Hi ferrari,
Welcome to HealingWell and the CFS message board!
I don't know if you have learned this yet or not, but one of the main characteristics of CFS is that it affects everyone differently. Most everyone who lives with CFS has diet issues, but they are all different. So you may get replies from several people claiming their diet is the best. And it IS the best, for THEM. But I believe that each person must find what works best for him or herself. If your symptoms don't appear to be related to your diet, then don't even bother with changing your diet. If they do seem related to your diet, the following is my suggestion.
Personally I have found the elimination diet to be helpful. Plus the nature of an elimination diet makes it suitable for individual needs. Basically, one eliminates things in their diet which they think might be causing their problems. Allow a week to go by after you stop eating one item, and if you are still having trouble, eliminate something else. Do not add the first thing you eliminated back. Keep eliminating things, either individual foods (cheddar cheese, pork, oranges, for example) or dietary groups of foods (dairy products, meat, fruits, for example), one per week, until you are eating only those things which are not causing problems. Be sure to keep a written history of what you eliminate, when, and the results of eliminating it. This will reveal SOME helpful info. But the most important part of the elimination diet is adding things back to your diet, which you previously eliminated.
Add ONE food item back, not a whole group, in roughly the same order you eliminated them. Even though you may have eliminated a whole food group at once, it is very important to add back individual foods. Any foods to which you have an allergy, sensitivity or intolerance, will cause your symptoms to flare back up. They will flare up severely, because you have avoided that food for the last several days or weeks. So there will be no doubt. As you identify each one, wait a week for symptoms to die down, before trying to add the next food back. You'll find some that you are able to add back without incident, and you'll find some that clearly cause problems. Be sure to take notes, as this is obviously a complicated and involved process, which you don't want to have to go through again.
If you do a search for elimination diets, you will find more specific instructions for performing each step--such as exactly what day to eliminate exactly which food. And that's fine if that is easier for you. But note that they all say to wait 4 days between each elimination and between adding each one back. But I would strongly suggest waiting a full week. Most of those instructions are written under the assumption that allergies are the only problems around. And 4 days is fine to identify allergies. But other reactions, which are more common (meaning you are more likely to have them than allergies) such as intolerances and sensitivities, take up to a week to run the course of its symptoms. (If that sentence is hard to understand, let me know, and I'll rephrase it!)
Good luck with this. I'll be glad to answer specific questions, if you have any. And I just want to stress one more time, if your symptoms don't appear to be connected to your diet, you probably won't have much success with relieving symptoms by changing your diet, in my opinion. Take care.
Brynn
Moderator for Chronic Pain forums and
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome forums