Hi Shawn,

With candida, it depends on how bad a person has it, what their immunity is like and how strict they will need to be.

If you do not have to be "as strict" you may get away with only having to give up sugar, wheat/gluten and yeast. You may even be able to continue consuming natural high carbs in the diet. So a looser diet might be able to still include the following high carbs(if you're lucky) limited fruit, potatoes/yam/peas/beans/corn, non wheat/gluten grains. Which will make the diet much less restrictive and the only things to steer clear from is refined sugar, wheat/gluten grains/breads/products and yeast.

So you'd be able to eat fruit (though be careful), non wheat/gluten containing grain/cereals like rice, corn, millet, quiona etc, meat, eggs, vegetables of all kinds, raw nuts (unless you react to any mould, see how you feel, but I wouldn't consume peanuts), sugar free natural acidophilus yoghurt, milk in tea or cereal maybe ok, any animal fats are always good (butter for example), potatoe chips, sugar free carob (as treats) etc.

Unfortunately, you'd be wise to exclude "oatmeal" because oats can contain some gluten. You may WELL be gluten intolerant, because many people suffering from toxicity and candida are and sometimes you can get great improvements from simply excluding sugar, wheat/gluten and yeast. Gluten containing foods are wheat/rye/barley/oats. Steer clear of these in case part of your problem is gluten.

HOWEVER - if you have a more serious condition, severe yeast? You may need to exclude ALL high carb foods - even non wheat/gluten ones.

So your diet may be restricted to consuming eggs, meats/liver/chicken, plain sugar free acidophilus yoghurt, low carb vegetables (e.g. celery, alfalfa, cauliflower, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, garlic, broccoli, silverbeet, brussell sprouts, cabbage etc), raw nuts - almonds/brazil are probably safest. Herbal tea (black tea maybe ok, stay away from coffee).

Stay away from all forms of sugar full stop. Including fruit, high carbs like ALL grains, honey, milk/cream, high carb vegetables like potatoes/corn/peas/beans/carrots/yams etc if you find these also feed your candida. It depends, as I said, on the severity of your condition.

It is up to you how strict you want to go. But whichever way you do it, the worst culprits are sugar, wheat/gluten and yeast. From there, one may have to reduce or exclude high carbs as well. But at the very least, get rid of those completely out of your diet.

It's all dependent on your own condition and how you respond. If you wish to start and try the looser diet? You could give that a go and see if that alone causes a die off and helps your condition. If you find that alone gives you an improvement in health, you will be pretty lucky and still be able to consume potatoes/chips and non wheat/gluten cereals/grain and even some fruit intake and maybe some milk.

But if you find you do not get improvement or enough improvement, you can always go to the much stricter diet.

Cheating on this diet is not wise, since usually it results in one having to start again. It takes sometime before yeast begin to weaken and die off and in doing so, you may feel increasingly hungry, crave the very things the yeast need to survive and you may get detox symptoms and feel unwell. This may go on for a few weeks, but the key is to battle it out and hang in there until improvement of some is noted. Again if the looser diet is not effective, you will need to go onto the stricter one.

I hope this helps Shawn.