I had difficulty following the 4 F's diet that Catra linked until I discovered the Paleo food movement, which allowed me to incorporate the 4 F's diet more easily. There are various books and websites that offer additional info, but the one I used was Marksdailyapple.com and if you stick to the forums you can access all the info for free.
Like Catra, I can get away with a cheat day, once a week works for me, but I still try and make smart choices. I'm able to indulge in high quality, flavorful and filling food, without counting calories every day. The foods that set me off are carbs--some being worse than others. Flour based products are my kyrptonite, lol.
The 4 F's allows diet soda, which throws my blood sugar into a tailspin. Hooshmand's website is a bit outdated, and at the time he wrote the diet very few doctors recognized the relationship between artificial sweeteners and it's effects on insulin.
Processed food is filled with junk that healthy people shouldn't be consuming, but with those that have RSD/CRPS, I think many of the systems in our bodies are often dysfunctional. By eating foods that don't create additional stress to those systems, you can improve how you feel (in theory at least, but I feel a HUGE difference when I eat badly.)
Catra: I was a diet Coke junky as a youngin but kicked the habit long before developing RSD/CRPS. There are times when I do feel like drinking something sweet though. Regular soda is out because I won't consume corn syrup. A few times a year I'll get a high quality root beer or ginger beer made with sugar. At home, I make lemonade or Arnold Palmers with raw sugar or raw honey, and I make a sparkling limeaid or sparkling cranberry with no sugar added juice, sparkling water, and maple syrup (the real stuff). I can make it to my desired sweetness level for that particular day--sometimes hardly any, sometimes very! Once in a while I'll indulge in a small glass of fresh apple, lemon juice. I find that these are better tasting, and don't make me feel miserable (well--more miserable, lol!)
