Disclaimer:  I am not a doctor of anything, and am just sharing what I have learned in studying, listening to different types of doctors and participating in various diets.

I have struggled with my weight since my twenties. When I say this I don’t mean I have been particularly overweight that whole time. I can gain five pounds overnight with no rhyme or reason and I can lose it the same. I can remember losing over 10 pounds on occasion without knowing why. I can remember gaining in the same vein. Weight is not the only thing I care about, but being of the petite population, I see how the weight literally weighs down my joints and slows down my body’s process.

This lack of understanding is not because I do not try to keep track of it all. I am by nature someone who wants to make sense of chaos. You can ask anyone. I go towards chaos sometimes just to make sense of it. My health is not one of the areas I treat in the same way. I have not gone on the Boston Creme diet to see if my arteries will harden. My body naturally does not comply to logic. Still I keep trying to find the one diet that shows the cause and effects of nutrients and health.

Good Ole’ Girls Method

My 20’s were loaded with stress. A single mom going to college and dealing with family tensions, I was less than settled inside or outside myself. I started drinking 10 cups of coffee a day and living on a packaged bagel with cream cheese to get me through the 12 hour days. I was able to get home cooked meals if I went to my grandparents for Sunday Dinner or if someone bought me a meal. I believed myself happy and content with this diet. I was invincible, perhaps. I also smoked about five cigarettes a day. I was surprised when my body acted erratically. Chronic yeast infections that were painful kept me up at night sleep was already not something I did a lot of.

This is what led me to my first lap around the dieting race. A friend of mine’s mother worked for a pharmacist that did hair analysis. He didn’t analyse my hair though. Instead, after 10 pages of information about myself he required from me, he called me in and gave me what I call the Dupois diet. This was January 1998 and Paleo wasn’t a household name yet.

I was given a diagnosis on linen textured, ivory resume paper. “Candida overgrowth is a complex medical problem” is how the report started off. The report had a list of Lifestyle and Dietary Recommendations:

• Eliminate the use of antibiotics, steroids, hormones unless there is an absolute medical necessity
• Do not eat foods high in sugar
• Do not eat foods with high concentrations of yeast or mold, including alcoholic beverages, cheeses, dried fruits, melons and peanuts
• Do not drink milk or eat milk products due to their high content of lactose (milk sugar) and trace levels of antibiotics
• Avoid all known or suspected food allergens

He also had me on supplements. This took quite a toll on my income, but I was tired of being in pain. Medical doctors had me on rounds of Diflucan that had left me cycling urinary tract infections with yeast infections. Instead, he had me take the following:

THYMURIL: 1 TABLET TWICE DAILY

A.C. CAPSULES: 2 OR 3 CAPSULES TWICE A DAY FOR CANDIDA

MULTIDOPHILUS: ⅓  TEASPOONFUL  IN WATER TWICE A DAY FOR ONE WEEK, THEN ⅓ TEASPOONSFUL DAILY.

DUPOIS TOTAL FORMULA #2: 1 DAILY FOR NUTRITIONAL SUPPORT.

BIOZYME: 1 WITH EACH MEAL FOR DIGESTIVE ENZYME AND PANCREATIC SUPPORT.

He was more detailed than any of the physicians and homeopaths I have worked with since. He was a pharmacist, so he watched me carefully. He also told me things that allowed me to work in caution and monitored the breaks in my recovery from the candida diagnosis. In the report he wrote “It is not unusual for a woman to have increased problems with her candida prior to her menstrual period, as this is when the vaginal secretions contain the highest amount of sugars (this is normal). Thus, strict attention to the diet must be paid in the 7 to 10 days prior to menses, with some relaxation possible in the first two weeks of the menstrual cycle.”

He had a clear list of foods for me to eat, if not allergic, and some food to absolutely avoid. It is not surprising that the banned culprits are the same that can be found on many of the alternative health websites. The first month consists mainly of fish, lamb and vegetables. Then it added chicken and other meat–limiting red meat to twice a week. Fruit could be added sparingly after the first month. The five page report had a meal plan, a portion list and suggestion of how to reintroduce food after the 3 to 4 month period.

I was to avoid chemical products, chlorinated water, mothballs and damp and moldy places.

I followed everything to a T for years — except I swam in chlorinated water for exercise.

I felt amazing though. I was at my “fighting weight,” as my mother would call it. I was lean muscle and in my zone.

I eventually moved to following a version of the Blood-type Diet. The book by Dr. Peter D’Adamo, Eat Right for Your Type was in its infancy and worked for me as a transition to adding food. But I did not cure the Candida for two years. The same doctors that had me on Diflucan had failed to note the Copper T IUD I had in me for the last five years. Medical doctors at NYU refused to take it out of me. It wasn’t until I met a seasoned midwife that my right to take out that IUD was honored…. Immediately. Here is a link to look at this further– 10 years later: http://www.epigee.org/is-your-iud-causing-yeast-infections.html.

I did not have a yeast infection from that day forward, and the issues that I had developed from the Candida, including the sensitivity disappeared… for awhile.

Takeaways/Long Term Questions to Consider:

Are there any underlying issues causing the autoimmune reactions? Are homeopathic solutions maintaining the body so that underlying problems remain?  What do elimination diets and added enzymes, etc, do to the body long term?

This same diet does not work for me today, 20 years later.  Where this diet once was a sure bet for me to lose weight, now, it seems to leave me stagnant. While it doesn’t seem a stretch that diets change as people age, the above diet was flexible enough to account for calorie and macro alteration but failed to produce the same results. I had my son on the A type diet (more carbs and veggies), which worked well for him as a little one, but as he was growing quickly– he craved what every growing boy craves: pure animal protein, preferably red meat.