Yeast Free Living

One of my tragic flaws, at least one of the ones that I have been able to identify is what has become known in the psychological world of cognitive behavioral therapy as “All or Nothing” thinking.  This thinking is said to be why many of us cannot make one mistake on the candida diet or any other diet for that matter, without spiraling out of control.  We strive for perfection only, and when we don’t achieve it we abandon all of our efforts.  I know that for me one piece of candy quickly leads to another because I think to myself, “I have already cheated so what is the use of being good today”.  I always vow to start again tomorrow or Monday or in a week giving myself free reign to eat poorly until I reach whatever arbitrary time I have set for myself.  The candida diet itself often seems like and all or nothing undertaking.  Most books and other resources that I have consulted take an all or nothing approach that makes most of us believe that unless we cut out all foods and ingredients on the prohibited list we will be doomed to remain sick.  As I began to look into my distorted thinking a bit, I started to wonder if there would be any benefit in implementing the candida diet changes in a different way?  To my surprise I stumbled across a book that advocated and outlined a way to introduce yeast free lifestyle changes gradually in order to promote lasting dietary change. 

Feast Without Yeast: 4 Stages to Better Health : A Complete Guide to Implementing Yeast Free, Wheat (Gluten) Free and Milk (Casein) Free Living by Bruce Semon, MD, PhD and Lori Kornblum is the first yeast free cooking diet book that I have come across that discusses how to implement candida diet changes over time.  This book is not your typical candida diet book, as it will not present you with a list of things that you should and should not eat up front.  This book was actually developed with the goal of alleviating symptoms of autism.  Coincidentally,  there is a great deal of overlap with the candida diet and many of the dietary changes used to treat autism.  The book teaches us how to implement these dietary changes in 4 very well defined stages and includes explanations on what food and ingredients to take out and why to take out a particular food at each stage.  The beauty of this is that if you regain you health at any particular stage you do not have to continue on to the other stages.  This is definitely new to what I have been following.  No two people are the same and therefore I believe this fact leaves room for different variations of the candida diet for different people.  Depending on the severity of your candida overgrowth, I believe it could be possible for many to  continue to eat wheat or cheese and still regain there health  I actually kept wheat in my diet the first time I succeeded at battling candida.  Wheat was not a problem for me.  My problems seemed to be mainly with sugar and white flour products.  Once I eliminated these I was on my way to feeling great and many of my symptoms disappeared. 

The beauty of the stages are that if one stage helps you restore your health there is no need to move on the the next stage.  A brief description of the 4 stages of the Feast Without Yeast program is as follows:

Stage I – Add brown rice to your diet.  Subtract a few fermented foods. 

Stage II – Add potatoes, beans and vegetables.  Subtract more fermented foods mold contaminated foods, yeast and sugar

Stage III – Subtract Gluten and Casein

Stage IV – More fermented and mold contaminated foods

Wouldn’t it be great if you did not have to eliminate everything found on those long candida diet lists from your diet.  If you are eager to try another approach this book may be worth a look for you.  Most recipes are very simple and since this book was driven by family recipes developed for their autistic son they seem to be kid friendly.  The book also does a very good job providing tools to make this transition easier such as ideas for children, suggested kitchen tools and shopping lists. 

There is one thing that does disturb me about this book.  Unprocessed clover honey is an ingredient that is never eliminated throughout the stages.  Most candida resources agree that honey acts the same way as sugar in the body, elevating blood sugar and feeding the candida which only exacerbates our problems.  I am unsure at why the authors think that honey is okay on a yeast free diet and I found no explanation as to why it remained in even the most stringent stage.  I guess you could omit and use stevia.  I guess it just makes me mad because I really want to use honey but knowing what I know already I feel that it will give me the same symptoms that sugar does. 

All in all I feel that Feast Without Yeast: 4 Stages to Better Health : A Complete Guide to Implementing Yeast Free, Wheat (Gluten) Free and Milk (Casein) Free Living decent yeast free diet offering.  It may be more helpful to those who are treating autism but I believe that it may be beneficial to some of us candida sufferers who are looking for a gradual way to permanent health.

4 Responses to “Feast Without Yeast – Book Review”