ntandme.com: Yet another dieting website. And more

This is the first post in a whole series, which I call the ntandme.com story. This first post will be the about section, the introduction or preface. You get the picture about the intention of that site, its intended goals and why at all start a new nutritional site.

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I am used to try new technologies with some kind of real life example. And nutrition has always been an interest of me, probably because my personal nutrition was rather bad. So at some stage a couple of years ago I did create a little desktop application with the personal C# edition of Visual Developer and thought this is a bloody good example and actually would work really well as a web application. And I already had a new interest, the symfony-project Framework which I wanted to give a try as I had read a lot of good things about. So I started with a short tutorial and found it really good. Additionally I had a real desire now to create my own nutrition website.

How it started

What I needed was an application that allows me to keep track of my Anti-Candida Diet, which I started a couple of month ago. This requires a pretty rigid diet with no sugar and simple carbohdydrates. That was my starting point, a tool to track my nutrition intake, a tool to help me plan my diet upfront. A little plus of course to track how many calories I used to eat and how many to loose while exercising. During the first versions (you can alway have a look at www.ntandme.com to check its current state) I implemented these basic functionalities, but soon found I needed a lot more. And so I changed some structures and made it as precise as possible with regards to nutrients and the calorie turnover in my diet. During that phase I learned a lot of new things about nutrition due to input from my Naturopath and other diet websites. Have a look around on this blog to read about my experiences of this specific diet. I also checked out some other websites such as calorieking.com and thedailyplate.com, but they were – at least at that time – mainly considering the weightloss side of diets.

Once you get your mind in a specific direction and actually start talking with friends about nutrition, you find how many people do suffer from nutrition related diseases, some becoming quite common (such as Diabetes, high blood pressure and food allergies), some not as common but with really heavy influence on your life style (such as Crohns Disease). And there is the biggest reason for our modern health problems, obesity. Today it is easier to eat industrial foods than to have a healthy and nutrition rich diet. Industrialized foods and dishes, which often are high in sugar and fat, are mass-produced to be cheap and enhanced with artificial ingredients to please our ill taste. So it became really easy to have a too high calorie intake and therefore unhealthy life style.

The education process

During my sessions with the Naturopath, the implementation of algorithms and the search for food information I learned a lot about nutrition. Since than it is, that I as well developed a natural feeling for ‘good’ and ‘bad’ foods. It was like an nutrition education course, that actually was not hard to do. The hard thing is to overcome habits. Cos these habits are driving you to what you are used to (the easy choice)instead of looking for healthy alternatives, which are more than plenty once you start looking for them. Just one simple example from my past month is the exchange of the beloved cookies in the afternoon with rice crackers and guacamole (self made Avocado spread). I love that stuff and still do not take in as many and especially not as ‘empty’ calories as before.

And there is one very obvious reward: The shrinking fat pads and better body feeling. I lost about 6kg in 2 month time (my BMI went from close to overweight 24.7 to  a nearly perect 22.65), very steady over time and constant since. I now eat way more vegetables than before and try to cook my food as often as possible.

The goals for ntandme.com

Since I found it helped myself, I thought what this tool could do for others. This has become somewhat my general road map and I hope (depending on my spare time) I will be able to implement the according tools sooner than later.

• Help people learn about good nutrition
• Give true information about the contents of food (not for example based on some unrealistic small portions)
• Show nutrition information for a wide variety of food
• Show alternatives to ‘not-so-good’ foods
• Guidance for people with nutrition-related diseases
• Day-to-day diary to assist doctors and naturopaths examining diseases and nutrition related issues

That is very rough and though I have quite some ideas, I am hopeful people will read this post and think it is a good idea, just missing this or that. If you can think of something that would help you and others reaching a better lifestyle, don’t hesitate to post it in a comment.

Comprehensive Anti-Candida Guide

Two days ago I had a comment form George Jackson, encouraging me to keep on and offering me help. Well, first of all that was a very nice comment and he even liked the idea of the nutrition and health tool on ntandme.com. Since I’m normally skeptical I thought I have a read through his proposed booklet before I recommend or link to his site http://stopcandidafast.com/

Second checkup after two weeks detoxing

I went to my naturopath Winona at Sydney Health Clinic last Friday again, to discuss the current development. Was looking forward to that as the diet started pretty good, the thrush did nearly disappear completely, but than came back again, so I was eager to know why. As I was a bit early, I spoke to her colleague specialized in eastern medicine (Chinese medicine) and I got some new ideas.

Candida and detox diet – Day 5

Honestly, it could be worse. But it could also be much better, as all of that stuff that I loved to eat, especially some nice treatments in between, is not allowed anymore. But I keep telling myself it will be worth it. At least the weight is going down already. Anyway, the detox with the herbal medicine Costat is now on full strength. I have a little but constant headache and feel pretty exhausted, but that might be due to the changed nutrition as well.

