to eating the same things on a rotation basis as it is.  Why should this be any different? 

Judgement Day - Yeast was found

April 7th

My now 7 year old daughter has been battling multiple medical issues since she's been 4 years old.  She's been poked and prodded by numerous doctors and none of them have found the cause of her illnesses.  I finally found an environmental doctor in Northern Va. whom I had high hopes for.  I felt that if anyone could figure out what was wrong with my daughter, it would be this gentleman.

I met with the doctor to get the results of Jeannette's blood work and other tests.  The doctor told me that she had yeast in her system, amongst a load of other environmental toxins.  I had a feeling that maybe she had yeast and I guess that's why I started her on a low carb diet a few months back.  I hadn't eliminated carbs completely, but I limited them.  I was trying to keep her intake below 20 g of carbs per serving of whatever she was eating.  I even got her off pasta and found soy noodles that she could eat.  I was also surprised to find out about the toxins in her system.

After I left the doctors office, I knew I had a bit of research to do.  I immediately contacted the nutritionist that works in this particular doctors office.  If I was going to be making such a huge change in Jeannette's diet, I was going to need some serious help, and I needed someone who was familiar with this type of diet.  I also started to scour the web about Candida.  I wanted to know all there was to know.  I wanted to know what it was, how one gets it, if there were any ideas about how to deal with Candida for kids and especially try to find some recipes for things that I thought Jeannette might like.  I found a few sites that were really helpful and I started printing off recipes to get us started.  What I was disappointed about was the fact that there weren't any sites specifically geared towards kids with Candida.  I found a few blogs that mentioned children, but not enough to help me get a better handle on Jeannette's situation.  I wasn't feeling very confident about putting my daughter on this very rigorous and restricted diet.

I got busy and shopped at our local Wegman's first because I knew they had a great natural foods section where I could find gluten free items and hopefully some yeast free items.  After having spent $160, I came out of the store with a ton of new ingredients that I'd never heard before.

Never in a million years would I have thought that I would be one of those parents with kids required to be on a special diet.  I always felt so lucky that I didn't have to deal with all the stress and anxiety about what to feed my kids.  It's bad enough on a daily basis to feed my extremely picky carbohydrate eaters.  We continuously have battles at the dinner table about eating and trying new foods.  I get bombarded with questions about what we're having for dinner when they get home from school.  I get so stressed about it that I just answer them with a "I don't know yet."  I just don't want to deal with the whining and complaining about a meal I haven't prepared yet and food they haven't even tried.

I am also concerned about the regimen of supplements that Jeannette is now going to have to be on to boost and replenish her immune system.  With all these new food restrictions, and the fact that Jeannette doesn't take pills, how am I going to get these supplements into her system?