When I found out I had Celiac Disease, I thought, “Great! I just need to stop eating gluten and I’ll be healed!”

Wrong.

Then I discovered SCD and I thought, “I just need to follow this diet perfectly and I’ll be healed!”

Not quite.

Then I started researching and learned about gut infections and I thought, “I just need to clear these parasites and I’ll be healed!”

That wasn’t it either.

And I thought the same thing when I learned about my hormones, or a new supplement, or a new food I should avoid.

Here’s the truth: no matter how “clean” my diet, no matter how perfect my supplements, no matter how expensive the probiotic I was taking was… none of it ever “healed” me.

Now, don’t misunderstand… it all helped me be healthier.

I wasn’t having diarrhea 15 times per day anymore, I actually was able to gain some weight and muscle, I had more energy. But I always had this nagging feeling – when would I be “healed?”

I felt like I was running a race but I didn’t know when the finish line would come.

Have you had this feeling too?

The Difference Between Healthy and Healed

So, what is the difference between getting healthier and being healed?

That’s what Steve and I have been trying to figure out for the last several years.

We used to think healing could be achieved using 3 means:

1. A healthy diet (like SCD, Paleo, or a leaky gut diet)
2. Exercise
3. Smart supplementation

But we were neglecting the most important aspect of healing… mindset.

Here is what we’ve learned: your mentality towards any health struggle isn’t just some feel-good attitude to have separate and apart from the physiological success of recovery.

Your mindset can make or break your ability to heal.

We’re not trying to say that you just need to put “mind over matter” or “will yourself to heal.”

Instead, think of a time when you had to take a big test. Imagine you’ve really put the hours in studying, you’ve done all the homework, and you even made some flashcards to study with. You are ready to ace this test.

But what if you have to take that test in a noisy airport terminal where people are everywhere, announcements keep coming over the loudspeaker, and you don’t even have a desk to work at?

You probably wouldn’t do as well as you would if you got to sit in a quiet room at a comfortable desk – even if you studied just as much before both tests.

Where you take the test is your external perceptual environment. Your mindset is your internal perceptual environment.

Just like your external environment can impact how well you do on the test, your internal environment (aka your mindset) can completely change how your healing journey progresses.

This is called “biodirectionality.”

Biodirectionality in Healing

What is biodirectionality? Simply put, it’s the concept that the body doesn’t only affect the mind, but so too the mind affects the body.

It might sound a little “woo-woo” but it’s true.

One of the most common examples of biodirectionality is the “placebo effect.” The placebo effect is the phenomenon where people experience positive health benefits just by thinking they were taking something that would help them.

But, biodirectionality isn’t a straight line – it’s neither just that the mind affects the body or that the body affects the mind – it is both.

The body and mind both affect each other in a constant cycle.

That means you can’t just ignore the body and focus on the mind – or ignore the mind and focus on the body.

To go from “healthier” to “healed” we believe you must focus on both your body and your mind.

How An Improved Mindset Helps You Heal Faster

Having the right mindset for healing can mean:

• More willpower to follow a prescribed diet
• Less anxiety about the healing process
• More confidence in your healing plan
• Fewer cravings for food or practices that hinder your healing
• Greater feelings of well-being (even if you’re still sick)
• Faster recovery from flares and setbacks

And most importantly… it can mean actually enjoying the healing process.

Healing can take a long time. You will have times when you feel great and others when you think “What did I do wrong?” You’ll have to change how you eat, how you relax, how you socialize, how you exercise, and more.

Mindset is the difference between people who lean in to these changes, embrace them, and enjoy life while they heal and those who suffer through, never making any progress.

Those without the right mindset and mental fortitude will see the healing process as “something to get through” or even “punishment.”

Those with the right mindset will see healing as a challenge to overcome – even a blessing – strengthening them along the way.

Your mindset is the difference between healing and following diet after diet, trying supplement after supplement and not getting results. Make sure you don’t neglect it!

What Can We Do To Impact Our Mindset?

We already know a lot of the things we can do to improve the health of our bodies:

• Eat a nourishing, whole-foods diet
• Exercise and make movement a part of daily life
• Fill in gaps with supplements like probiotics

But we also know a lot of things that can help improve our mindset:

• Yoga
• Meditation
• Epsom salt baths
• Affirmations
• Maintaining social connections
• Time in nature
• Laughter
• Spiritual practices

Steve and I have implemented all of the above practices, and each one has helped us achieve a higher level of health. Before you try anything else, we think you should develop a routine that incorporates all of the above mindset influencers.

But we don’t call ourselves “health engineers” for nothing – even when we’ve gotten to “good,” we always wonder if we can push it to “great.”

That’s why when we first heard about something called “neurohacking” our interest was piqued.

Neurohacking: The Next Frontier in Mindset

About 15 years ago (back when Steve and I were about to start college) a new trend called biohacking was just starting to become popular.

It was the idea that you could “hack” your biology and change your body in the same way a computer genius might “hack” new software.

Popular biohackers – like our friend Dave Asprey – study the way our bodies work and discover how they can enhance our natural abilities through things like diet and supplements.

And biohacking really works – hundreds of thousands of people who drink Dave’s “Bulletproof Coffee” every day can testify to that!

Neurohacking is an extension of biohacking – but instead of focusing on the performance of the body, neurohacking focuses on the performance of the mind.

Neurohackers don’t just ask what foods can help them have healthy guts or lose weight – they want to know which foods, exercise, and supplements can best fuel their minds.

Neurohackers might try practices like:

• Ketogenic diets
• Extended fasting
• Cold plunges

But while these are powerful tools, they aren’t accessible to everyone – especially busy people like Steve and I who have families, kids, jobs, hobbies, pets, etc.

Luckily, neurohackers have found a new tool that can be used by just about anyone who wants to improve their mindset: nootropics.

What Are Nootropics?

Nootropics are substances that benefit various aspects of cognitive capacity – things like:

• Memory
• Clarity
• Pattern recognition
• Emotional resilience
• Creativity

Most nootropics are herbal and botanical extracts that have been used for hundreds of years by traditional cultures.

In fact, there’s a common nootropic most people take every single morning – coffee!

In addition to coffee, there are other nootropics:

Hordenine HCI

Hordenine is a natural MAO-B inhibitor found in barley grass. High levels of the enzyme MAO-B in the brain are associated with the development of both Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. It is often taken for increased energy, alertness, concentration, and metabolism.

Vinpocetine

Vinpocetine is a vasoactive alkaloid derived from Periwinkle. Studies indicate that vinpocetine can benefit attention and memory, decrease fatigue and increase alertness.

Huperzine A

Huperzine A is a natural synaptic enzyme modulator. Studies indicate its ability to support learning, memory, neuroplasticity, and executive function.

Theobromine

Theobromine is a methylxanthine related to caffeine extracted from cocoa (Theobroma cacao) beans. Studies show that theobromine increases alertness, attention, and executive function.

Did You Follow That?

Other than coffee, most people aren’t familiar with nootropics or terms like “synaptic enzyme modulator.”

If you’re a little confused about what nootropics actually do, you’re not alone.

In simpler terms, here’s what nootropics can help you have:

• More focus, with a longer attention span
• Increased creativity
• Better problem-solving
• More willpower
• Better able to delay gratification
• More physical energy
• Greater feelings of contentment

They can also cause:

• Less brain fog
• Less forgetfulness
• Less anxiety and worry
• Less pain and physical discomfort
• Less fatigue (both mental and physical)

Are Nootropics Too Good To Be True?

After reading that list, you might be thinking nootropics sound too good to be true – or you might be wondering if you can pick up a bottle of theobromine on Amazon Prime.

The truth is that having success with nootropics isn’t as simple as popping a couple supplement caps.

First, most work far better when they are supported by other vitamins and minerals like:

• Vitamins: vitamin B3 as niacinimide, vitamin C as ascorbic acid, etc.
• Anti-Inflammatories: quercetin, curcumin, etc.
• Adaptogens: artichoke extract, gingko biloba, etc.
• Amino Acids: taurine, l-theanine, etc.
• Choline Donors: citicoline, alpha GPC, etc.
• Minerals: zinc picolinate, magnesium threonate, etc.

Secondly, just like other vitamins, some nootropics are best taken with food, and others without.

And of course – some nootropics are super-charged by being combined with other nootropics.

Not For Beginners

With how complex using nootropics can be, it is important to note that they are not suitable for those who are just beginning their healing journey.

If you’re still in an active flare, I wouldn’t suggest you try adding nootropics just yet.

Before you even consider nootropics you need to have these fundamentals in place:

• A diet that supports a healthy gut (learn more about what Steve and I follow here)
• A sustainable movement routine (like walking, biking, or swimming)
• Base support supplements (like probiotics and l-glutamine)
• Stress management practices (like yoga, journaling, meditation, etc.)

But if you have the foundation down and you want to take your healing to the next level? Keep reading.

The Best Nootropic I’ve Tried

Normally, I don’t prefer supplement “blends” – I like having the control that using single supplements provides.

But with nootropics, the opposite is true. Because nootropics are complicated to use, a blend of nootropics – or as neurohackers call them, a “stack” – along with the supporting vitamins and minerals they need is far more effective than trying to formulate your own protocol.

Steve and I have tested different stacks and by far the best we’ve used is Qualia from Neurohacker Collective.

Qualia is a blend of nootropics, vitamins, and minerals – they all work together synergistically and each ingredient is backed by research (check out all the ingredients in Qualia here).

With any supplement, you get what you pay for – the highest-quality, most effective supplements are almost always the most expensive too.

With nootropics, this is especially true. You’d be better to skip nootropics all together than use an inexpensive supplement – which might be ineffective at best or dangerous at worst.

If you’re looking to get started with nootropics, the only brand I’d suggest trying is Qualia.

(And if you do want to try Qualia, you can use my special friends and family code to get 10% off – just use the code SCDFAMILY when you checkout).

The Mind-Body Approach

Remember – healing isn’t just about the body or the mind – it’s about both.

If you’re already following a leaky gut diet, using mindfulness practices, and exercising and supplementing wisely – but still feel like something is missing – I really hope you’ll look into trying nootropics.

Let’s be wise enough to care for our brains, and the mindsets they create, with the same degree of concern and thoughtfulness we give our bodies. As our understanding of the mind and body increases, it is becoming increasingly clear, there is no clear distinction between the two.

What practices do you follow to encourage a positive mindset? We love to learn what is working for you – please leave a comment and let us know!

-Jordan

The post How To Improve Your Mindset So You Heal Faster appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

At 2am, in an empty hospital waiting room, we squared off.

(The respected, 30-year surgeon and me.)

He had just successfully operated on my dad and I was tremendously grateful, but there were still things to be talked about.

As my mom and sister nervously watched, we intensely debated his plans for my dad. My heart raced after I asked the tough questions that required me to explain them medically and support with data.