My practitioner answered me an email and cut down on some last resorts for nice stuff:

Yes sour cream is dairy so NO you cannot have it! Wedges are fine if you bake them and dont use any oil. Not sure what you will dip them in? your nuts should be raw, not roasted or salted…as for the pizza just make sure theres no cheese…Im not sure if you misunderstood me but the anti-candida diet is minimum 4 weeks!

sorry the gods leave the building during anti-candida diets

Oh no! I was in the god section to my nutrition god for some mercy. But no, nothing on the spiritual front. Now i know I will have to stick the Corn chips, which are not exactly good, but I got allowance from Winona to cheat a tiny little bit. I believe it will now become better anyway, as the first five days is the time to adjust to changes and see all the no-nos everywhere. Now I actually only look for the good stuff and still manage to get something nice to eat during the day. Yesterday was a good example:

Breakfast: Omelette of two eggs, with fresh tomato slices
Lunch: Did not really exist as I was in the town. But not really hungry
Dinner: Plenty here though. Oven baked chicken breast (just some pepper, salt and garlic on top), oven baked potato wedges (no oil, no salt) along with some pumpkin and Peppers. Pretty nice, leftovers will be my lunch today.

Luckily I finished adding about 7000 foods to my personal nutrition tool web site. I also started tagging the foods I can have during my candida diet, so it will be easier to find good combinations and keep track and plan. I guess I will be able to upload it to www.ntandme.com in the next week for alpha testing.

The current stats:
weight: 83.8 (down 700g in 5 days)

Candida Diet Reloaded

I just re-posted my first experience with a Candida Diet two month ago. It wasn’t a full success, mainly due to missing supervision by a doctor, but at least proofed for me it was a candida infection, that I could reduce due to little medication and change in nutrition.

But now I finally decided to do it properly and went to see a docter, to get proper medication and fight this till the end. I went to a Naturopath in Sydney, it is a clinic of combined eastern and western medicine. I found them via google search and especially liked they have a price list online. So went there on Wednesday for a Candida test late afternoon.

The first candida diet is over – Resume

Originally posted on March 3rd

What I tried so far did not work out. It’s a couple of weeks ago that I switched back to normal nutrition and since than the Candida returned. Again, I still don’t feel bad, but it simply annoys me that I know it does not need to be that way.

Three month ago, the change in nutrition

Originally posted on Feb 11th

So far so good, I realized I have Candida infection in my mouth and wanted to do something about it. This apparently goes along with a change of Nutrition, clearly no sugar – Saccharose, which is the sugar as we know as well as Fructose (fruit sugar) and Lactose (milk sugar) – and simple carbs as in white bread, pasta and even in cooked rice. There should be no potato as well, but it is said that in some sources, that you can eat them as they are scraping the yeast out of your guts. And my main concern is the yeast infection in the mouth, so the most important is “no sugar”. Of course I did it wrong and thought, yeah, Milk is alright, these can’t be used from the candida, but I don’t know why but Milk is not ok, but so are natural Joghurts and yeast-free cheeses. There is a nice list of do and do not foods. So, after four days I will know get rid of Milk from my Nutrition plan as well. Besides that, I am doing perfectly fine, we have a bakery that does that really black bread which I can eat with Avocado-Cream and many other sorts of spread. Over the weekend we had potato wedges with Chicken drum sticks and a vegetable casserole. I am quite happy as I don’t have to miss out complex carbs. And the infection is visibly less, guess another four to five days without milk will give it the rest.

Three month ago: realize there is Candida

Originally posted on Feb 7th

To solve a problem, you first have to know there is one. And sometimes this hides quite well, especially for health problems. Feeling well, one would never think there is a yeast infection in your body that affects you. Well, I don’t know how it is to be without it, not yet. But this will change soon. Today I started taking some pills called “Acidophilus Bifidus”, that contain Lactobacillus acidophilus and Bifidobacterium animalis. These are to reactivate a healthy gut flora (along with Zinc). This will take six to twelve month. And for one to two weeks I will take “Fungilin” four times a day. These contain Amphotericin B and that kills the yeast. The pills are not swallowed but sucked. That is because I found the yeast on my tongue, as a film of whitish-yellow colour. How did I found out I have this yeast infection? Well, I had a cold and during that I saw my tongue having this film. So I started looking up the Internet and found a lot of information about tongue diagnostic, some of these really interesting and scary. Apparently there is a kind of diagnostic based on the film on a tongue. But nothing really fitted the “look and feel” of what I had, so I went further and found some hints of Candida infections. Candida is a yeast everyone has in its body, but normally this is held under control by a healthy immun system. Well, in my case that has been weakened in teenager age due to antibiotics and my love to sweets. I remember this has been tried to be cured once, but not in a really good attempt. So I probably live with that for about ten years.

I was quite sure it is a yeast infection when I started to not have carbohydrates for about a week, which I’ve started two weeks ago. And the results have been there very fast and obvious – no film on the tongue. So today I went to a pharmacy in Sydney and had a very knowledgeable pharmacist, explaining a lot of the basics, what diet and how to address the infection. He also stated I would feel way better in about two to three weeks. We’ll see, don’t feel bad at all right now. I will keep on blogging about it, as I believe this is a very common problem, but not many talk about it. Last week I had a very open chat with a manager of mine. And let me tell you, it can hit you way harder. So, no sugar and simple carbs for me. That’s hard, but luckily sea food over here is awesome. Could be worse. And it hopefully will have a enduring effect on my nutrition. It already changed to the better the last two weeks, when I realized how many sugar there is in my food. Hang on for more.