Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 2 – Overcoming Sickness

Steve Wright, Co-Founder of SCD Lifestyle, has finally broken down and started his path to intestinal healing. After many years of undiagnosed digestive warfare in his body, this series of weekly posts will take you through his experiences, thoughts, and struggles on the SCD diet. Check back and follow his progress:

Week 2 Summary

At this point, I’d say I’ve officially survived my transition from the intro diet into phase 1. It definitely didn’t go as planned, as I started feeling sick on Tuesday and ended up being home sick for 2 more days. I’m proud to say that I was able to stick to the diet during the flu-like symptoms. However, I doubt there was much intestinal healing that took place this week. I believe I successfully introduced a couple new foods but their symptoms could have been masked by the flu. I’m also traveling for the weekend for the first time on the diet, which I’m sure will be a learning experience (full report next week). To sum the week up, I stayed true to the diet but due to a flu bug most of the week was a lost cause.

Mental and Body Changes

Due to getting sick, it is pretty much impossible for me to determine what changes, if any, happened with my digestive tract this week. The flu caused some pretty bad BMs and created seemingly never ending nausea and stomach pain. However, I was able to figure out a couple things. The first major revelation I had was early in the week before getting sick I was able to narrow down my early morning stomach problems to drinking Welch’s Grape Juice. It doesn’t seem to matter how much I dilute the juice, it just doesn’t work with my stomach. So until further notice, I will be abstaining from any grape gelatin or glasses of grape juice. Mental clarity and energy-wise, things still seem to be going up and I find that I’m craving coffee less… especially late in the afternoons.

Fitness Goals

This week was basically a lost cause from a weightlifting standpoint. I managed to get one training session in, however the rest of the week was very low in activity. In all, I’m recovering fast and plan to start back up Monday morning, I’m not really worried about losing a week.

Diet Details

This week, I introduced 3 new foods. I started with some butternut squash, which was a great change of pace from all those carrots I was eating. Then, I mixed in some apples which also added some much need variety to the fruit section of my menu. I also unintentionally added honey to my diet, I was becoming very dehydrated during the sickness, so I made the SCD Electrolyte drink. The drink itself didn’t taste bad (I will admit to using slightly more honey than specified on that recipe).

I did introduce one probiotic pill each day this week and I started using a varied list of spices I have. I used quite a bit of cinnamon this week, trying it on every fruit and vegetable I’m currently eating. To me cinnamon is an SCD’ers sugar, it slightly sweetens anything you sprinkle it on and usually tastes good with almost everything. The second biggest spice that I introduced was garlic. I started putting the garlic on my meat, eggs and some vegetable dishes. The garlic was a huge help in bringing out a bit more flavor in the meats. I did make some pork and several batches of eggs using combinations of basil and oregano. At this point, I will be continuing to use these spices and might introduce a few more as I get more confidence in my gut. Please be aware, if you’re following my lead, I’m only using organic, additive-free, SCD legal herbs and spices.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• It is truly amazing how much we crave pleasure through food when our bodies and emotions are shut down in pain due to sickness (I actually dreamt I was eating chocolate cake for Pete’s sake!)
• Having the number of days I’ve been on the Diet written on my hand was basically the only thing that stopped me from ordering a pizza while I was feeling like crap
• In my opinion, introducing a new vegetable is more important than fruits, most people like fruits (they are sweeter). However, not many out there can take the same vegetable week after week
• The use of spices and herbs doesn’t seem to get much attention online, but I have to admit they added some much needed flavors back to my palate
• Pear sauce with cinnamon is my new treat!

What’s your take on using spices on the SCD diet? How about experiencing non-digestive related sicknesses, any tips? Thanks for reading, see you next week.

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