After the tough stuff was done, he took another 15 minutes to chat with me about how and why I knew so much. He kept digging, and I was trying to dance around the real answers… until I gave him what he wanted, exactly what we do here on the blog, in our products and 1-on-1 consulting program. He was supportive and intrigued – a response I didn’t see coming.

Afterwards, I chatted with my family and they wondered why I was dancing and not more direct with my answers. Emotionally drained and sleep derived, it was actually remarkably clear. I’ve seen this before in other areas… this was an important test of my beliefs.

Do you REALLY believe it Steve? Because either way you are about to create it.

Get That Monkey Off Your Back and You’ll Run Faster!

Have you heard that before?

I’ve heard it in the locker room, from family and friends… and surprisingly, the speaker is typically right. They see something’s wrong, BUT I think I’m trying hard as hell. And the more the comment stings the more I know they are right.

They can’t call me out for not trying, but at the same time their instincts are sensing I’m not committed. And when I’m not committed, my performance will always be subpar. They expect more from me.

Commitments without beliefs are empty and others can pick them out.

The outcome is pre-determined by the belief.

Beliefs Will Determine Outcomes

Like back in 2011, when I decided to enter a sprint triathlon with only 6 weeks to get ready. It didn’t matter that I had never swam, biked or run for 1.5hrs straight. It didn’t matter that it was 85 degrees and 90% humidity.

6 weeks before, I had made a commitment and now it was time to see if I believed.

My bike was a little over 35 years old, I puked during the swim and I peed in the middle of the run. But none of it mattered because I made up my mind before I ever began. I would finish and do it in under 1.5hours.

And I did — 1:29:33 was my time.

I was sold, I was all in. I was willing to fight through every punch thrown at me that day. Trust me, I had plenty of chances to quit, for what most would call “legitimate” reasons. But my beliefs didn’t allow me to.

There is a fundamental rule of this universe: Beliefs will determine outcomes.

They try to teach us as kids, “If you believe… you can achieve.”

“If you believe you can’t… you won’t.”

And this simple truth is just that… almost too simple that it’s easy to forget. I’m repeating it now in hopes that you’ll re-examine this simple truth. Not only as it applies to your health, but as much as it applies to your finances, love life and family.

I Didn’t Always Believe… That I Was Worth It

That I should be allowed to be healthy…

That I should have clear skin…

That I should be confident…

That I should be in shape…

That I should have money…

That I could write…

I didn’t always believe I was worth it.

And My Life Reflected My Beliefs

I didn’t love me, others couldn’t love me. Money came in but I spent it as fast as I could, debts mounted.

I got jobs, good jobs, and I quit them.

I got fat, I got skinny, and I got fat again.

I focused, worked, struggled and made progress in any area I wished… and yet I always regressed backwards. I never held the gains.

Then, I got help with my beliefs. I stopped struggling and started asking questions and listening instead of answering.

The feelings and beliefs that bubbled up were not always what I wanted. But they painted the picture of why I was making choices to run with monkeys on my back, to turn around when I was about to breakthrough.

Turning Around Just Before…

It happens all the time, turning around right before the breakthrough.

Basically, right before the breakthrough it always gets tough, and when I didn’t really “believe” the universal law would rein me in. Things would just happen, making it impossible to reach my goal. The reality is they weren’t “just” happening, my lack of belief was causing them.

There are always some “belief tests,” like cheat meals, the random stress, emotional outbursts, break ups, shopping sprees and supplements running out.

And these tests would allow my true colors to shine, exposing my real belief structure. If I didn’t truly believe, that is when I’d sabotage my gains.

Maybe you can relate?

Sure, I can describe chemical, social and psychological reasons for taking the sabotaging actions I did. But what I’ve learned is that most times these reasons are only ways to obey beliefs (and many times fix themselves as beliefs change).

Cut the Ropes Weighing You Down

It’s like that scene in King Kong.

He’s surrounded, the captors are close to winning and the outlook is dim. The ropes and nets are being slung over his shoulders. The weight is heavy, he could be hurt or killed.

The tension is unbearable, will he allow himself to be taken… or break free from all the ropes? And then the movie cuts to his eyes (because belief hides in the eyes).

I’m looking into my eyes right now and I’m challenging you to look into yours.

Even the Strongest Beliefs Can Be Changed in Seconds

For the longest time, no one believed America would be attacked… and then in mere seconds, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, an entire nation of beliefs changed forever.

For over 9 years, the world believed running a 4-minute mile was not possible. Roger Bannister believed differently, when everyone told him it couldn’t be done. He ran a 3 minute 59 second mile. And ever since he broke the barrier, the history books have been re-written.

Flight was impossible until the Wright brothers. Now, there are roughly 5,000 planes in the sky above the United States at any given time.

Heck… we used to believed that the sun revolved around us… Belief about even the most sacred of things in life can change in mere moments.

These were all strongly held beliefs by massive numbers of people, simply shattered in moments.

Today, let’s focus on beliefs surrounding health, wealth and happiness.

I know I barely passed a belief check the other night. And if I’m going to take this to the next level, helping millions of people I’m going to need to be at a much higher level. And so as I re-focus I urge you to pick something and join me.

Whether you are strengthening a belief or changing one, I want you to take action today to begin a new commitment to it.

For instance, if you haven’t started a structured diet plan to get your digestive problems under control, today is the day to look in the mirror and believe something different. If you’re not getting results, I’m challenging you to commit with a different belief and plan using our SCD how-to eBook.

You can do it, you are worth it, if you believe.

Create a new belief… and then get to work on it.

I am. Let me know in the comments what you did.

-Steve

The post Life’s Tests Are Designed to Reveal Beliefs appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

But steady progress is hard to measure, especially if it’s a .001% improvement or a 1% improvement per day. But it’s exactly this kind of improvement over 5 years that would completely change your life several times over.

So, we humans have figured out a way to better track progress… or so we think. It’s a powerful tool that every self-help coach, engineer and teacher uses… Goals.

Goals, as we’re taught, should be well defined with trackable markers and defined time frames. This allows us to see our progress, to know when we’ve had success and also when it’s time to shoot for a larger target. There are several hundred-page books all about making good goals. And it’s pretty common knowledge that the best movers and shakers always have them, review them and achieve them.

Except that many times they FAIL.

Almost every successful person I know fails at several goals each year.

Why Have Goals?

If we know that it’s likely for us to fail at least a certain percentage of all the goals we set… why not just sit on the couch all day watching some awful reality TV show? Are we being masochistic for even setting goals in the first place?

Well, my answer is focus. When we have a goal, we narrow our focus. We put ourselves under a microscope, we take notes, we observe ourselves and do things differently.

Without this change in focus, which I believe leads to a change in behavior, it’s highly unlikely that we will actually get up off the couch and do something different. We humans love our habits and routines, especially the lazy ones. And in case you’re wondering, yes I just watched 10 hours of NCAA basketball.

But during that 10-hour marathon of March Madness I also did pull-ups, air squats, ate a bunch of bacon, did pushups, had some carrots and did some bicep curls. 4 years ago, this activity would have read differently – drink beer, eat chips, get up for door, pay pizza man, return to couch… repeat.

Was it my goal to live as healthy as possible that changed my behavior? Maybe… but it’s likely it only had a small effect. Much more likely was my recent goal to lose 4 inches off my waist and try to find those elusive abs that my anatomy textbook tells me I have.

See, long-term goals are always easier to compromise on. If the consequences don’t provide immediate feedback, it can be very hard to respect them. Short-term goals change the focus and the time-frame of consequences.

Of course, when you stack them together you get the best of both worlds:

A short-term change in focus and behavior and long-term arc of behavior to strive for.

Failed Goals vs. Progress – What Matters Most?

Would you say the following people are failures?

John’s trying to triple his freelance revenue from $50,000 to $150,000 this year. His family has grown to 4 total in the past year and they are counting on him. But after doing his best, December rolls around and he’s only made $110,000 this year. He can’t take his wife on the vacation he was secretly planning and he has to admit to those around him that he didn’t achieve his goals. Despite a 120% improvement, he feels shame and sadness.

Sallie is overweight and looking to get the body of her dreams. Her short-term goal is to lose 60 pounds to get down to a more average weight for her height. She gives herself 6 months. She thinks 10 pounds a month is a great goal and so do her supporters. Unfortunately, she only loses 50 pounds. She’s been telling everyone for months about what her new weight will be and she’s just missed it by 10 pounds.

Bethany has decided this year she’s going to cross finishing a marathon off her bucket list. She signs up for a marathon 12 weeks from now. She’s already been running a few miles a week so she’s not totally out of shape. She hires a coach and gets some sweet new shoes. As the weeks go on, she’s on schedule and is hitting new records like running 13 miles and then 16 miles. Then, two weeks before the race she pulls her hamstring as she finishes a 20-mile run. She can’t hardly walk, let alone race. She’s devastated, yet 10 weeks ago she hadn’t ever run further than 5 miles in a day.

Probably not. As a family member, friend or loved one, we’d celebrate all of their successes. Yet, if you interviewed these people, the overwhelming feeling you’d likely get is one of disappointment and failure. (Hopefully not bordering on self-pity, defeat or anger, because I’ve been there.) It’s a scary place, and I hate seeing people there when in reality they should be celebrating.

Their Current Perspective Is Crushing Them

They are focused on the short-term. They are forgetting the long-term.

If you asked John if it was more important for him to have $500,000 in revenue in 3 years or make $150,000 right now, he’d likely agree that the 3-year goal is what he really wants.

Same goes for Sallie. What she doesn’t publicly talk about is that she was borderline diabetic and her knees were killing her. Her father died of a heart attack. While she narrowly missed her 6-month goal, in the grand scheme she’s actually really afraid of diabetes and heart disease, both of which she dramatically lowered her risks of in a few short months.

And Bethany as well. How big are the demons of doubt thinking about trying to go from 5 miles to 26.1? Way bigger than the confidence knowing that you’ve run 20 miles and with some injury-prevention training could be right back at that level in a few months. If a marathon is a true goal of hers, she’s much closer than she’s ever been.

The big question is: In the face of short-term pain, how do you switch to being grateful for the long-term success you are on track for?

We Always Want it Sooner Rather than Later

I struggle with the statement above on a weekly basis. I want it all right now. And short-term setbacks are great at making every negative feeling even worse. There are two strategies that I’ve figured out to help me keep perspective.

The first is to be grateful and genuinely happy about each day’s small success. For instance, just the other day I did 5 pull ups with 45 pounds around my waist. I was pumped. Am I at my goal yet? No. And, as you’ll see in a moment, am I on pace to reach my fat loss goals? No, but I celebrate things like seeing 179 on the scale for the first time since I was a Sophomore in high school.

The second is a weekly review of what the long-term goals are. It’s sooo easy to lose the forest when you’re walking amongst the trees. In other words, every week make it a point to think and dream about those 3, 5, or 10-year goals. Of course, I want 6 pack abs in 12 weeks. But the reality is I want the strength and low body fat that it takes to get them to help me stay lean as I age and play sports.

