Questions about GERD

[QueBert]

My friend has GERD and she wants to lose some weight so I'm trying to help her put together a list of meals to eat. Googling it I had no idea that there were so many things you can't or shouldn't eat. I'm also getting all sorts of contradictory info, 1 site will Strawberries are very high in acid and should be avoided, another says they're not the best but they're not super bad. And on about.com I saw a daily menu and it had a cup of them at dinner every night. She claims if she drinks too much water it brings it on pretty bad, I can't find anything about this on Google, but she swears it causes it to flair up. Is this in her head or could there be some truth here? She's cut out citrus, tomatoes & onions and doesn't eat spicy foods. Apparently dairy is bad, but what about Soy milk? She's not huge on veggies but does love greens & green beans and Asparagus. She's not a fan of fish or brown rice.

I'm really digging deep to find interesting things she can eat, especially sauces. Tomato sauce & BBQ are out of the picture and all I can come up with are Soy & Teriyaki. Both are good, but they can't exactly be used every day.

 

[the DRIZZLE]

In my personal experience the quality of food you eat and the level of stress in your life are more important than avoiding acidic fruits. For example, greasy food or cafeteria tomato sauce would always get me but fruit was never a problem. IMO she needs to look at this as a life style issue rather than just looking at lists of foods to avoid.

 

[Kaido]

Avoid anything fried or acidic (citrus, tomato, peppers of any kind including black pepper, spicy, etc.). Fried foods are a huge one for me - fries, chicken, etc. (even pan-fried chicken in olive oil is a no-no). Fatty burgers too. I'd go with Almond Milk over Soy Milk (google "soy is bad"). Stop eating a few hours before bed - another big one. Yes, water will bring it on if your gut is already kicking up the acid. It really boils down to making a lifestyle change regarding food.

I lived with GERD for a long time until I got serious about changing my diet. You can still have a cheat meal once in awhile (like once a week is fine for me) but I definitely can't do it every day or even every couple of days. Eating "a cup of strawberries" every night is not a lifestyle change - that's a band-aid, lol. Have her eat a plain-foods diet for a week and see how she feels. It will not be easy, but I bet by Day 3 she will be feeling no pain. Here's a good list of foods to eat:

http://www.bunklers.com/Plain_Foods.html

If she really wants to cure it, have her switch to an alkaline diet. It is a lifestyle change, and a big one at that. The best resource I can pass along is Brenden Brazier's "Thrive Diet" book, which has a 3-month rotating diet of alkaline foods:

http://www.amazon.com/Thrive-Nutrition-Optimal-Performance-Sports/dp/0738212547

The difficult thing is that eating well takes more effort than the drive-thru and doesn't taste as good, so most people won't do it - partly due to habits and partly due to energy level. If I didn't cook all of my meals in the morning and carry a giant lunchbox around with me all day, I would not eat nearly as healthy as I do lol.

 

[Kaido]

My friend has GERD and she wants to lose some weight so I'm trying to help her put together a list of meals to eat.

Put her on this for a week:

Morning: Plain oatmeal with vanilla almond milk. Eat this within 30 minutes of waking up, even if she doesn't feel like it. 1/4 cup cooked is fine.

Morning Snack: 1/2 banana, 1 hardboiled egg.

Lunch: Whole-wheat bread, sliced turkey breast, lettuce. No tomato.

Afternoon Snack: Baby carrots with hummus.

Dinner: Oven-baked chicken with green beans and a whole-wheat roll on the side.

Dinner Snack: 2 Tablespoons Natural Peanut Butter on a Brown Rice Cake.

Later: Stop eating 3 hours before bedtime. Stop drinking anything including water 1 hour before bedtime (even if she gets thirsty).

Try that with nothing else - no smoking, alcohol, drugs, chocolate, candy, soda, tea, coffee, etc. Have her carry a water bottle and have her try this for a week straight to see if it helped.

Otherwise, I hope she likes Tums I used to live off those - yuck!! Routine is just as important as what you eat when you have GERD...forcing myself to eat some solid carbs in the morning and stopping eating 2-3 hours before bed and stopping drinking an hour before bed helped a TON, although it was a really hard lifestyle change (especially eating before bed!).

That's just my experience. Things won't change until she does. It's not easy. HTH.