Hi,

Thanks for your question.

As you may know, being overweight can be a contributing factor to your development of gout, and losing weight can help to reduce the likelihood of future attacks. Following a calorie controlled diet and exercising regularly will help you to lose weight in a healthy and sustainable way, which may help to improve your gout attacks going forward.

In terms of your dietary choices, you should aim to follow the guidelines for a healthy diet which includes the following:

•     Eating a diet that is rich in fruit and vegetables – having at least 5 portions a day

•     Opting for wholegrain carbohydrate sources such as wholemeal bread, wholewheat pasta, wholegrain rice, quinoa and oats. These foods are full of fibre and vitamins which are important for health

•     Include lean protein sources such as chicken, turkey, quorn, low fat yogurt, low fat milk and eggs.

•     Having 3 servings of low fat calcium rich dairy foods each day, such as low fat milk and yogurt and reduced fat cheese.

•     Drinking at least 8 glasses of fluid each day, this can include plain water, tea, coffee, no added sugar fruit squash, milk and fruit juices.

As you may know certain foods contain high levels of purines which are the chemicals that are broken down into uric acid in our body. So it is recommended that you limit your intake of these foods to help prevent future gout attacks. These foods include liver, kidneys, oily fish such as sardines, anchovies, herring, mackerel and trout, seafood such as mussels and game meats.

There is a really useful page on the NHS choices website which I recommend you take a look at. It provides some great information to help you with the types of foods to avoid:

http://www.nhs.uk/Conditions/Gout/Pages/Treatment.aspx

You should try to be as active as you can in your day to day life, so walk as much as you can, take the stairs instead of the lift, get off the bus a stop earlier for example. It’s great to also include some structured exercise such as swimming, cycling or going to the gym if you can. These activities will help to burn extra calories to help with your weight loss.

Just ensure when you exercise that you drink plenty of fluids to avoid dehydration, as you will need to replace the fluids you lose through sweating.

I hope this helps to get you started. If you need any further help at all please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Kind regards

Emma

Nutracheck Nutritionist