Andy's Arthritic Diet (Digestion part two)

Well not so much a triangle but at least three ways of looking at what you eat..  This is my first attempt at trying to explain my diet in terms of foods I concentrate on, foods I avoid and trying to look at this nutritionally.

FOODS TO EAT
I have found concentrating on these foods positively helps me get healthier day by day.  And by healthier I mostly mean arthritis free.

1. Every day you should be ensuring you are getting many of these: 4 glasses Water, 2 cups Green / Hibiscus Teas, 3 servings Green Veg, especially dark Greens, 2 servings other Veg, 1 tbsp Flax Seeds, 1 or 2 servings Grains/PseudoGrains, 1 or 2 servings Legumes, Handful of Nuts, esp Walnuts, 2 cups Soy or Almond Milk etc, 2 servings berries, 2 servings fruit, esp Kiwi.

My Approach to Food

As a couple, we turned vegetarian back in 1979 and have never regretted that decision: in fact rather the opposite.  From my own standpoint I have always argued that decision was made on health grounds, and indeed I attribute 40 years of holding my Psoriatic Arthropathy at bay to that decision.  And apart from the odd unintentional mistake I have neither eaten fish nor meat since that time.

Our form of vegetarianism is what I think of as a wholefood approach, so bread is mostly wholegrain, and rice is brown.  We have always prided ourselves on cooking as much as possible from raw ingredients.

Our daughter, Jane took our interest towards veganism, but until this last year that has been more of an interest.  Lovely cheeses have ruled out leaving dairy behind entirely.   That said cow's milk took a dive and instead we have had either soya or almond milk.

Last year as my arthritis started to flare badly I took a personal decision to drop gluten from my diet.  It took around 3 months to really become fully gluten free as it took time to become aware of gluten-free alternatives.

Late last year I began to understand important and relevant health benefits of juicing and so I bought myself a juicer and again that brought me closer to veganism.  This year I started dropping dairy products in earnest and thus began to achieve a vegan diet.  That process again took a month or two, but it was only when I was at an absolute low and the Paddison Program gave me both the motivation and also the route forward to being finally able to declare to myself fully vegan.