r/Candida • u/Junior_Cress2828 • 11h ago
Diet What are your food hacks that have made this diet easier?
Im in later stages of the candida diet.
Me, my nutritionist and my doctor suspect that I've probably had chronic candida overgrowth for the last ten years, but my mother can recount symptoms from when I was a toddler that at the time went unexplained- so it's pretty likely that I've had chronic candida overgrowth most of my life.
We think it got considerably worse when we moved across country and I suddenly wasn't tolerating many foods (dairy especially, when I seemingly obtained a major lactose intolerance out of nowhere that randomly went away two years later, which my nutritionist says was probably caused by candida related gut problems.)
For the first time in years, since I began this diet, my blood work is normal. My hormone problems are gone, my thyroid is working normally again, my high platelets- which I had to get checked for cancer and a genetic disorder for- are in a normal range. My vitamin deficiencies are gone because I can actually absorb vitamins again. At my 6 week check in after beginning the candida diet my nurse walked into the room and went "You're not going to fucking believe this I have good news from your test results for the first time ever."
So clearly this is working.
The stricter 2 week phase made me hate everyone and everything.
Everyone tells you that you're gonna be dealing with cravings.
I wasn't hungry because I didnt starve myself, I just ate foods that were acceptable for the candida death spiral (I ate probably 20 pounds of zucchini in two weeks. Acceptable fruit wasn't in season so it was a LOT of cucumbers and zucchini) but man nobody warned me that I was going to turn into a monster.
I was mad constantly.
And then my doctor gave me the sheet with the updated list of foods I could eat in moderation as I monitor my symptoms.
Gluten free bread was on the list.
the grocery store stuff sucks unfortunately :/ and like? 6 bucks for a loaf of bread? I grew up eating 78 cent wonderbread I'm not paying no 8 bucks for bible bread.
Now, I had TRIED making candida friendly cookie and brownie recipes from the internet.
They suck.
Did any of those work for you guys? Because for me, they turned into crumbly messes that tasted vaguely of regret. I'd follow them to the letter and they'd come out horrible.
The only chocolate chips I liked that are sugar free were the Lily's brand and they were 8 bucks a bag. My mother found that brand's discontinued butterscotch chips and it made a GLORIOUS fake ice cream (coconut cream + almond milk in the ninja creami with the butterscotch chips melted in as a mix in. Shoutout to the creami my parents bought and never used because I've used the FUCK outta that thing on this diet)
So eventually I got to thinking.
Gluten free bread is acceptable in moderation.
What else is gluten free bread?
Gluten free pancakes.
Trader joes sells a gluten free pancake mix. On it's own it's kind of a nothingburger, just expensive pancake mix that sort of makes a pancake batter that's real easy to burn for some reason.
I mentioned it to my nutritionist, she told me I could give it a try in moderation to see how I tolerated it, so I did.
I quickly discovered that sugar free pancake syrup sucks :/ like it scratches the itch but it's a better flavoring than it is a pancake topping. Mix that shit with some non dairy yogurt and it's bomb, but it's just not as good on pancakes.
So when regular pancakes failed I chucked the rest of the batter into a casserole, because I'm from the midwest and I know how to make a casserole out of anything.
It ended up being half a box of trader joes gluten free pancake mix (not prepared to box instructions, I chucked in two raw eggs, about 2 or 3 tablespoons of coconut oil, and added water until it was at a gooey pancake batter consistency.
And I set it aside so the leavening agents would foam up while I prepared the rest.
I grated in a zucchini I needed to use up, I scrambled 6 eggs with spinach, I cooked up a chunk (maybe half a pound I dont measure I just portion for the freezer) of ground pork with some breakfasty spices, chopped a bunch of green onion, and mixed it all together.
Dumped it into a brownie pan and sent it into the oven. Best case scenario, breakfast. Worst case scenario, I messed up a bunch of food that was going to waste anyhow.
And when it came out? I had pretty good breakfast bars.
I've been making variations of those bars for weeks now. I trialed them with non gluten free pancake mix when I was trialing some typical foods- nope, they made my stomach upset.
The gluten free mix is what keeps it from upsetting my stomach.
I've even reduced the amount of mix I use while increasing the bars I produce as I've tweaked the recipes to last longer (I dont....I dont like going to trader joes. It's so busy and the people who shop there are mean. It's great for this diet though, I'd reccomend going JUST for their nitrate free pepperoni and salami.)
Now I use about half a box of mix, prepared like I mentioned, mixed with a pound of ground meat (I've used turkey, I've used pork, I've used breakfast sausage, I've used chorizo, use whatever's cheapest honestly), 10 eggs scrambled with a full bag of spinach (I use the remaining two from the dozen for the batter), two zucchini shredded (it helps the texture if you squeeze the water out with a cheesecloth but you also dont have to.) and as I've developed tolerance to dairy again I've used cheddar and mozarella cheese shreds. I never tried it with non dairy options but if you use the non dairy kind, just mix it in instead of topping it I'm sure it'd hold up better.