What It’s Like to See Failure Happening…

As you can see from the picture below, I’m not close enough to my goal of losing 4 inches in 12 weeks. I’m seeing the writing on the wall. I’m not going to hit my goal. And I owe it to you to tell you that. Here’s me just yesterday with a 33.8 inch waist at 181 pounds.

I’m not happy about this.

A few days before, I was under 33.3 inches and 179 pounds. But picture time came and I didn’t get what I had hoped for. I knew what I was going to have to do, which was admit that I was likely going to fail. Losing 2 inches at this point in 3-4 weeks at this low of body fat is very hard. And I owe my buddy 50 bucks!

But here’s the thing. I threw out 1/4 of my clothes (all the fat ones), I’m on the last notch of all my belts and honestly I’m loving what I see in the mirror. Check this out (taken a few minutes after I was looking at the pic above)

I haven’t looked this ripped… ever, so I like the progress.

Perspective is where it’s at. I want to grow old with the most amount of lean body mass, lowest body fat and best mobility I can. I’m well on my way.

And I want you to know that regardless of your short-term goal progress is what matters.

-Steve

The post Failed Goal = Wasted Time? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” – The United States Declaration of Independence

I’m not sure what “Life” meant to these famous men. But I know that for me, a sick “life” wasn’t supportive of liberty or the pursuit of happiness. I was too busy being… sick.

Or denying that I was sick, while being sick, while thinking I wasn’t and that I was normal.

Don’t’ get me wrong, waking up every day is a blessing.

Feeling alive and grateful every day regardless of circumstances is rare and even better.

But having wellness and that grateful mindset is the best. For me, it’s the real “Life” they spoke of – one that supports and encourages the pursuit of happiness.

I believe that we all have this right to feel good. Regardless of our genetics, history or past choices, we have the ability to create good health and build a great mindset.

We may need the support of a special diet, supplements, drugs or close knit community but that does not diminish our ability to live amazing lives. It actually makes us stronger, braver and more responsible than most.

Choosing to feel great is your right. Do you choose it?

If You’re Sick – Living Forever Isn’t On Your Radar

It’s tough to care about a long life, or spending time with the grandkids, when your body is screaming at you every day. If you’re reading this article because you want to stop your stomach pain, end a bleeding colon and eat food that doesn’t make you hurt, then what I’m about to tell you is very important.

Your health is the most important thing you own.

Without good health, you can’t fully focus on family, friends, school, and work. I know some days it can even be hard to take care of yourself. But with great health you will have the energy, brainpower, and drive to do anything and everything you can dream of.

Your health can either be the weakest link in your life or the backbone of your whole life.

Your choice.

Healing Time Is Not “Time” in This Equation

In the 80-20 law of healing, “Time” is the major input and your health is the output. But “Time” is not just a length of days, minutes and hours. It includes that but it’s much more complex.

To get healthy, we spend our time learning, eating, supplementing, stress-reducing, self-renewing, talking with consultants, doctors, family, friends, having fun and much more. All of these various activities make up the “Time” part of what can accelerate you up the healing curve.

The sum of our activities, positive and negative, make up this “time.”

The shape of the “80-20 Law of Healing” is non-linear which means it’s not straight. Looking from left to right you can see it rises upward at an almost exponential rate.

This means that when you start stacking the positive activities that make up your allotted “Time” they will multiply your healing results and can take you from feeling awful to feeling pretty good much faster than most would think.

Because of the Power Law, going from feeling like a 1 to feeling like a 6 on the scale does not need to take very long!

In fact, it will likely take you twice as long to go from 6 to 10 as it does to go from 1-6.

Why that’s important…

We Think It’s Your Human Right to FEEL GOOD

It’s your right to wake up each day, have energy, be able to work a full day, take care of the kids, and laugh without being in pain. From what we’ve observed, this starts to happen around a 6 on the scale.

And for those of you who aren’t there yet, we want to put you on our backs and carry you there…

But it turns out we can’t come to your house every day and carry you around doing it all for you. It’s just not physically possible. Not to mention, if you’ve followed us for any length of time you know that we encourage you to take charge of your health. Not sell out your responsibility to someone like us.

HOWEVER… We can lead, push, and love you to higher levels on the healing curve in a different way. We can show you the way that we did it, the way that our high-end coaching clients do it, and the way that a larger class of students did it last year. And then make sure you get the same results.

In other words, there is a well-worn path that works.

All You Have to Do Is Watch, Listen and Follow Our Lead

And you too can start feeling very good very soon.

It might sound too good to be true, but we’ve taken several people from the hospital bed to feeling very good in mere weeks. That’s not typical but it’s happened many times and shown us the power of stacking up your “time” with the right activities for healing.

At this point, I want you to imagine before you were sick, or if you can’t, think of how it must feel like to be someone with really great health…. full of energy, smiles and focus. They seem to be able to do it all.

Okay good….I know I can get you to that place if you’re willing to do some work.

If you’re not willing to put the work in, please stop reading this now and unsubscribe from our list.

Because I work to serve you, and you’re the amazing, hard-working, courageous leader of your health.

I know we can help you. Our track record shows it. So, if you’re ready to feel like a 6 on the healing curve in a short time, then pick this course up and start watching the videos today.

Get Your Copy of the -> Digestive Troubleshooting Course

And I will expect an email later this week telling me all the new stuff you’ve learned.

And then I will expect another email telling me how good you feel.

And if you don’t email me…I’ll be disappointed, because we love to hear success stories.

But like I said. This is only for those who BELIEVE it’s possible, who will WORK for it, who CHOOSE it.

Go get your health back with the 9 hours of content.

Talk soon,

Jordan and Steve

P.S. – The key to the fastest recovery possible is to maximize your time and decisions using the best information, food, supplements, and thoughts possible. Don’t cheat yourself.

The post Your Unalienable Right to Good Health & Happiness appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

I have many times.

It seems like the whole time I’m trying to get the job done, sweating and struggling; the little voice in the back of my head keeps reminding me that there is a better, faster or safer way to do it.

I think about this conundrum often.

The Right “Tool” Is Always Preferred – Except…

When it’s not.

On one hand, we have path #1, in which I’m happy to have taken action to get what I wanted. I didn’t let fear, resistance or the lack of a “tool” stop me from getting the job done. I thought of something, and started it moments later. No need for the right tool, because I used creativity, hard work and problem solving skills to get it done.

Path #1 example: Like last week, when I was trying to replace the battery in my alarm clock. Instead of using the right screwdriver I backed the screws out with a dime, but it took me forever!

On the other hand, by not choosing path #2, I have wasted time, resources and pain because I choose not to do it with the proper tool or method. There was a better way and I didn’t use it. All I needed to do was do a bit of planning, learning or investing and it would have been simpler, faster and cheaper.

Path #2 example: I’ve been learning how to make homemade ice cream, it turns out you can do it without any special equipment, but recently I bought an ice cream maker. Now, instead of waiting 24hrs I can make a smoother flavor ice cream in 30 minutes.

Path 1 or Path 2 will usually get you what you want over time. But, there are different trade-offs for choosing either. You might trade more time and sweat for more money, like in example 1 or trade less money for more time and quality in example 2. In every decision, there is always a trade-off and understanding what you’re willing to trade is very important.

Sometimes NOT having the right tool or info is used as a reason to not do something…

Don’t Let Lack of Tools Trigger Excuses

In the past, I’ve used this “lack of tools” excuse over and over.

I’ve avoided doing things I needed, wanted and loved because I didn’t have the right “tool.” I either decided I couldn’t afford it, couldn’t use it, or told myself I didn’t know how.

Either way, I let fear and resistance stop me from taking action on either path.

There are always 2 paths, you just have to be willing to walk.

Because ALL the excuses above were LIES.

And those lies caused failure.

Inaction Is the Only Failure

Any action is success because you’re actually going towards what you want.

Every week on our Facebook page or via email, we get questions about supplements, books and other products. Replying to each is nice, but we realized how many more we could help if we made all of our answers public.

In this spirit, I wanted to let you know that we’ve created a Digestive Resources page for you.

It’s not complete yet, but it will be.

It’s not as pretty as usual, but it will be.

But now you have more tools and we took action.

91% Will Still Help 100%

We decided that we had to give you the 91% version now because it was more important than waiting to figure out how to deliver the full 100%. On that page, you will find only products that are the best – the products we buy, use, and eat… the ones we give to our families, friends and personal clients.

The ones we’ve spent ridiculous hours figuring out price vs. quality vs. effectiveness. 

Most of the products on the page are affiliate links, meaning when you click them, and purchase something, we get a very small amount of money for recommending it on our site.

So, if you’d like to support us feel free to use them.

The summary is to take action… whether it’s starting the specific carbohydrate diet, trying a new treatment, doing yoga or cleaning your house, any action towards your goal is better than none.

Neither path is right or wrong.

I want you to know that if you’ve failed to start in the past because of lack of tools, education, or method that’s why we are here to help. Nothing can amplify your success faster than the correct tools for the job.

The best tools we know of are listed here (the ones we use) for free.

-Steve

P.S. – Let me repeat, nothing will multiply, amplify and maximize like having the right tools, which is a main reason why we created our SCD eBook because we saw a need for more tools.

The post The Right Tools Maximize Your Results appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

This is a guest post series from Matt Robinson, digestive illness coach at Natural Digestive Healing.

This is the last post in our Big Picture series. (Read Post One, Post Two, Post Three) If you are using this series to its fullest, remember to get out a pen and paper so you will be ready to jot down ideas and think about the questions and concepts posed along the way.

In the first post, I discussed the value of a big picture outlook, and introduced the concepts of balance and prioritization as they relate to healing from digestive illness. In the second post, I expanded on those concepts, and walked through the first steps of developing a big picture-focused healing plan. In the third post, we used your Go-sion and your SMART goals to design a healing plan.

In this post we will ask four questions:

1. How do I know if my plan is working; how will I know if I need to change something?
2. How can I discern trends, either positive or negative?
3. If I need to change something, how will I know what to change?
4. What is the (hard and simple) secret to healing?

Knowing Your Body; Observing Healing

As you implement your healing plan, how will you know what is working and what is not?

The answer: your diet/symptom journal.

Your journal will help you to know your body. On the whole, those people who journal consistently heal more often and in less time than those who do not. Journaling consistently will help you see trends, identify foods and supplements that are safe and those that are not, and it will remind you how far you have come.

Two weeks ago, I was frustrated because I had a recurrence of some symptoms I thought I had gotten over. I thought, “Why haven’t I gotten any better? I was better last year, after my elimination.” Those thoughts plagued me for a week. I thought I was stagnating, or getting worse, until I looked back at my journal. As it turns out, I had been carrying a rosy picture of how well I actually was after I cut out the four horsemen of the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I did get better then, but the diet/symptom journal does not lie, and it told me that I was going 2-3 times/day then with an average Bristol stool rating of 5-6. Now I rarely go more than once/day, and I have many more #4 ratings than I did then. Progress! I was still moving forward, but would never have seen it if it were not for my journal.

