A pizza delight

Whenever one thinks of dietary changes you have to look at the lifestyle in which you live.  It is all well and good drinking high-powered juices each day but no restaurant is going to want you and friends drinking your own juices on their premises.  Also the fun of eating out is exploring new tastes with friends.

Add into the mix my diet and it is not difficult to see that I haven't eaten out a lot.  In fact I have only had one pizza in the last six months, and that was a big mistake leaving me with more than a week and pain, inflammation and recovery.  On my diet a pizza represents a perfect storm.  Usually it is made with wheat dough and topped generously with both tomato paste and mozzarella cheese.  None of these are good for my diet, indeed all of them individually will cause me pain and inflammation for several days.

And so it was with trepidation that I ordered a take-away pizza from Pizza Express.  The one I chose was a Pianta.  I chose the Gluten-Free option and asked them to remove the tomato and artichokes.  I added in goats cheese and capers.  Bingo.  Twenty four hours later no arthritic reaction and happiness reigns.

A fabulous pizza and I felt like I belonged to humanity once more!

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 first GF beer

I feel that going out to restaurants is like taking your life in hands: rarely can one have confidence in the menus to deal with a challenging diet like mine.  I may go into that later.  What I want to say right now is that I had a Daura Damm beer and had no side-effects apart from a good sleep afterwards.

I largely became an alcohol-free zone about six months ago, say October 2015.  My first alcohol was a couple of small glasses of some rather expensive Sauterne which I had early in the New Year.  From this I am confidence I had no side effects.