15 August 2008 No Comment

I’ve told a few people about my health condition and the changes I’ve been making in my lifestyle. The thing that my Japanese friends always say is that they can’t give up rice. I understand the feeling.

I was raised on rice. Our family used the rice cooker almost every day. The only times we didn’t have rice was when we had spaghetti or S.O.S. (creamed ground beef over mashed potatoes). All other times, we had rice. If we had pork chops and applesauce, there was rice. If we had meatloaf, there was rice. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because I get stuffing and rice with gravy over it.

I gradually made the transition to brown rice this past year or so by mixing half white rice with half brown rice. I still got the sticky consistency without the dryness of the brown rice that I was used to having in the Santa Cruz hippie restaurants. I finally changed to all brown rice when I started getting more serious about getting my health in order.

When I saw Pat for the first time in several years, she told me that the Candida was present in my body and that I’d have to give up all grains, including rice. I said, “Do you know how big it was for me to change to brown rice? That was huge!” She said that I could have brown rice two to three times per week, but I would need to cut down my portions.

I thought that I could do that. At least she was allowing me to have a little rice. When I started on the strict Candida diet that day, I made baked chicken with lemon, garlic, rosemary and olive oil with a side of veggies and needed rice, too. I made a stir fry and needed rice on the side. I made a coconut milk curry and needed rice to soak up the sauce.

It was hard to stick to the two to three times per week.

I then decided that I should make soup so that I wouldn’t miss the rice. If I made a curry with lots of sauce, I would think that I needed rice. If I made soup with lots of meat and veggies, my head would think that that was a meal.

The first couple weeks on the diet were hard. I missed bready things. I missed rice. I would sneak gluten-free snacks like rice crackers (the ones by Lundberg are good!) and still ate breaded chicken breast in my salad. But then I decided that I needed to get serious about my diet so that I could get better. I wanted to feel better. I didn’t want to cheat and didn’t want my health to hold me back anymore. I cut out rice altogether, checked labels and stayed as close to the diet as I could.

Do you know what happened? I didn’t crave carbs as much after taking the cheats out of my diet. The less I had it, the less my body would crave it. The more I stayed with the diet, the less bloated I felt, I started losing weight (11 lbs. in about a month), my stomach looked almost flat (after a C-section!) and I had more energy. I was seeing results that made me even more determined to stick with my new lifestyle.

Because I was losing weight and it wasn’t plateauing, Pat told me to add root vegetables, like cooked carrots and sweet potatoes, to my diet. I was able to add more carbs to my diet because I had been so good the previous six weeks. Having Candida overgrowth doesn’t mean that you will be giving up carbs forever. It just means that you’ll have to stick to a Candida unfriendly diet most of the time. I even cheat every once in awhile by having a drink or something without adverse effects.

If you’re looking through this site thinking that you won’t be able to do without carbs, think of me. I’m a Japanese American who gave up rice. There’s a bag of brown rice sitting on top of my fridge, and I haven’t eaten any in awhile. I can now eat a meal without rice. I can eat stir fry without rice (as long as there isn’t too much sauce). I make taco salad and eat yellow tail cooked in a grill pan with a fresh salad on the side. I love the food I make now, and I love the difference it’s making in the way I feel.