Fast Tract Diet 12+

This app made following Dr. Norman Robillard's Fast Tract Diet a piece of cake. It's well laid out and easy to use.

I have only been using it for a week and find it very easy to track the FP values of my food. I actually started the diet after reading Dr Robillard’s heartburn/LPR book two weeks ago. For years, I have had bloating, and more recently (two years) LPR. All doctors can say is use H2 blockers or PPIs. I made mistakes before downloading the app, because flipping from page to page on my iPad Kindle was a pain. The app is a necessity imo. Thank you, Dr Robillard, for your knowledge and for creating the app. One thing, please remove avocado from the vegetable category and place it with the fruits where it belongs.

My initial review for this protocol was very hopeful, but it has been a year now and I can say that this did not work for me. My reflux was terrible on this diet, even when I initially kept my daily FP under 10. In fact, I then tried keeping it under 5 and still had no success. Finally, I tried an extreme 0FP experiment, eating only eggs, fish, salt and oil for several weeks. My gas went down, but my reflux was awful. My LPR was really bad. Things got much worse.

After 5 months of a strict <10Fp diet my LPR did not improve. I experimented with various low FP combinations for another 7 months to no avail.

Instead what yields improvement for me is a diet that speeds gastric transit. Doing anything I can to keep that system moving as quickly as possible reduces my symptoms better than anything else I've tried. I avoid starchy foods like rice and potatoes entirely, but I eat foods with fibre. I avoid grains, apart from white wheat flour products like crumpets and certain crackers, which are not a problem for me, which is contrary to the Fast Tract Diet's theoretical basis. Blueberries help a lot. Mashed chickpeas, blended celery are fine.

My diet is extremely limited. I can only eat about 5 foods without getting bad LPR which causes throat pain and debilitating hoarseness. To stay alive I supplement with vitamins and amino acids, which are my main protein source. It's not a healthy diet, but being unable to speak is the alternative and reflux-induced oesophageal cancer is a possibility if reflux goes on for too long.

The app itself is quite good for seeing the fibre, FP and carb content of a wide range of foods, though it's disappointing that in a year there has not been an update. It still doesn't provide important data like calories and protein content, meaning that to design a diet, other apps are required to be used at the same time, preferably on two phones so one can see the FP and macros together while choosing foods to add.

If the app alone doesn't help you, Norman recommends his consultation service. His website pushes that service fairly hard. Fair enough, that's how he makes a living. But he charges thousands of dollars for the consultations, and if you are like me and eating a low LP diet doesn't fix your reflux, that money will be wasted.

Good luck, everyone!