Work in Progress
As we have previously mentioned life with MC is complex, by this stage you have made various changes in your life and hopefully enjoying days with minimal symptoms (no urgency or watery BM's)
Life with MC will never be 100% perfect. The aim for most here is to have majority of our days symptom free, and be ok when there are the occasional bad days.
Here are some suggestions how to expand your eating plan.
Stay 100% Gluten Free
after months on the bland, low amount of ingredients eating plan, take things SLOW when trialing/adding new ingredients.
The best approach is one new thing at a time. it is normal to have a change in BM when adding a new ingredient.
Have a small serve ( no more than 3/4 cup) one day, wait 24 hours. have another small serve (again no more than 3/4 cup). wait another 24 hours and then have another small serve. If after the third day there are no symptoms, that ingredient is a keeper.
if you react to a new ingredient, stick to your bland 'safe' ingredients until digestion settles down and then try another new ingredient.
Do not try new ingredients if you are tired, stressed, having histamine reactions. only do it on good days
New ingredients need to still be low fibre. Be conscious to not have too many high histamine elements
You can use small amount of fresh herbs when cooking for flavour, but dont eat them (things like rosemary on the stalk etc)
Coconut Aminos is a soy free, gluten free savoury flavouring that can be used for cooking
some can tolerate small amount of Pepper
If you have avoided chicken eggs to this point, try cooked eggs in small amounts
trial nut butters
be cautious about eating out - a big dose of contamination could undo healing work you have achieved thus ar
the safer ingredients of salads in small amounts things like peeled cucumber, kale,
be cautious about tomato - it is high histamine and high citric acid
be cautious about 'gluten free grains' there is still high risk of contamination from manufacture process, and grains are inflammatory to the digestion system
look at some of the paleo recipes (loads of free ones online) and adapt to your safest ingredients
Check out Meal Suggestions area of the forum and Paleo Diet Information
lots of meal and snack ideas -
http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=53
http://www.perskyfarms.com/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=49
what many of us have found is that we have our 'staples' that we can have every day.
there are foods that are sometimes foods - you can have 3-4 serves per week (any more than that and reactions start to happen)
and there are treat foods - you can have a serve once a month or so.
Try small amount of dairy - even if you dont react, it is something that could be a sometimes food / treat food due to its highly inflammatory nature
once you have an expanded safe ingredient list another element people try at this stage is Rotation Eating.
http://www.food-allergy.org/rotation.html
Like most things in MC world, this does not work for everybody
Depending on how long you had chronic symptoms, how well you are healing, what other health issues you may have, impacts how long you stay on Stage Two.
Observations of what has been shared here on the board, younger people (under the age of 40) that heal well, can return to eating plan with more salads, more fresh fruit etc.
Older members, or those with multiple health issues still have to follow a cautious eating plan majority of the time.
Stage two can be anything from 3 months to 12 months.
There is the situation for a minority of MC'ers that for various reasons they do not move beyond stage 2.
you may have seen 'Methylation' mentioned in discussions
here is a good article explaining methylation and some ways eating plan wise that you can improve your methylation function
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-18245/me ... -more.html