Think about: Does your Journal play a central role in your healing? What do you know about your body now that can inform your healing plan?

Warning: Most of the time a thorough journal will help you understand what is going on, but there are times when it does not—that is the nature of digestive illness. In the first post of this series, I wrote about making friends with uncertainty.

Identifying Trends

What is a trend?

Through journaling, you will learn how long it takes for irritating foods or supplements to manifest symptoms. You will learn how long it takes for each healing modality you use to begin working. You will also learn how quickly you can expect to recover from a bump in the road. The question is, how do you discern those road bumps from other more ominous signs, like the signs of a flare or a supplement that is hurting and not helping?

There is no single answer that applies to every person; however, if you are thoughtful in journaling and reviewing your journal, and if you are disciplined in implementing your healing plan, then over time you will learn how long adverse symptoms, or positive improvements need to go on before you can consider them trends.

For me, I have learned that if my symptoms worsen, and then continue to worsen for more than 48 hours, I have a problem, and I go to my journal to see what’s happening. For example, in February of this year, I decided to try Butyrate enemas, one per day, starting at a small dose. At the time, I was having 1-2 BM/day at 5-6 on the Bristol Stool Chart. I took the first enema at night. The next day I had three BMs all at a #6. Might be a reaction; might just be getting used to the medicine.

I continued.

The next day I had three BM at a #7—complete diarrhea. OK, something is going on, but it might settle. The third day, I went five times at a #7. STOP!

Alright, so I did not need a journal to figure that one out, but the point remains: I learned through two years of journaling, that 2-3 days signifies a negative trend for my body. On the other side, I have also learned that 5-6 days are necessary for me to count positive progress as permanent.

Note from Steve: This is a great insight about how to spot trends. I just want to point out 2 things. (1) Matt saw a worsening of his problems for 3 days. It likely took him 3 days more before he was back to himself, so don’t forget about the bounce back.  (2) Not every minor bump looks like this. Sometimes you’ll notice a regression in all areas of BM’s like Matt did, but instead of getting worse and worse each day it will just stay slightly worse. So, journaling is needed to pick up this minor trend at the end of the week when you’ve made a small change like cooked to raw foods, or a new food.

Think about: Look at your journal entries (no matter how many you have) and see what you can discern about your body, about your diet, and about other healing strategies you are using. Are they helping? Hurting? How will you know?

When to Add, Change, Modify

Even the best natural healing modality, when added at the wrong time, or done haphazardly can lack the desired effect, or worse, cause problems. Healing happens in layers, over time, and so your healing strategies also must be added in layers, over time.

The healing pyramid from previous posts in this series is meant to be a guide to help you organize healing strategies into a plan; it should also help you evaluate and re-work your plan should the need arise. Spend time tweaking and working on the most effective healing strategies first (like diet, probiotics, and other gut-specific treatments).

It is important, if you feel that your healing plan is not working, that you re-evaluate it. Check to ensure that you are adding the most effective strategies first, like diet and probiotics. Check to ensure that you have implemented those strategies in the way they were meant to be implemented and for the effective time period. For SCD, give yourself 30-45 days without cheating before you re-evaluate. For probiotics, three to six weeks. For Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN), another example, it could be three to six months before you see the full desired effect.

If you encounter a good healing strategy (like Butyrate enemas), and it does not work for you today, keep it, and try it again in a year. It may be that your body needs more time before it can utilize that particular healing strategy. It is true that some strategies might not work at all for you, and that is good to know, but it would be a shame to throw out a perfectly good hammer before you have driven in all of the nails.

Yes—I have kept the Butyrate for another day.

Think about: What in your healing plan might need to change? Is it organized and implementable?

Trying New Approaches

If an approach simply does not work for you, toss it, no matter how many people it has helped. Make sure first that you have done it right, done it fully, and done it flawlessly. I will use the SCD as an example:

Elaine Gottschall, who popularized and solidified the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which has helped thousands of people to heal, freely admitted that the SCD does not work for everyone. Her experience was that about 95% of people with Crohn’s and about 75% of people with colitis benefited from the diet. That’s good news; the SCD will likely work for you. This is a big reason diet should be the cornerstone of your healing plan.

Note from Steve: In general, I don’t agree with Elaine at all. SCD or eating a custom version of the SCD diet will give you the best chance from food to heal.  The term “work” is undefined and means something different wherever you are. What is defined is that there are many foods that cause inflammation, leaky gut and are toxic to the body. Eating those foods will hurt your healing or stop it if you choose them.

However, the SCD per se does not work for everyone. If you do it for 30-45 days without cheating; if you have personalized it, tweaked it, and extended it to its fullest, and it still does not work, that is okay. There are other dietary strategies, just like there are other supplement regimens to try, other stress relief ideas, etc.

If a healing strategy simply does not work for you, muster the courage to chuck it.

Think about: Evaluate your healing strategies. Are you implementing them properly, and for the full time period (so long as they don’t make you worse)? What approaches are you taking which need to be re-evaluated? What strategies can replace them, and where do they fit on the pyramid?

The (Hard and Simple) Secret to Healing

The secret to maximizing the potential for healing is so simple many people I talk with at first want to dismiss it:

Take responsibility for your illness.

That is what this series is all about, really. In fact, that is what natural healing philosophy comes to in the end; in taking responsibility for our illness, we are free to take control of our healing. It is difficult to do, especially for us Americans who are used to an easy (medical) convenience which is only afforded by a shortage of responsibility.

It was hard for me to hear at first—that I had a role in my illness. I wanted to be a victim, a causality of choices over which I had no control. But when I thought of it, I did have a role. I can think of dozens upon dozens of times where I betrayed my body. Sure, I could not control the fact that I was not breast fed as an infant, and I had no say over the antibiotics I took as a young child. But there was a lot I could control, and there is a lot I can control now.

It was a milestone in my healing journey, when I stopped blaming the world for my illness and took responsibility for the role I played in getting sick. When I finally did that (it was a long road), I began to feel free from all the junk I was holding onto: blame, anger, doubt, shame, uncertainty. Oh, they are still there for sure, but they no longer have any power. I took responsibility for my illness.

And the best next step? Take responsibility for my healing.

With that said, I want to issue you one last challenge. If you have been journaling or taking notes throughout this series, this would be a good way to wrap up your healing plan.

Think about your past: What factors may have influenced your road to digestive illness? What role did you play in developing illness? What factors were under your control?

Note from Steve: I added the bolding above, this is quite possibly the most powerful question written in over 200+ posts on our blog. When you ask it, don’t look for an immediate answer just keep asking and thinking about it.

Think about your present: What would it feel like to let go of those past factors (yours or not) that may have contributed to your illness? What factors can you control now? What can you do today to take control of your healing journey?

Think about your future: What next step(s) do you want to take (something you can do this week) that will help move you towards healing?

Onward to health,

Matt

The post Big Picture: Evaluating Your Digestive Healing Plan appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

This is a guest post series from Matt Robinson, digestive illness coach at Natural Digestive Healing.

This is the third post in our Big Picture series. (Read Post One and Post Two.) If you are using this series to its fullest, remember to get out a pen and paper so you will be ready to jot down ideas and think about the questions and concepts posed along the way.

In the first post, I discussed the value of a big picture outlook, and introduced the concepts of balance and prioritization as they relate to healing from digestive illness. In the second post, I expanded on those concepts, and walked through the first steps of developing a big picture-focused healing plan. In this post, we will use your Go-sion and your SMART goals to design a healing plan. As we go, remember, your healing goals and plan are living documents. Today, we will design a good first outline, but allow yourself the space to rework the plan if needed. We will get into that in the final post in the series.

In this post, we will deconstruct the healing pyramid and insert your goals and Go-sion to produce a healing plan. At the end of each section, I will give you an example of that portion of my healing plan.

Journaling

First, a note on journaling. A good diet/symptom journal will go a long way to increasing your healing potential. It will keep you from past pitfalls, and it will help you figure out what is working and what is not. If you are like me, I often forget what I ate this morning, let alone three weeks ago, but your journal can tell you. It can tell you what your gut felt like on a certain day. It can tell you trends in symptoms. It can tell you whether you missed a dose of probiotics or other medication. Your journal will be your most important companion on your healing journey.

Think about: A diet/symptom journal, used daily, is a primary weapon against digestive illness. I would go as far as to say that those who use this tool well heal much more regularly and in much less time than those who do not. You can design your own, or you can use one of the free templates in the sidebar of my blog under “Tracking/Journaling Tools.”

From Matt’s Journal: Here is an example daily page from my diet/symptom journal.

Dietary Changes (SCD, GAPS, etc.)

Dietary changes are your foundation, and the first place to start in healing from digestive illness. A personalized diet that works for you will dramatically increase your healing potential. Indeed, diet increases the effectiveness of other natural healing modalities such as probiotics, enzymes, and omega-3, and it can also work together with conventional medical treatments such as steroids, sulfa drugs and immune therapies. It is the base of the pyramid because it can make or break your healing experience.

Think about: What dietary changes will form the base of your healing plan?

From Matt’s Plan: (Relevant goals: Stop Diarrhea, increase energy, wean off medication) Start the SCD, and do it without cheating for 90 days, then reassess progress. If I see positive gains after 90 days, then continue on the diet for one year. Reassess after one year. Journal diet, symptoms, mood, weight, exercise throughout the process.)

Note From Steve: I agree, a custom diet is a the foundation for your healing. Diet is not neutral, it is either contributing to your health or hurting it. Our book is the only step-by-step plan that shows someone suffering from digestive illness how to figure this part out.

Gut-Specific Treatments

Gut-specific treatments are those that target the gut. Diet is one example. Other examples are:

Probiotics: L. acidophilus, for those on the SCD.

Natural Anti-microbials: If persistent gut dysbiosis is a primary cause of digestive illness and if changing the gut flora produces healing, then natural anti-microbial compounds, combined with diet and probiotics make sense. I have written more on natural anti-microbials for IBD here.

Note From Steve: In other words, if you see some changes from SCD and other treatments but are not where you want to be, it’s a great idea to get tested for other causes of dysbiosis and then treat accordingly.

L-glutamine: Free-form L-glutamine is the primary fuel source for repair and regeneration of intestinal mucosa, and when taken on an empty stomach, it reverses the osmotic potential in the gut (sends water out), acting as an anti-diarrheal.

HCl and digestive enzymes: Dr. Campbell-McBride, in her book, Gut and Psychology Syndrome…, states that most people with GAPS (illness resulting from gut dysbiosis) have low HCl production. Restoring HCl, can be one link to restoring healthy digestion. Caution: for those with Crohn’s or Colitis, HCl can increase your diarrhea. Test this first, and if you see an increase in symptoms, discontinue HCl and/or enzymes.

