Please be patient with this page as it’s a work in progress. I’ll include some loose guidelines for shopping below and will be working on a more extensive shopping list with specific items moving forward.
General Shopping Guidelines
- Protein: Buy all kinds of eggs, meat, fish, fowl without restrictions other than you should buy raw ingredients instead of processed or pre-cooked in most cases. Beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, shellfish, eggs, etc. are all totally acceptable.
- Veggies: Stick to green and leafy green vegetables for the time being. Lettuce, avocados, broccoli, chard, celery, sprouts, peppers, mushrooms, and even carrots are all ok from my experience.
- Fats: coconut oil and olive oil are good. Butter is great too. Fats are good, honestly. See the note below about fats, but basically you’ll need to get over your fear of fats.
- Fruit: Berries are great and that’s where I stop. All kinds of other fruits are technically ok on this diet so go for it, but you’ll have to experiment for yourself and test things like apples with iodine before eating them. Bananas are notoriously starchy so I’d avoid those.
- Milk and Milk Products: I avoided milk for the first week and then introduced it back in after my diet was “clean”. It presents absolutely no problem for me, but I’ve heard of other folks w/AS who have issues with it. For yogurt: read the labels and DON’T buy lite or reduced fat varieties as both of these types need to make up for the lack of texture and consistency when they take out the fat, and so they often add corn starch back in as a thickener. Corn starch, tapioca starch, etc. They’re all bad, umkay?
- Snacks: sardines, some nuts (macadamia, almonds, walnuts, but NOT peanuts as they’re legumes, not nuts), eat leftovers from dinner and breakfast as well.
Special notes:
- Regarding Fat: fat is good for you. Read either one of Gary Taubes excellent books if you need an expert opinion on the matter: “Good Calories, Bad Calories“, or “Why We Get Fat: And What We Can Do About It“. The second book, Why We Get Fat is a much “easier” and less technical read than GC/BC. It’s basically a slimmed down version of GC/BC, so I’d recommend that one unless you’re a total geek and can handle GC/BC, in which case that book is outstanding. Sorry if my explanation of “fat is good for you” is a little brief, but I don’t have the time, energy, or smarts to restate the excellent work of someone like Gary Taubes. Read the book and then come back with a new perspective…it’ll blow your mind.
- Adding Foods Back In: I started out with a very “clean” diet for about a week before slowing adding questionable foods back in one at a time. I added only one food at a time for a day or two so I could gauge my reaction to it before adding another. Yes, my list of Veggies and Fruits is slim. You could add apples, for example, back in to your diet after a week or so, but I’d make sure to use iodine to test every single freaking apple you eat for starch before eating it. Do the same for other fruits and nuts. Cheese gives some folks a problem, and so I began my diet without cheese for about a week. I added it back and without ill effect but eventually gut it from my diet altogether for other reasons.
- Snacks: This is the stumbling block for many people and it was for me. I need to eat a ton of protein and fat in order to feel satisfied without carbs. So I snack on avocado, sardines, and leftover meats and eggs from dinner or breakfast. I’ve also been able to add macadamia and walnuts back into my diet without ill effect. But you’ll have to test those one at a time for yourself.
- Testing Foods: Sorry, you’ll just have to learn how to use iodine. See my previous post about using iodine.
- Cooking: You’ll be cooking your food. If you don’t cook then you’ll need to learn. Scramble some eggs in coconut oil or butter; brown some meat and stick it on top of a salad with tons of oil-based dressing and veggies. Learn to cook. Start simple.
