Honestly, I have no idea if my diet is actually helpful for PFS, but it’s been something for me to focus on and feel like I’m doing something to help my situation.
Here’s my currents diet and my reasoning behind it (again, I don’t know if any of the reasoning is sound, but I’ve based it on what seems logical to me).
Breakfast
1 chicken leg
100g steamed spinach
2 unripe green bananas
Lunch
1 chicken leg
200g potatoes cooked the day before then kept in the fridge overnight
100g steamed white cabbage
Tea
250g beef mince, 12 percent fat
50g raw oats soaked in water overnight
2 kiwis
My reasoning…
Each meal includes a source of resistance starch. The aim is to support gut health and increase butyrate production which is an HDAC inhibitor but without anti androgen effects like basically all over dietary sources of HDAC inhibitors are. Digestion issues are common in people with PFS so this felt important to focus on. My digestion was also destroyed after my crash, I had extreme constipation and very slow digestion for a while. It has much improved now.
I chose foods that give a mix of type 2 and type 3 resistance starch (as these are most important for butarayte production / gut health), along with a bit of type 1. These include green unripe bananas, raw oats soaked overnight, and potatoes that have been cooked and cooled overnight. From what Ive seen when searching this forum and Reddit, banana, oats and potatoes seem to be well tolerated and considered safe too.
I wanted to try and include a decent amount of fruit and vegetables for vitamins and minerals such as magnesium. This was difficult as many fruits and veg seem to have compounds which are 5ar inhibitors and / or have been reported to cause various people issues when they ate them. I tried to find a balance of fruit and veg with a range of nutrients which also had lowish reports of issues.
One of the things I definitely wanted to include was a cruciferous vegetable for it’s mild anti estrogen effect due to the chest and nipple issues I have had. I chose white cabbage because it appears to have weaker 5ar inhibition than green cabbage, and definitely red cabbage, while still giving some anti estrogen benefits. I also expect it to be lower in 5ari than foods like broccoli and brussel sprouts as usually the more colourful a food is, the more compounds it has with 5ari. White cabbage seemed the best option as a cruciferous vegetable.
I wanted to find a fruit high in vitamin C in the hopes of supporting skin health as Ive seen many people report issues with skin. I don’t expect this to stop those issues at all, as the issues will be due to issues with androgen receptors, but I don’t want to be low on vitamin C and cause additional issues on top of that.
From looking at a variety of fruit, kiwis seemed the best best. I couldn’t find any negative reports about them and I didn’t see anything too bad when looking up what compounds they contain. Plus they’re loaded with vitamin C and reportedly help with sleep! Hence why I choose to have these for my last meal.
For the last addition I looked at what was lacking the most in my diet nutritionally, such as magnesium, and tried to find something which covered most of the weak spots. Spinach seemed the best bet here, plus I also saw at least one recovery story mentioning high spinach intake. That is probably a coincidence but it still made it seem like a reasonable choice.
I also wanted to try and include as much fibre as possible as it can help with hormone balance by binding to and remove excess estrogen. I kept that in mind with my food selection and tried to pick higher fibre choices too.
Moving onto proteins and fats, meat is obviously a great source of protein and many key fat soluble vitamins and minerals. This is important to help prevent muscle wastage and support hormone production. I wanted my diet to have plenty of protein, with moderate amounts of carbs and fats.
Beef in particular is a nutrient dense food and has a better omega 6 profile than pork and chicken. Cows also filter their feed more thoroughly due to their digestive system so this would have been my first pick for the main meat source. However beef is high in zinc, which is a 5ar inhibitor and has caused issues for some people with PFS (I will note, I’ve only read zinc being an issue for people when taken as a supplement, but still I wanted to not have too much). Because of that I limited beef to one serving and paired it with oats since oats contain compounds that bind zinc and reduce absorption. I also chose to have these foods for my last meal as oats reportedly help with sleep!
Oh and I will note, I wasn’t trying to eliminate zinc, just not have it in excess. My diet still provides a decent amount within the healthy range when I checked it all. I can’t remember the amount off hand now.
I decided to make chicken the main protein source for the the other 2 meals. Its omega ratio is better than pork and pigs tend to accumulate more unwanted compounds in their fat, including mycotoxins from feed that has mould exposure and possible soy isoflavones (although probably low amounts). That made chicken the safer option for me. These are the main meat options for me. Lamb is also fairly accessible but very expensive and has the same issue with high zinc.
To sum up…
- Plenty of protein (to prevent muscle wastage), moderate fats (for healthy hormone production) and moderate carbs.
- As much fibre as possible, especially in the form of resistance starch to help with gut health (butarayte production) and estrogen balance.
- A variety of plant based sources of food to try and get a variety of vitamins and minerals, whilst trying to pick foods which have a low reported issue rate with PFS, and aren’t noted / the compounds aren’t noted as having notable 5ar inhibition (for foods).
- Include a cruciferous vegetable to help lower estrogen due to my issues with nipples and chest. This is probably on the higher end of foods with 5ari effects, but I’m trying to find balance.
- Have the oats and kiwis as a part of my last meal as they help with sleep.
- Use chicken as my main protein source as it seems the safest. But also including some red meat (beef) as it also have lots of minerals we need.
Extra notes…
- Organic oats as I can’t wash these before hand
- Organic spinach and potatoes as these are some of the worst foods for pesticides.
- All other foods standard as they have lower amounts of pesticides used and/or have skin on which protects the fruit inside, or outer leaves which can be removed in the case of cabbage.
- Later (probably in about a months time) I plan to try adding eggs back in. I previously thought I had an issue with them, but maybe it was because they were standard eggs, or maybe it was a coincidence. Next time I will try soy free, organic eggs.
- I also plan to add in milk in the future to see how I get on with this. I’m pretty sure kefir made me feel worse as I drank it on several occasions and it happened each time. I’m not sure if it was a dairy thing, or just a kefir thing.
- I’m not going to eat fish again, atleast not for a very long time. I’m sure sardines made me feel worse before and triggered my anhedonia. Theres also reports that high omega 3s have caused issues such as depression for people in general.
Oh and the nutritional totals for my current diet is…
- 1974kcal (pretty low, I might need to bump this, although my activity level has been very low due to the PFS)
- 210.1g protein (overkill really, I think 160g would have been enough for me)
- 98.7g net carbs (I think this is a good amount)
- 80.5g fats (I would have liked this to of been a bit higher, maybe 100 - 120g. I might change the beef mince from 12% fat to a higher % later).