Note From Steve: Jordan and I have talked with hundreds of Crohn’s and Colitis sufferers who have had great success with HCL. We advocate, as with any change to your healing plan, that you only change one thing at a time. Therefore, you would only experiment with HCL while keeping everything else constant. Then, it is very easy to understand if you have a paradoxical reaction such as diarrhea from HCL. Adverse reactions to HCL do happen, even in people with low stomach acid. Dr. Wright explains why in his book, saying that they have the most inflamed stomachs and must be slowly ramped up to higher dosages of HCL.

Think about: What gut-specific treatments make sense for your goals? When will you add them?

From Matt’s Plan: (Relevant goals: Stop Diarrhea, increase energy, wean off medication) After 90 days on the SCD, re-evaluate progress. If SCD is working, then slowly, slowly add L. acidophilius. Work up to therapeutic dose. Once up to a therapeutic dose of L. acidophilus for two weeks, begin to utilize the probiotic retention enema 1-2x/month; 1x test, then regular use. Once I’ve been doing retention enemas safely for 3 months, add L-glutamine. Evaluate progress at each step…)

Body Systems Support

Our bodies, and consequently our illnesses, are complex. Never is just one system affected by chronic illness. For example, chronic gut inflammation can lead to malnutrition, thyroid issues, and adrenal fatigue, to name a few. So, when healing from chronic illness, it helps to envision healing happening in layers—start with the inside, the most critical pieces and move outward. Start with the gut – with what you put in it. Evaluate, and then begin to treat the dysbiosis. Evaluate, then begin to look at other systems. This is where you will want the support of a good naturopathic physician or nutritional therapist who understands digestive illness and healing from it. Below are just a few areas you can address:

Look deeper into digestive function with stool and blood tests

• Thyroid function
• Adrenal function/fatigue (common with chronic illness)
• Nutrient deficiencies (Vitamin D, Zinc, or Magnesium, for example)
• Hormonal imbalances
• High histamine levels

These and other “layers” can be why we (with digestive illness) often experience depression, mood swings, low energy and sex drive, slow growing hair or brittle nails, or increased symptoms from allergies.

Think about: What other symptoms are you having. Where and when in your healing plan do these elements begin to be addressed?

From Matt’s Plan: (Relevant goals: Increase energy; find the cause of my itching/rashes; learn food intolerances; learn bacterial composition of my gut; learn my digestive effectiveness) Visit naturopath for comprehensive digestive stool analysis and food sensitivity testing. Do adrenal function test for my fatigue. Discuss chronic fatigue and itching/rashes (why are they happening)? Actually follow the doctor’s orders unless they conflict with SCD (then discuss an alternative).

Note From Steve: Regular testing is very important to long-term management of health and understanding acute disease treatment options. I get various lab values tested every few months. We have seen quite a variance in food sensitivity testing and found them to be unreliable. It’s cheaper and faster to test the actual foods yourself as you create your own custom version of diet that works for you.

Lifestyle and Social-Emotional

Because stress is such a trigger for digestive illness symptoms, it is arguable that this category should be lower on the pyramid. I agree. No model is perfect. I think, in fact, that this category should be ubiquitous throughout your healing plan, from beginning to end.

Lifestyle

Lifestyle issues can have a major impact on your healing. Some life components that fall under this category include:

Sleep: Are you getting enough, and is your sleep of good quality?

Rest: Sleep and rest are the same, but different. Sleep is the ultimate rest in life, but how many of your waking hours are restful? Do you experience peace throughout the day?

Exercise: Regular exercise can take the form of a simple walk up the stairs (if you are really sick), a walk around the block or in the woods, yoga, weights, cycling, swimming—you get the picture. However, when you are healing, exercise should leave you feeling invigorated, relaxed, and energized. For you athletes (I know!), now is not the time to challenge your body. Your illness is enough challenge for your body—one thing at a time.

Meditation: Regular meditation has worlds of benefits, including decreased stress, increased mental alertness, decreased inflammation, alleviated symptoms of depression, and much more.

Note From Steve: We’ve found that those with a daily stress reduction program, like meditation or our 2-Minute Stress Relief program, reduce their symptoms much faster and feel better longer. It’s importance cannot be overstated.

Alcohol, smoking, etc.: None of these should be in your life. Some few people can tolerate small amounts of dry red wine or certain hard alcohols. Certainly, I had trouble with this one, and would still love to have some wine. Over time, my theory has evolved to: There are no neutral foods; if it is not helping, it is hurting. I know, I miss beer too, but I would miss my colon more should I lose it.

Think about: How do you need to adjust your lifestyle to improve your healing potential?

From Matt’s Plan: (Relevant goals: Reduce my stress; relax more; be mentally “free” to play with the kids) Continue regular exercise. Start mindful meditation 20 min, 2x/week; work up to 20 min/day. Every day, do something I really enjoy.

Social-Emotional

There is a theory out there that every chronic illness has a psychological component to it. We are not judging, today, whether that theory is correct; however, I challenge you to think about the question: If there were a psychological component to my illness, what would it be?

Stress plays such a pivotal role in exacerbating (and maybe even causing) digestive illness, that we cannot ignore it. Some areas of life to explore in your healing journey:

Sources of stress: What are your sources of stress? How will you minimize them?

Community: Do you have a community of people with whom you can share your victories and your struggles? Do you have people who can hold you accountable to your healing plan, and who will support you when you need it—even when you do not ask for it?

Think about: How will you address the psychological component of your illness?

From Matt’s Plan: (Relevant goals: Shift my attitude from self-focused to others-focused. Find contentment in each day) Find time to write creatively—for me. Do something to serve my wife and my children each day—think: What do they need?

Maintenance

Congratulations! You have made it. You are healthy, and you want to stay that way. Look back through your journal and your healing plan. Highlight the things that have worked and make certain they are a regular part of your everyday life. Cross out those that did not work and do not dwell on them.

If you can, think through your life before digestive illness. Ask yourself: What does my new lifestyle look like? What should it look like in order for me to stay healthy?

Be thankful for your health daily.

Wrapping Up

Following this guide and the principles from the first two posts, you should be able to write your own healing plan. Start with your Go-sion (your visionary goal), insert your SMART goals, and then outline how you plan on getting there.

After you have written your plan, think about sharing parts of it in the comments. What creative ideas are in your plan? What has worked for you? If you already have a plan, How has having a plan helped your healing?

Next time, we will discuss how to assess and adjust your plan along the way.

Onward to health,

Matt

Note From Steve: As Matt said, the best thing to do is put pen to paper and start asking some of these questions. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try and tackle one area a week over the next month. As you start to form your own answers, new questions will pop up. Leave them below so we can help out!

The post Big Picture: Designing a Healing Plan appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Sometimes when I look down and notice a bug in the lush grass, time slows down. Next thing I know I’m deep in contemplation on the trees, and the scene around me.  It’s easy to get lost in the beauty of a forest.

It’s just as easy when your belly hurts to get lost in your head, the internet and books, except this kind of lost doesn’t usually calm us down.

It’s in these darkest hours, when the Google death spiral consumes us that we need perspective the most. Having perspective on where you’re going, why you’re doing what you’re doing, and that you’re not alone is very important. Unfortunately, many times it’s hard to take the steps when your tummy is hurting or colon is bleeding.

It’s one of the essentials for long-term healing. And that’s the tragedy… the people who fail to think with perspective and plan are likely to never get well. That’s why we are really happy Matt is back to help us all gain some awareness and perspective on proactive health planning.

This is a guest post series from Matt Robinson, digestive illness coach at Natural Digestive Healing.

One of my personal goals for this series (and in writing and coaching in general) is to share some of the tools that I have developed over the years in the hope that they may speed your healing, and save you anguish along the way. Getting to the place where I could write a series like this has been a struggle. I have had some wonderful successes (like the SCD), and I have had some miserable failures. It has taken a tremendous amount of trial and error, of searching out experts, of reading books and studies, blogs and chat forums, to get my gut under control. Writing this series in hindsight, I hope, will help minimize some of that for you.

In my last post, I discussed the value of a big picture outlook and introduced the concepts of balance and prioritization as they relate to healing from digestive illness. In this post, I will expand on those concepts and walk you through the first steps of developing a big picture-focused healing plan. If you are using this series to its fullest, remember to get out a pen and paper, so you will be ready to jot down ideas and think about the questions and concepts along the way.

To be sure, having a healing plan does not guarantee that you will heal. There are no guarantees with digestive illness, and there are many days when I wonder, “Will I ever be free of this?” Having a plan is essential to healing, and is especially helpful in those moments of doubt, frustration, and fear. It helps you to:

• Map a path to follow. With a map in hand, it is more difficult to get lost, waylaid, or sidetracked—all of which will slow or stop your healing.
• Create a vision. A big picture healing plan keeps the goal in front of you. The best way to achieve a big goal like healing from digestive illness is to have a powerful vision, and to use it to create a roadmap that gets you there.
• Create a structure for learning about your condition, and help form the container into which you fit all of the ideas and treatments you want to try. Adding new treatments willy-nilly is the best way to decrease your chances of healing. So, when you see a new treatment, or hear of a new diet tweak, go back to your big picture healing plan and ask, “Where does this fit on my roadmap?” If it does not fit, file it away for later. If it needs to fit, then rework your plan, but make sure whatever you are adding betters your plan and fits your goals.

Writing Your Go-sion

What in the world is a go-sion? I’ll get to that in a moment.

Last time, I asked you to envision your life once your ultimate healing goal has been achieved. If you did that, take a second to remember what you saw and how you felt; try on that life again for a moment…

If you did not do that, or if you are just catching this series, I challenge you to pause right here and do that. Dare to envision a fully healed life. Here are the questions I posed last time, as a guide:

Now that your goal is fresh in your mind, we can use what you just envisioned to create a go-sion. A “go-sion,” as I call it, is a vision and goal in one. A vision is inspiring and captures the essence of the venture. A goal is concrete and achievable. In healing from chronic illness, I find it is easier and more helpful to write vision and goals together as a visionary goal, a go-sion.

Your go-sion should embody your ultimate end state, where you are content with your health. It should also be specific and measurable. That is, you should be able to tell when you get there that you have achieved your goal. It should also be inspiring and capture your heart. Let me give you mine as an example.

My big picture healing go-sion says this, “I want to be inflammation free.” It is a simple, succinct, powerful statement that reminds me why I strive and struggle daily against colitis. For me the clause, Inflammation Free, embodies my dreams of growing old with my wife, of backpacking with my children, of living with energy, zest, and ebullience. To me “Inflammation Free” is both measurable and inspiring. It is my go-sion. Making it rhyme is a bit silly, but helps me to remember it more easily.