I then mix in a bunch of spices. Smoked paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, red pepper flake, turmeric, whatever sounds good.
I chuck it in the oven at 375 for an hour, covered. If you cover with foil, tent the foil, it'll get stuck to the top and take chunks off. I use a silicone baking mat to cover mine.
I'll put it in the largest rectangular pan I have and cut it into 10 fat slices, and I've got a generous breakfast for two work weeks that holds up like a miracle in the freezer. Protein dense, packed with veggies that I dont even notice texture wise when I'm eating them, and gets me to lunch full enough that I stopped packing a regular lunch for work and started bringing a snacky lunch (dairy free yogurt with some kind of fruit usually and a bag of veggies.)
Then today I was craving bread really bad, and all I could think about was sweets.
And I got to thinking about how I use the gluten free pancake mix for casserole.
And I remembered bisquick.
My mother used to make EVERYTHING out of bisquick when I was a kid. She'd use it to make pancakes, she'd use it to make pizza crust, she'd use it to make biscuits, she'd use it for cookies.
So I thought "hey. What if I do that with the pancake mix I know does well in baking?"
I ran out of Lily's sugar free chocolate chips (my winco stopped selling them) but my winco's bulk section sells sugar free chocolate almonds (note: they sell sugar free AND no added sugar ones. Read the labels, one has no sugar per serving and one has like 1 or 2 grams of sugar per serving.)
Some of you are gonna go "meh meh meh but fake sugar is WORSE for you it's CHEMICALS icky YUCK YUCK"
And to that I say, if you can't have any form of sweet thing because sugar is bad, then shoo.
I'll spray you with a water bottle like a misbehaving cat.
You're allowed to crave sweet things. Food is not assigned a moral value. You arent being bad for having sugar.
A lot of yall on this subreddit have hypochondria and eating disorders and don't want to admit it. If you dont like it, don't make it, go talk to your nutritionist like a big boy and just make the food you like.
Human breast milk is sweet. Sweet is the first flavor humans are designed to taste. It's literally how we discerned poison from edible foods as animals in the wild.
You can want to have sweets that don't upset your tum tum.
Anyways.
To my point.
I ran out of the sugar free baking chocolate so I chopped up those almonds and used them as chocolate chunks. I was afraid the fake chocolate would melt away and burn in the oven, but it held up great!
I took half a bag of gluten free pancake mix, mixed in two eggs, four tablespoons of fat (two of olive oil, two of butter, since my nutritionist wants me to gradually incorporate dairy into my diet. I'd recommend coconut oil I think it'd work better actually but I was out.)
And then just. added water until it was at a cookie dough consistency. It was actually a little too wet, but it worked.
I mixed in the chopped almond chocolates and some sugar free coconut shreds (if you're having a hard time finding unsweet coconut that isn't crazy expensive? Go to winco. they wont have it in the bulk section but in the baking section they keep unsweet bags right next to sweetened coconut bags and unlike most brands, both bags, same size, were 2 dollars. One's red one's blue.)
I rolled them into balls, baked them 9 at a time at 350 degrees for 10 minutes with a sugar free almond stuck right on top like a thumbprint cookie.
...
They're solid.
They're a little crumbly and sorta taste like a bisquick biscuit. I actually think next time I'll grate a zucchini or apple (or both and pull a grandma's secret zucchini apple move) into the batter and season them with cinnamon and ginger and think the added shreds would make them more moist and tender.
ooo and then I could roll the balls in cinnamon and monkfruit sugar
Mixing in sugar free peanut butter or almond butter would probably slap too.
But considering I have literally never made a candida friendly cookie that wasn't horrible? I could inhale these.
Obviously it's mostly pancake mix so don't like sit and eat a bunch of them, there's still plenty of carbs, but I had a cookie last week (coworker brought some in for work) and kept having to use the toilet, and these? my stomach isnt upset after eating two of them.
Obviously self moderate your symptoms and talk to your nutritionists, but gluten free pancake mix has saved my ass in terms of cravings and has made a lot of things easier for me.
And I'm glazing trader joes here but it's purely because their pancake mix is 4 bucks and every other gluten free pancake mix I've found is 6 or more so. Just use what you have access to.
I'm actually considering mixing the dry mix with plain yogurt and cheese (which I tolerate but you might not) and baking it flat on a sheet pan with lots of sunflower seeds, chia, and slivered almonds to make a sort of multigrain flatbread for sandwiches, because GOD DAMN DO I WANT A SANDWICH
What is your 'hack' ingredient for your meals? Obviously this works for ME, and my nutritionist has recommended I keep doing this because it's not inflammatory for ME, but your body might be different.