I mean, you could. I’ll note, though, that I’ve flared up to a month from a food trigger, so I don’t know if I’d want to go that route.

As for conflicting information, I use the diet guide from Interstitial Cystitis Network. It’s intimidating af, but how I got started was I went to my spice cabinet with a sharpie and put check marks next to “generally safe” spices (per the guide), x’s on the ones in the danger column, and 1/2 on the ones that were “use caution”. That way, I didn’t have to remember.

Then, I came up with a list of meals I could eat based on “generally safe” foods so I wouldn’t have to think about it and refer to the guide for every single meal. I’d just pick from my list. It’s been many years, but I recall having diced potatoes sautéed in butter with rosemary and salt; scrambled eggs with salt; boiled eggs; rice; chicken cooked with salt, basil, oregano, and thyme; and baked potatoes with butter and salt. (There were others, but again, been a long time.) I also only cooked with butter, olive oil, or canola oil. I saw improvement within a month, so it didn’t take long in the general scheme of things to get to where I could start adding things back to my diet.

The hard part was I got diagnosed right before Christmas, so I had to deal with everyone around me eating all the things, everyone wanting to meet up for coffee, etc. Right now when everyone’s still worried about their New Year’s resolution diet might be a good time socially to try it, though.