Notice that my go-sion is BIG. Even though I would like to be able to eat a bar of chocolate without gut problems, that is not a visionary goal—it is not a go-sion. It may be an appropriate measure to let me know I am close to my goal; it may even be a fitting progress goal, but it is not a visionary goal. In creating your go-sion, think big picture.

Putting pen to paper and writing your go-sion statement is essential. It’s not enough to just know it in your head. Writing it will clarify and solidify your statement.

Review and Remember: What is your go-sion? Where would you like to get to? Write this down and put it in a place where you will see it every day.

Using Balance and Prioritization to Set SMART Goals

Now that you have a go-sion, you can set progress goals. In setting goals, you want to ensure that each goal is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Timely. ^[1]

As you create your goals, remember:

• Location: You are in the perfect place right now to set healing goals and begin working towards them.

Think about: What are some obstacles in your life that keep you from setting healing goals and working towards them? How will you overcome those obstacles?

• Commitment: Full commitment is masterful. 99% commitment never achieved a goal.

Think about: Am I committed to my go-sion? As you lay out your go-sion and SMART goals, ask, “Am I committed, really committed? What are my obstacles to commitment? What will it take for me to commit to just the first goal (to start the SCD, for example)? Who will hold me accountable, for instance, to staying on the SCD when I have the 3-month flare, or during the holidays when all I want is a big fat hunk of chocolate?”

• Perseverance: Healing from digestive illness takes work. That work can be fun, and it will change your life; it has changed mine. I am a better man now having struggled with colitis than I was before. This work is also often frustrating, thankless, and difficult. Stick with it; the reward can be invaluable.

Think about: Accountability, transparency, and community are keys to perseverance. How will you ensure these elements are a ubiquitous part of your life?

• Community: DIYers, Independent souls, I’m talking to you. There is no shame in your illness, no guilt in needing (or wanting) help. Gather around you a group of people who will support you in your journey. These are people who will always tell you the truth, and who will hold you accountable to your goals; friends, family, medical professionals, coaches, your childhood teddy bear. Be thoughtful about this one, because no one can tow this road alone.

Think about: Do you have a good support community around you? If you do, how will you encourage and thank them for the role they play in your life? If you do not, what steps do you need to take to build that community?

Writing Your Goals

Okay, enough of the soft stuff. It is time to get into the details of using your go-sion to set SMART healing goals. I’ll use my experience as an example, and we can set these goals together.

Remember my go-sion? “I want to be inflammation free.”

In developing goals, it is important to apply the concepts of Balance and Prioritization from the previous post. Balance the urgent with the important; care for your short-term needs. Of the urgent, ask yourself, “Are these needs or desires?” Plan and create space for your long-term healing.

In late 2008, when I was starting to make my healing plan and goals, one of the first questions I asked was, “How was I going to get from 24 bloody bowel movements per day, and ‘severe colitis throughout’ my colon (as my doctor described it) to no inflammation and 1-2 formed comfortable movements per day? And how would I know I was moving in the right direction?” I needed some goals.

Here are just a few that I set for myself as examples. Notice that they are Specific (clear, understandable), Measurable, Achievable (realistic, but a bit ambitious), Relevant (to healing) and Timely (set in appropriate order—I cannot run a marathon until I have fewer BMs).

A note on Timely goals: Notice that my healing goals are timely and not time-bound. As much as we would like, we cannot control or predict the amount of time it will take to heal or to reach a healing goal. This is embodied in number two in my list of Big Picture Outlook traits: “Make Peace with Uncertainty.” Strapping yourself with time-bound healing goals for your body will only add stress and frustration to your healing journey.

(A Few of) My Goals

1. Start the SCD by May 1^st, 2009, and complete the first 90 days without cheating (something I can control).
2. Wean off prednisone (up to my body).
3. Get down to four bowel movements per day (again, up to my body).
4. Tell my wife something I am thankful for, each day (attitude is half the battle).
5. Run a trail marathon (embodies goals 1-4).

Each of these goals represents a milestone I wanted to reach in my healing journey. They are just a sample of the goals I have set for myself in the past four years. Sure, I have made mistakes along the way. Certainly you will too. I have had almost four years to revise and track my goals. Your goals sheet and healing plan is a living document, so be open to revision; dream, and have fun with these—they will be your guide, your cairns on a long and winding road.

Think about: Set 3-5 shorter-term healing goals for yourself. Include at least one you can start today. Ask yourself, “Are these achievable? What do I need to do to achieve these goals?” Once you have set those goals, think about longer-range goals. What might those look like? Write them down too, knowing they can change.

Prioritizing Your Goals

Once you have sketched some goals, you can prioritize them. Prioritize first those goals which give you early success. Choose things you can do, you can control. For me, it was to start the SCD. I could do that no matter how I felt. It was completely under my control. Build the momentum. Then, prioritize your other goals. As you do so, you should start to get an idea, an outline of what your healing plan should look like.

As you begin to think about your healing plan remember: healing from illness is tough. It happens in layers, and layering healing modalities in order of efficacy can speed your healing. Remember this pyramid below? This pyramid is the container which I use to hold all of my healing ideas. It tells me what to add and when, the relative efficacy of each healing protocol, and helps me put it into my plan.

As you start prioritizing your goals, and begin to add natural healing modalities, think about which of those modalities will have the largest effect, and try those first. Pick the low-hanging fruit first and you will increase your chances of early success. These early wins are important to building long-term momentum that will keep you on the narrow path to healing.

It is important for me to be clear: There is no canned approach that will bring everyone healing. That pyramid is just my representation of what I have seen work, and it embodies the credible literature and approaches I have read and experienced.

That said, I am convinced that dietary changes for treating digestive illness are the foundation of any good healing program. Whether it is the SCD, GAPS, an elimination, or another diet, what you eat has the ability to make or break your healing experience.

Next, gut-specific treatments like probiotics, enzymes, HCl, Fecal Transplants, butyrate enemas, etc., affect the same system and problems as diet: your damaged gut and gut flora. Your gut flora is the keystone of a healthy life, and the right combination of diet and other gut-specific healing protocols are the best way to begin to reset that keystone.

Developing a visionary goal, setting SMART progress goals, and layering healing protocols in an ordered, effective manner (waiting for each to have its full effect before moving on) will help to ensure your healing path is as straight and smooth as possible.

Now that you have a go-sion and some goals to work with, we will go into more detail next time about setting a healing plan. I will walk you through my big picture healing plan, and we can frame your own plan together along the way.

Onward to Health,

-Matt

Matt Robinson is a digestive illness coach. He helps people with digestive illness to optimize their healing path. He was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis in 2002, and has been living medication-free since early 2009. You can read more articles like this one, or schedule a free coaching session at his website: www.naturaldigestivehealing.com

[1] Meyer, Paul J (2003). “What would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? Creating S.M.A.R.T. Goals”. Attitude Is Everything: If You Want to Succeed Above and Beyond. Meyer Resource Group, Incorporated, The. ISBN 978-0-89811-304-4.

[FYI – Yes, we will make a small commission off the amazon link above… but you probably already knew that. We don’t want to insult your intelligence, but need you to be aware of this. Thanks for the donation.]

The post The Big Picture: Setting Healing Goals appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Back in high school I knew a guy that put fuel in his truck from an old gas can in his parent’s garage.

What he didn’t realize is, his Mom was using it to water her flowers, and he fueled up with 5 gallons of fertilized water!

His truck stalled out a mile down the road…

Your body is the same way. It can run on different fuel sources for short periods, like anything from processed crap to natural foods, and even no food at all.

But we know it runs better on high quality sources of food like Paleo or SCD. And as it turns out, your mind is no different. We feed our brain a steady diet of thoughts every day.

And the quality of those thoughts matter.

Ever have one of those days when everything seems to go wrong?

I used to feel that way all the time, until I learned a little secret: Bad thoughts don’t have to snowball out of control. Bad thoughts and bad things happen, but learning to approach each day with an attitude that allows me to be OK with them is the best food I can give my brain.

If you want to take control of your health and live a symptom-free life, start by taking control of the thoughts you feed your brain…

And it starts by asking one simple question…

What’s My Definition of Healthy?

I started this diet because a doctor “prescribed” it to me. I don’t know where you’re coming from, but I had an end goal in mind, and you need one too. Healthy is a vague term. Your new definition of healthy is probably different from mine, and different from the clinical version (your doctor’s).

In order to begin your healing process, you need to define what being healthy means to you.

For example, does it mean having endless energy and one perfect poop every day? Or would you be happy if your stomach pain vanished?

I’d be willing to guess you’ve been feeling less than 100% for a long time. Maybe you’re not even sure what 100% healthy feels like.

Before I started this journey, my health involved waking up two hours early so I had enough time for diarrhea before class. When I started SCD, I decided my new definition of health included:

• Being able to go anywhere without worrying about where the bathroom was
• Pooping when I was ready
• Minimal gas and bloating
• Never having stomach problems cross my conscious mind
• Gaining weight back
• And feeling full of energy

Today, I want you to define a new healthy life that allows you to eat without belly pain. It’s important that you remove the chains you’ve attached to your gut and figure out what your definition of healthy is.

Take a moment and imagine what your healthy body would feel like.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• How do you want to feel after you eat your favorite meal?
• What would your life be like if you bounced out of bed with tons of energy and focus?
• What would it do for your life if you never worried about your tummy again?

This is a personal journey that you’re going on. I’m here along with you, but I want you to embrace the emotion of feeling free, both physically and mentally, from your stomach problems.

Want to Know My Secret for Not “Falling Off the Wagon”?

Read your definition of health every day. Not only that, but revise it along the way as you keep getting better.

Imagine enjoying your healthy life like you’re already living it. These little victories build day-by-day until you have so much momentum that nothing can stop you from making it to the top!

TO DO TODAY:

Make your ideal future real. Leave a comment with 3 ways you will define your health going forward.

For example, here’s my definition from 2009:

1. Have 2 perfect poops a day, no straining or urgency
2. Never worry about my stomach once during the day
3. Have never-ending energy throughout the day

Be specific and imagine going through the day without thinking about your health. What would that would be like? Define a new, healthy you and share it below.

I can’t wait to hear from you,

– Jordan

The post What Are You Feeding Your Brain? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Who’s definition of health are you holding?

I used to hold society’s, my doctor’s, and my shame all mixed together as my own. It impacted how I felt and what I did on a regular basis. Because I didn’t create my own definition, I justified how I felt, told myself lies about how bad my health was and generally did a lot of settling for subpar results.

In our book, we walk you through an exercise much like Matt describes below. It’s often overlooked because the pain of a hurt belly is so loud. I don’t really blame you, because I’m not sure I would have done it back when I was lying in bed fighting back tears. So, today you get some homework.

• Step #1: Now that the pain is less, re-read our book and do these exercises as they can change your life. When Matt approached us about doing a series regarding the bigger picture of healing your gut we thought it was an awesome idea.
• That makes Step #2 to open a new document and answer the questions that Matt lays out below and start to take this part of your health as serious as you take the foods in your mouth. Diet is only one big piece of the health puzzle and it is a really good idea to get some perspective every now and again.
• Step #3 is to share what you learn from doing these exercises in the comments below.

