If you live with a chronic disease, you’ve been told some variation of “you can cure your disease if you eat this or don’t eat this”. I’ve been told to eat ginger, turmeric, be vegan, go paleo, cut dairy, cut nightshades.

The list goes on, and I’m generally skeptical of these suggestions. But there’s nothing like mounting symptoms to get you to try anything.

So last fall, I decided to embrace the Autoimmune Protocol completely for 30 days and slowly add in foods. To help, I bought

• The Autoimmune Wellness Handbook: A DIY Guide to Living Well with Chronic Illness
• The Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook: An Allergen-Free Approach to Managing Chronic Illness

The diet is strict – essentially having you cut anything that could trigger a reaction, reset your gut, and add foods back one by one.

Here’s the guide I followed, created by Mickey Trescott:

After a month of following the diet, and a few months adding foods back in, here’s what I learned:

• Life is just not the same without coffee and wine. 😉 Seriously, I don’t care if my symptoms flare a bit, these “food groups” have been added back and are staying.
• The diet makes eating out nearly impossible. For me, this was difficult as I eat out a lot. Being forced to cook so much was a learning curve, but I’m now a much better cook!
• I now know how to cook all sorts of meats. Before this diet, my kitchen was essentially vegetarian because I didn’t like cooking meat. Now I cook it weekly.
• Nightshade vegetables DO cause achy joints for me the next day, particularly tomatoes and peppers.
• My gut feels better with WAY fewer grains in my diet. Though I’m currently not gluten free, I generally now stick to rice and corn if I’m eating grains.
• I have continued to eat more vegetables, meat, fermented foods and kombucha and feeling better for it. Most mornings, I still make myself a green smoothie to start the day.

I’m not about to tell you this diet will cure you. I’m feeling better, but I think that’s largely due to a change in medication (switching from Enbrel to Cimzia). Adding the “light” version of this diet I’ve landed on to my lifestyle keeps me healthy and makes me feel good. I recommend testing it for yourself and would love to hear if you have experience with this diet in the comments!