This whole experience has made me want to do more to ramp up my immune system with a better diet and regular exercise. If anyone knows of any reliable books on this, I'd really appreciate knowing their titles.
Thanks!
It's funny, I've been thinking the same thing though not because of thrush. I was once in fantastic physical condition and all this stuff has beaten me a lot more than it would've at the time.
I don't know of any books specifically, but there's a lot of really simple things you can do fitness-wise that don't need books or trainers or fancy equipment.
Running is a big one, though not everyone can really do that (cycling is good substitute). The trick there is to make it into a habit rather than a chore, and by the end of the second week doing it force yourself to push through that "wall" you hit where your body is trying to tell you to stop running, to slow down. Once you've been through that point you can go much farther without trouble, and it makes gaining ground in terms of fitness possible. (Until then you're just shocking your system a little and building yourself psychologically to attack the wall.)
Sit-ups, push-ups, aerobics, and so on are all fine. Unless you're training for a serious sport or trying for a radical body form change - exercising to make yourself look different rather than feel different - you don't really need to get fancy with it.
You simply need to crank up your metabolism and heart rate for a little while on a regular basis and your body will make the necessary improvements.
As far as diet goes, I don't really bother with it too much. In my experience the more you exercise the better you'll eat simply because your body will start demanding better fuel to keep up. If you're running a couple miles a day you'll find yourself looking at a plate of pasta or a slice of cake and
craving that pasta much more often than the cake.
(By the way 2 miles a day is very doable and reasonable. In decent shape it's not hard to cover that distance in 15-18 minutes, which isn't a big slice out of your day.)
EDIT: obviously I'm not a doctor or a nutritionist or anything, but I very strongly believe that cutting out any type of nourishment - carbs, fats, whatever - is a really bad idea. Exercise will do it all. Diets are to lose weight without concern for health and fitness (in general, not always). Changing one thing at a time is a lot easier to stick with, and exercising will do more for you than any diet ever could. If, once you're reaping the benefits of regular exercise, you think your diet should be improved it will be easier to make that change. Feeling healthy is addictive.