This is a guest post series from Matt Robinson, digestive illness coach at Natural Digestive Healing.

[ENTER MATT]

What is your ultimate health and healing goal? Pause for a moment and picture it. What is life like once this goal has been achieved? What are you doing? How do you feel? What have you learned along the way? Take some time to experience it…

That life you just experienced, those moments you just envisioned, that is the start of developing your big picture. Write it down in as clear a fashion as you can. You’ll need that for the rest of this series.

The goal of this big picture series is to help you see the value of being big picture focused. I will discuss how to develop your personal big picture, why you should keep it in front of you daily, and how a big picture focus can revolutionize your healing journey.

This series is designed to function as a guide; it is your own coach to help you develop a big picture healing plan. It is packed full of information. Along the way, I have inserted questions to help you think through the concepts and practicalities of developing your personal big picture healing plan.

Have You Been Here?

I first began to take control of my recovery from colitis in 2008 after the onset of a massive flare-up which very literally crippled me. For six months, my doctors tried everything. My gut laughed at immune suppressants, steroids, sulfa drugs and the like. Nothing would touch this flare. My doctor began to talk about taking out my colon. “This is crazy,” I thought. There has to be a better way.

Maybe you have been in my shoes. Maybe you are there now. Maybe right now you are experiencing tough symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel (IBD), Celiac, IBS, or some other digestive illness. Perhaps you are reading this for someone else. Regardless of your reasons for being here, simply by reading this post, you are taking an active role in caring for your health or the health of someone you know—and that is a big step.

My first real proactive step towards healing was to start the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) in early 2009. Four days after I started the diet, I noticed a positive change—four days. I had waited years for a positive change, and the SCD showed me hope on the fourth day. Now, to be realistic, it has taken me three years on the SCD, and a lot of work to get to where I am now (1 BM per day, sometimes formed, sometimes not), but I would not have gotten this far if I had not been able to keep the big picture in mind.

When I first started the SCD, I measured my progress by the bowel movement; each trip to the bathroom would send me either into the clouds (if it was good) or into an I’m-going-to-die-of-diarrhea, food-purging, squash-is-the-devil tailspin. Each loose stool would send me into a treatment-changing panic. I would immediately think, “The SCD isn’t working. I need something else, now!”

Raise your hand if you have been there.

Steve: From my experience and from our inbox this is very typical. If you’re in this place right now, then I want you to know that you’re on the right track. If you’ve been here before, then I want to urge you to take the next steps below.

The Big Picture Approach to Healing

The things I was doing: tracking my symptoms, journaling my food and supplement intake, tracking my weight and medications, tweaking my diet—these were, and are good things. All of us should be doing them. What I lacked was a big picture approach. I was easily swayed by each tummy rumble because I had never articulated where I wanted to go (my health goal), and how I was going to get there. I had not developed a long-term healing plan.

Having a plan, and seeing the big picture anchors us in those moments of panic. It helps remind us where we are going. It can teach us that using natural means like diet to heal from digestive illness—be it IBD, IBS, Celiac, Diverticulitis, or some other condition—is a long road. There are lots of bumps, setbacks, and yes, natural fluctuations in our health that will happen along the way. The big picture approach reminds us to stay the course, to look back and see how far we have come, and to anticipate the prize: a life without (or with drastically less) medication, surgery, hospitalization; a life with energy and zest.

Steve: Another way of thinking about health planning is to approach it just like retirement planning. Often difficult to start, but we know that successful people figure out a way to get it done. Over the next few years… Fail to Plan – Plan to Fail.

In this series, I will introduce the practicalities of maintaining a big picture view of your healing, and how that can revolutionize your outlook and potentially speed your healing.

Big Picture Attitude

Before we can develop a healing plan, we need to be open to the big picture. Yep, that means we need to examine our outlook. Here are some characteristics of a big picture outlook along with some practical questions to help you think about the concepts:

1. A big picture view removes stress: Seeing the big picture helps us to not sweat the little things so much. So I made a mistake. Let’s figure it out and move on—I’m worlds better than I was six months ago, and in six more months I’ll be better than I am now.

Think about: What steps can you take today to adopt a big picture view? (We’ll talk more about this in future posts.)

2. Make peace with uncertainty: Will I ever know the cause of my illness? I just had avocado last week and I was fine, what’s up? I’m having symptoms today and didn’t change a thing; what is going on? There may be answers to these questions, and there may not. We strive to answer them, but ultimately we need to make friends with ambiguity.

Think about: What uncertainty in your healing path bothers you most? How will you make peace with it?

3. Learn from Every Experience: Each time your symptoms act up, each time you eat something or take a supplement that doesn’t agree with your body; each time you get stressed and your symptoms return, your body is teaching you what it is like to be in its shoes. If you are journaling your diet and symptoms regularly, if you are mindful of your stressors, you can learn what worsens your symptoms and what helps you heal. It takes time and some effort, but those who do this well have a higher healing potential.

Think about: What experiences have you had in the last month from which you can learn about your body? Write them down.

4. Learn from everyone you can: Everyone has different styles of learning. If you are a reader, read everything you can. If you are a doer, experiment and take copious notes. Compare them with others. If you learn best through interaction, make every effort to meet people with digestive illness who are using natural means to heal. Establish relationships, ask questions, learn from each other.

Think about: What will you learn this week? Make a commitment to learn something new or reach out to someone to help you on your way to healing.

5. Give Yourself Permission to fail: You perfectionists…you know what I’m talking about. It is tough to fail in this arena because it hurts more than your ego.

Think about: Failure and mistakes are part of the game. What one step can you do today to help give yourself permission to fail?

6. Utilize Support: No one can do this alone; no one. There are thousands of people in the U.S. alone who are using the SCD and other natural means to heal from digestive illness. We are here for you.

Think about: Do you have a good support network? What can you do improve the support around you?

7. Set realistic expectations: When I first began the SCD in 2009, I expected to be back on my normal beer and pizza diet in a year—9 months if I was good. I read three or four stories of people healing on SCD in a year or two, and immediately thought that would be me. That may very well be some people’s story, but at least for colitis, it does not reflect the majority of people’s stories. The majority of people with IBD take at least half as long to heal as they have been sick. In 2009 when I started the SCD, I had been living with colitis for at least seven years. By this more realistic rubric, I should be back to normal in 3-4 years. And you know what? I’m 3.5 years into the SCD and am just now beginning to feel truly normal.

Setting realistic expectations will save you a lot of heartache along your healing journey. That’s what I like so much about Jordan and Steve’s site. Just the name sets a realistic expectation: SCDLifestyle—it sets the expectation that this is not just a diet I am going on for a while. It says, “My body needs a real lifestyle shift.”

Think about: What are your expectations? Write them out. Are they realistic? Which of them need to change?

8. Enjoy Life: Digestive illness is overwhelming at times, sad at times, and frustrating at times. But that is just a part of life. Sometimes I get so consumed with healing that I miss the simple beauty of family and friends, of spring warmth, or hot lemon tea in the winter.

Think about: What can you do today to enjoy and celebrate life?

Developing the Big Picture: Essential Concepts

Balance

In developing your big picture healing plan, an important word to keep in mind is balance. Having an effective plan will help you balance the urgent needs of today with the important long-term needs of your body. Urgent needs are those which speak so loudly to you they can draw you away from just about anything else you are doing. They say, “Take care of me now!” These are often very real needs: “I’m loosing lots of blood.” “I’m having 40 bowel movements a day.”

Just as often, these urgent “needs” are not needs at all but desires. “Helminths worked for my friend, Joe.” “I just really want to have a beer. I feel like a social outcast.” These desires seem urgent for very valid reasons, but where do they rank in importance when thinking about healing your body? And remember, healing your body is the truest path to a symptom-free life.

The tyranny of the urgent is that, if we are not careful, it can take our focus away from what is truly important. For example, what do you do with all of those new natural treatments about which you are learning? “What about L-glutamine, probiotics, and helminthic therapy?” With each new idea comes some promise of healing, and some new hope—I’ve been there. But even the best treatment (natural or otherwise), when carried out with impatience, or employed at the wrong time or for the wrong duration, can fail. The best way to keep the urgent in check is to have a big picture plan.

Quickly, let’s go back to the very beginning of my SCD days. About five months into the SCD I had an increase in symptoms, a mini-flare. I did panic initially, but then I remembered “The Plan.” Reviewing my big picture healing plan with my wife helped me relax and take a more rational view of the situation. If I had abandoned the SCD in an urgent frenzy to stop the flare, who knows where I would be now. Having balanced a plan helps us to stay the course.

Think about: Outline your most urgent healing needs of today (those that speak most loudly to you)? Now outline your body’s long-term needs. How do they differ? Try and set them in priority order.

Priorities

One of the most effective functions of planning a healing path is that it helps us set priorities. In developing a big picture healing plan, it is important to prioritize the most effective healing modalities first, before you layer other treatments with them. People heal in layers. Address the most effective treatments first and give them time to work. Do them right, and you may not need anything else. Below, I introduce my prioritization scheme. In coaching, this pyramid is how I approach layering natural methods for digestive illness, and it is the model I use for myself.

Notice that “Dietary Changes” are the base of the pyramid. From my experience, changing diet to address digestive illness is the most effective natural healing method, and it is foundational to healing. Not only can an effective diet like the SCD help to heal your gut, but it also augments the effectiveness of other proven modalities like probiotics, digestive enzymes, and natural anti-microbials. Diet can even increase the effectiveness of pharmaceutical treatments such as corticosteroids, sulfa drugs, and TNF inhibitors.

Think about: What treatments are you using now to heal? How have you prioritized the addition of treatments? What role does diet play for you now?

In the next post, we will use the concepts of Balance and setting Priorities to look at what it takes to develop a big picture healing plan and how that plan can help you.

Matt Robinson is a digestive illness coach. He helps people with digestive illness to optimize their healing path. He was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis in 2002, and has been living medication-free since early 2009. You can read more articles like this one, or schedule a free coaching session at his website: Naturaldigestivehealing.com

The post The Big Picture: How Having a Plan Can Transform Your Healing Path appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

I played on several softball leagues last summer and during one all-day tournament I was in, a sharply hit ball came up the middle. I started ranging from my shortstop position and when it was clear I wouldn’t get there in time, I dove. Stretched out horizontal, I thought for sure I was going to make ESPN on this one, but I didn’t… and when I started getting up I knew immediately something was wrong with my shoulder.

10 days ago, I went under the knife to repair a labrum tear (SLAP / Bankart lesions) in my left shoulder. I was scared, I’m not going to lie. Recently, I lost one of my best friend’s Dad due to complications from an elective surgery (RIP – Rob) and it weighed heavy on my mind.

