Living Candida-Free: 100 Recipes and a 3-Stage Program to Restore Your Health and Vitality

Buying Ricki Heller's book Living Candida Free and joining her Sweet Life community was the single best thing I have ever done for my health. After cooking for 4 boys for over 20 years, I was burned out and decided I was going to go the route of very simple meals. Many of those meals were to grab a fast (organic, but still processed) veggie burger or something similar. Recently, I became very sick to the point of lying on the couch and watching a movie was a huge effort! After 5 weeks of being sick, I went to my ND and she diagnosed Candida and suggested I go on the "Anti-Candida Diet". After looking at all the things I couldn't have, I was despondent. Seriously, "This was NOT going to be fun AT ALL", I thought. I went online and looked at the different books on this diet. After reading the reviews on the books, I decided to buy Living Candida Free because many people said it was EASY to understand. (And, it *definitely* was!) At the same time, I joined Ricki's group, The Sweet Life. There, I found support not only from Ricki, but also from a group of people that were going through the same process as I was. Best of all, when you join the group you have access to TONS of extra recipes.I started making recipes from the book, followed the diet strictly, and within one week I was feeling AMAZING!!! I could not believe the difference in just one week! Three weeks after starting the diet, I jump out of bed, can't wait to start cooking and have more energy than I have had in years! The biggest thing is that I feel I am eating better than I have in my life with incredible tasting meals! I don't feel I am being deprived of anything at all. In fact, my body is responding so positively to this way of eating, I can't imagine going back to processed foods and sugary desserts. I am slowly making my way through the recipes and OMG are they DELICIOUS!!! Pizza? It's in there. "Chocolate" pudding? It's in there. "Sun dried" tomatoes? Ketchup? Cookies? It's ALL there!!! THANK YOU, Ricki Heller, for writing this book and others, and for your amazing Sweet Life group! You have changed my life for the better!!

I love this author and am currently taking her functional medicine nutrition class!

This product is really good. There are good explanations and a list of things that one can and can't have on the candida diet. The recipes seem to be well thought out but some can be a bit complex. All-in-all I have no regrets buying this product.

This is an amazing book and I'd highly recommend it to anyone dealing with candida. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised to find that this book isn't just a cookbook (although I would have been fine if it had been). In addition to the great recipes, the book touches upon a variety of information regarding candida (what it is, how to best fight the condition, how to deal with various cravings that might occur once switching to an ACD, etc.)The author has made what seemed like an impossible feat (switching to an anticandida diet) possible in my life. I really appreciate Dr. Heller writing about her own personal stories and struggles amongst all of the great information she has provided. Oh, and let me take a second to simply talk about the recipes. My mouth literally salivates after reading each one!Thank you, Dr. Heller for all that you do. You are amazing.

I found this book to be a little to no more helpful than her website. You could probably get most of the information and some recipes from her site. I think my biggest complaint was the layout of the book. As a working mom who still needs to cook a separate meal for my family, I didn't find this layout and flow at all helpful. I can see if you don't have kids or if you are only making these meals for yourself that this flow would be ok. I'm pressed for time and have a lot more to cook after these meals.1. I feel this book was laid out in Word and bounded as a book. There's no design to it, no breaking things apart, and no color coding. The flow is always a brief description, then the ingredients, then the steps, and then the notes. There are page breaks in the middle of the recipes. It makes it awkward for reading while cooking. The "notes" are always at the bottom. Never close to the asterisk. Yes, a minor thing but you're also flipping back and forth to read due to the page breaks. It's hard to read and work with a cook book like this when there are sooo many good cookbooks out there that break things apart and make them visually pleasing and easy to scan.2. A meal plan is provided but no shopping list. How great would it be just to rip that page out and go shopping without spending a good chunk of time reading through all those recipes?3. A meal prep cheat sheet would be awesome! As someone who doesn't soak and dry my nuts and legumes, I wasn't fully prepared for this. I'd like to see more instructions on the meal plans that say, "You'll be eating 3 servings of x so start soaking these on this day so you're ready to cook right away!"4. I don't feel this has been updated with products that have come on the market since it's publication in 2015 nor are there product substitution ideas.5. I never felt full unless I ate a ridiculous amount of food and the taste was always very off for me. I didn't come from a SAD diet, so it wasn't that I was missing the taste of highly processed food and sugar, I was eating Paleo before this and the only thing I cut out was meat and fruit. After 10 days on the Vegan track I had to add meat back in which I know she stated was ok to do.Overall it's an ok book with lots of room for layout improvement to make it easier for those adapting to some new ways of cooking. I am truly impressed with her recipe testing and the things that she uses to make dishes. I'd read through some of them and think there was no way that would work and it does. Ricki is a true recipe creator and that's really impressive to me.I'm not sure I'd recommend this to others. I took the principles she taught and found other paleo authors I liked and knew I liked the taste of their food and adapted. It wasn't too hard to adapt, I just had to know which ingredients I had to omit from the recipes and make it work.

I love the receipes in this book, so easy to follow and taste so great, it dosn't feel like I am on a restrictive diet at all. In just 6 weeks my gut and skin has really started healing and the improvement in my quality of life is amazing. I am sticking with the Stage 1 diet for another 6 weeks and then I will move onto Stage 2 and like the writer suggest I will follow a version of this diet for the rest of my life, which I am happy to do as I love the food. I feel like I am eating, feeling and looking better than ever. Thank you so much for writing this book and sharing your experience with others.

Great book

What I love about this book is the conversion/substitute advise. Meaning, the information in this book helps you take a regular recipe and convert it into an appropriate Anti-Candida diet recipe. I would recommend this book not only to Candida suffers but anyone wanting to improve overall health in their gut. This book is a great practical guide to better health through diet.

As a holistic nutritionist I've learned a lot about Candida, but unfortunately there wasn't a lot of answers given for how to treat it. Finally there is a concise and inclusive book that not only includes information on Candida, but an easy to follow process for how to get rid of it. And as a bonus there are delicious recipes included, which will make this book an easy one to recommend to all my clients with Candida. Thanks Ricki, for providing a program that anyone can follow! I look forward to trying out your recipes.

Absolutely recommend this book! I love how much information this book offers and easy to understand. Now every symptom makes sense and now I look back at my eating habits and lifestyle and it all makes sense. It's a great book and the recipes taste awesome although they're not necessarily as easy to make or easy to find ingredients BUT it is worth it if you want to experience HEALING and a BETTER quality of life