To ask what on earth I'm supposed to eat if I've been "advised" to cut out..?

[dottytablecloth]

I'm in the process of being diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, as in doctor is 99% sure I have it but am needing further tests.

Anyway lots of people are recommending that changes to diet is my best option to control it. I'm not listening to well meaning people over the doctor but if it helps I'll try it.

Anyway so far I've been advised to cut out:
Dairy
Red meat
Caffeine
Processed food

I really don't know what I can eat instead

I have porridge or eggs for breakfast so the milk on the porridge and the eggs are dairy.

My one pleasure in the morning is a skinny latte, so I can't have that.

I have a cup of tea in the evening so I can't have that.

We try to eat fresh home cooked food but I enjoy a pizza or Chinese takeaway once a fortnight, so I can't have that.

No red meat means, no shepherd pie, lasagne etc, I'm not a fabulous cook and these were so good for family dinners with a fussy 2 year old.

I eat lots of fruit and trying to eat more vegetables and my only vice is a few squares of chocolate in the evening.

I try to eat as much fish as I can 2-3 times a week.

I'm aware I sound really negative here, but am I missing something? Do people really manage to eliminate these things from their diet?

Am struggling with possibly having RA, feeling quite down at the minute but just wanted some views.

I developed a dairy allergy during pregbancy. I found it terribly restrictive. There is a lot if choice in supermarkets etc- I found a lot tasted really foul (oat milk is prob best and a decaff soy cappuccino is about tolerable) but worse was the social side- being able to pop over to friends for a drink, eating out was really hard and so on. So big sympathy

I wouldn't change my diet until I got a diagnosis and tried the medical treatments available.

Could someone please confirm whether eggs are dairy or not? Its a bit unclear here

I made the coconut porridge mentioned above this morning from the Deliciously Ella blog. I recommend leaving out the almond butter, I found the texture really odd. (Ella says that Koko isn't the best as it has loads of stuff added to it but she recommends Grace coconut milk instead)

Try the different milk alternatives. There's loads of different types and I would use different ones for different things. I like almond as a latte but oatly on my porridge

Eggs, fruit (watch citrus), grains, white meat, fish, nuts, seeds, soy or other milk substitute.

You have my total sympathy, OP. Being recently diagnosed as stage 2 hypertensive, I had to give up fats, salt and caffeine. Sounds easy until you start looking at the salt content of foods. Activia yoghurt, for example, contains 3% of your recommended daily salt intake. Wtf is salt doing in yoghurt? I am currently living on de-caff everything and home-popped flavourless popcorn. Good luck to you my dear.

Tofu is a good alternative to meat. You can buy a good range in health food shops and get things like sausages. You can also get a limited range in supermarkets.

Agree with PPs however that you should check with a medical professionals that this is the right advice. If you're going to cut out huge amounts of am food from your diet you'll need to make sure you're getting all the vitamins and things you need.

Hi,
Eat pulses/lentils they are really healthy soak overnight and add ginger when you cook them.

Use olive oil (2 tbls) we need some fat, but don't cook with it add it after you have made the curry or just about to eat it.

Nuts a handful a day, i soak them too.

fruit/veg

For drinks cammomile tea and peppermint tea. Other teas have natural flavourings which may sound good but their not. you can also just drink plain boiled water before meals.

Fish, so many variety.

you can make home made chappatis with wholewheat flour.

HTH

pizza is quite easy to make, you can make the dough and then freeze the rest.

The other day i made a pizza with a ready made base (i know your not allowed that) but the topping took like 5 minutes to make with passatta and tomato puree and largely chopped veggies etc. i know some people use egg instead of cheese over pizza.

I know your feeling low right now, but actually all these foods that you have been told to eliminate are unhealthy anyway so thats a plus. many people with high cholesterol can't eat these things.

Are any of these people recommending you cut out whole food groups medically or nutritionally qualified?

If not, ignore them. If you think changing your diet might help, speak to your doctor or ask for a referall to a nutritionist.

You might do more harm than good.

red meat and dairy are all saturated fat, and all these processed foods are full of animal ingredients, and too much are bad for our heart.

i hope you dont mind but you could also eat chicken.

it seems hard in the beginning, i just got tested for high cholesterol so been told to cut out all the things you have. it means to cook more at home, but ive learnt the freezer helps and cooking in larger batches is good. also i do feel healthier generrally cutting out these things. I haven't given up milk in my porridge my thinking is, to cut out other sources of saturated fat from processed food and then i can still have a cup of full fat milk with my porridge...no im not swapping that for any other milk...taste horrible..... skimmed and all.

you can still have chocolate dairy free sugar free, make it yourself at home too. dates are good.

the problem is that these foods aren't bad its just that we eat too much of it, thats why there are all these diseases colesterol diabetes...think fat america.

You need saturated fat in your diet, plus it's delicious.

OP I assumed your doctor had advised it, but as they haven't I wouldn't drive yourself mad unless you really suspect there is something in your diet that's exacerbating things. In which case perhaps just cut things out on an individual basis in a carefully managed way, but probably best to wait until you have the definite diagnosis.

RA is an auto-immune disease. It is your immune system attacking itself and there are all sorts of factors involved. You're going to get all sorts of people telling you that you'll cure yourself if you cut anything nice certain foods out of your diet/do yoga/exercise more/stand on your head four times a day etc. There is NO CURE for RA (or other auto-immune diseases like MS, ulcerative colitis, Crohns, AS etc). People will tell you there is but there isn't. There are plenty of drugs available to you if you do have it, some may work better than others.

The fact of the matter is, auto-immune diseases can and do flare up at all sorts of times. People who restrict their diets severely also get flare ups.

If you really want to go down the diet route then the Paleo diet is a good one to try as it's very close to how our ancestors would have eaten (and therefore what our bodies are designed to eat). Or if you want to be really restrictive then the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. You start out very restricted and gradually start reintroducing things into your diet. Frankly, I think it's all a load of rubbish. I have UC and followed the SCD for two years religiously - didn't make the slightest bit of difference!!

Just coming to terms with a dairy intolerance here too - it's a mind shift, you find substitutes. Goats milk is very similar tasting to cows in tea and coffee I find, try soya lattes or soya chai lattes instead of your skinny lattes, and there's quite a range of goats cheese. Soya cream is also v good and works well in cooked dishes, pasta sauces, potato bakes etc. I haven't yet found a decent alternative to whipping cream but working on it.