Thankfully, it was successful, lots of love to modern medicine and my surgeon!

But it wasn’t a decision I took lightly.

First, I Tried to Figure Out All My Options

After going insane checking out all the angles, it turns out if the body can’t heal cartilage damage in the labrum in the first 6 months after the injury it is basically impossible for the body to reattach the cartilage. It was either surgery, plus a lengthy rehab, or I would have to cope with early onset arthritis and decreased range of motion (ROM) later in life.

The MRI results showed damage around the bottom of my labrum, called a Bankart lesion and potentially a SLAP lesion. The doctor thought it looked typical of what he sees on a daily basis. But I still pressed him hard on all kinds of questions, to which he told me he does about 300 of these a year and works regularly with college athletes (MSU) and explained why all my crazy alternative methods wouldn’t apply in this situation, I was confident I had the right guy.

The Full Story Isn’t Known Until They Open You Up

Huge thanks to my family and friends for the support and all the questions I laid on them. My sister, who has the most experience in this area (ACL surgery and exercise science degree), nailed it on the head. She told me the doctors can only tell so much from the Arthrogram (MRI) results and it is likely they could find more damage once they got in there.

She was spot on. The surgeon found a chunk of cartilage floating around near the tear. He also found that the tear was worse than he thought, the whole side of my labrum was detached from top to bottom. Lucky for me, all my tendons were in good shape. 5 sutures (think screws), 3 holes in my arm, and 2 hours later I was all put back together. The cool thing is the anchors are bioabsorbable…

Recovery starts with 4 weeks in a sling and very limited range of motion (ROM), rehab for a couple months, and full strength with ROM somewhere between 3 and 6 months. I’ve heard most people end up near 5 months, but obviously my goal is 3.

My sister gave me another great tip to talk with the surgeon about and find a rehab specialist who was younger, and on the cutting edge of rehab programs. She was adamant that I find someone who would modify the rehab program and push me as I progress, instead of just going by the book. I did just that and I start in a few days.

I didn’t stop there…

My SLAP Surgery Supplement Plan

It’s just my nature and I can’t help it. I have to push the boundaries and see what I can do to help. I consulted with Chris Kresser, Pubmed, and Tim Ferriss’s “4-hour Body.”

Here is the post-surgery supplement plan I’m following:

• A cup of bone broth 2-3 times a day (at least 6 months)
• 2-3 servings of collagen a day (at least 6 months)
• Inflammatone 2 caps a day (2 months)
• 4 tablespoons of flax seed oil (at least 6 months)
• 4 caps FCLO/Butter oil (6 months)
• Glucosamine and Chrondroitin (at least 6 months)
• Eat SCD with minimal cheats and fermented foods
• Lots of sleep and low stress
• Faithfully do the home rehab exercises
• If needed, I’ll add Cissus Quadrangularis

With the additions above, I will be creating a massive influx of all the nutrients needed to repair collagen, cartilage, ligaments, and bone (K2 from the butter oil). I will also be working hard to keep inflammation low and keep my body focused on my injury… and not fighting saber tooth tigers.

I’ll try to give you an update as I progress through rehab and let you know what I think helped! And I’d love to hear if you have any tips for recovery or share your surgery experiences below.

The post SLAP – Bankart Shoulder Surgery appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Today sucks. Today I don’t feel good.

I have been on the SCD Diet for almost two years and I still have bad days every once in a while. I have to preface that the last few months my digestion has been flawless – nothing but better and better days.

Then, all of the sudden I started feeling bad last night and today I have been in-and-out of the bathroom at work. Today is an SCD setback for me. Tomorrow, I know I will be fine and I want to share with you why I know that and the psychology I use to beat my SCD setbacks.

If you can learn what I am going to share with you and implement it on your down days, you will be able to control emotional cheating days, quiet the voice in your head telling you it’s pointless, and alleviate the constant drive to use Google to diagnose your latest ailment.

Good Psychology = SCD Success

This diet is more mental than anything else. More than the food, more than the sickness, more than the social anxiety – this diet is about your head.

The good days are great and the bad days suck. But the reality of it is that you’re getting better, albeit slowly, you’re getting better and better.  But it’s so easy to ride those highs and let those lows drown you. Trust me I have been through many of them.

If you’re anything like I was at first this morning, as soon as you start to get that inkling that something down there is going wrong the voice in your head starts to gets loud.  Here’s how my morning went:

“God, I feel like crap – I wonder what it could have been?”

“Maybe it was the new batch of sauerkraut I made the other day”

“No, no that can’t be it. It must be that I ate too much avocado over the last two days”

“No it can’t be that, I wonder if it was the raw broccoli I ate last night?”

“Dang, this sucks, I should just fast all day and eliminate some things from my diet.”

“I wonder what Google has to say about this?”

STOP RIGHT THERE!

Once you fall off the deep end and start Googling, it’s over. You’re going to be chasing a new diagnosis like “fungus of the left earlobe” or something, and soon enough you will be ordering a super secret herb that you can’t pronounce from some place in China that is sure to cure you.

How do I get through a setback anyway?

It’s all in your head. And I have to keep telling myself that this morning and all day. I’ve used the following four step process to use psychology to beat an SCD setback:

Step 1: Accept that I don’t feel good today and be OK with it. I just realize I am sick today and I just ride it out like a wave. It will crash to the shore eventually and I know I will feel better. The number one thing is to know that I am sick, communicate that to the people I love, and make an effort not to make any big decisions today (like buying that new car that might make me feel emotionally better for five minutes).

Step 2: I stop panicking about what caused it. I logically open up my food journal and review what I have been eating. If nothing is obvious like “I tried raw almonds last night,” then I am just going to make sure I don’t overreact. In many cases, it’s not even related to food! Sleep and stress have more to do with your digestion than you might ever want to admit to yourself.

Step 3: I take a step back and review my journal to see, how was I feeling 30 days ago? How was I feeling 90 days ago? How was I feeling a year ago? That really puts things in perspective for me. I know that a year ago, I was just happy to be able to hold a poop for 20 minutes. Now, I get cranky if I get gas! That’s important to review because it tells you the big realization of “I am getting better slowly over time.” There are going to be ups and downs – you just can’t let yourself follow them.

Step 4: I make sure not to give into emotional decisions that I will regret (like chugging half a bottle of honey). It’s so easy to fall into the trap of, “I already feel like crap today, what’s it going to hurt if I just eat a whole batch of SCD blueberry muffins.” When I am looking for emotional comfort during a setback I “change my mental state.” So, do something physical like 10 push-ups, or chug a glass of water, or brush your teeth (thanks for that one Paul). Do something to change your mental state away from emotional and stop thinking about that emotional comfort.

If you follow these 4 steps carefully to use psychology to beat an SCD setback, you will be able to control emotional cheating days, quiet the voice in your head telling you it’s pointless, and alleviate the constant drive to use Google to diagnose your latest ailment.

Remember that sometimes it really isn’t about the food. There are so many extraneous things that can affect digestion. Once you get a good diet in place, you’re simply going to have setbacks that you can’t explain every once in a while. I know by looking at my food journal that I really didn’t change much. So, I also I know that tomorrow I will probably be fine and back to another upswing, even if I keep eating the same things. Now, if I’m still feeling bad four days from now, it’s probably something I’m eating and I would start to get more serious. The point is: I don’t overreact.

These are all parts of a bigger picture. 90% of the SCD Diet is mental (seriously), which is why the first two chapters of our eBook are all about your brain and how to use it to be successful. If you want to learn more about using psychology to ensure your SCD success and get through any SCD setback, click here to see what I mean: “SCD Lifestyle – Surviving to Thriving.”

What tricks do you use to get through setbacks? Leave a comment. Maybe it will help someone else if they don’t feel good today.

– Jordan

The post How to Use Psychology to Beat Any SCD Setback appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

But based on some reader feedback it seems some of you are still interested in how I’m doing.  So without further ado here we go; I’m still doing SCD and I’ve gone through all the stages and basically tried all the legal foods.  I’ve even experimented with some non-legal foods (experimented sounds so much nicer than cheated right?).

But The Big Question is How Am I feeling?

If I had so sum it up I would say “Stupendous” okay so I got the thesaurus out for that one, no but really how I feel right now is so far above what I could have ever imagined its really incredible.  My productivity and energy for life is through the roof in all areas of my life.  I never really understood how much my digestion and IBS problems stole from me on a hourly basis, let alone when you add that time up over a week.

In the past month alone I’ve taken a new much more involved role at work, been working feverishly here on the blog, completed a sprint triathlon, and won 2^nd place in my softball league!  Seriously though I can’t explain to you how nice it is to spend my mental energy on my passions and not worrying about drugs, supplements, doctor’s appointments, or long term health concerns.

It truly is the most freeing transformation that I’ve ever experienced.  Getting my health handled has opened so many doors for me its truly a blessing.

So What Changed Over The Last Couple Months?

I believe several key areas finally came together for me.  I got a better handle on my Candida overgrowth, my smelling came back with a simple SCD tweak, and after several experiments (cheats) with illegal foods I had another mental break through.

With regards to my Candida that I discovered via a Genova Stool Analysis here, I tried the natural route for awhile but after more research I went back to my doctor and asked for a prescription for Nystatin.  I’m now in the middle of month two of three, within the 2^nd week of starting Nystatin I noticed cravings for fruits, sugars and alcohol decline significantly.  In order to help my battle with Candida I’ve been doing a very low sugar/fructose SCD diet.  I might eat some honey once every 2 weeks and my fruit consumption is down to a cup of berries every couple days.

I can smell!  Which turns out is really cool except when other people have digestive problems but hey I’m in no position to judge.  What happened?  When I originally started the diet I gave up cow’s dairy for awhile but my smell was no where to be found.  Then I stumbled on some research suggesting that I had a zinc deficiency which I wholeheartedly believe was the first part of solution.  But after getting my zinc levels back up the smelling just wasn’t there either, that is until a few weeks ago when I gave up cow’s dairy.

Several weeks ago I got into see an amazing allergist who tested me for environmental and food allergies using a combination of serial endpoint titration (SET) testing and sublingual immunotherapy testing (SLIT).  This is not your normal allergy skin prick testing.  The result of getting shot up with all kinds of allergens was the conclusion that I have real allergies to wheat, corn, soy, yeast, dairy and a few molds and mites.  Turns out following the SCD diet was a pretty good choice.  But like we’ve been talking about a lot lately every food in the SCD diet needs to be treated like a potential problem.  Five days after stopping dairy my smelling was back full force and has stayed around!

My Big AH HA Moment!

Now for the illegal experiments, first off there a good reason why Elaine advised us to not try illegal foods until you’ve been symptom free for at least a year.  I can attest to the fact that I’m by no means ready to eat my old western diet without serious digestive and mental side effects.  Other than a few all out weekends that reminded me why I started this journey what about a chocolate bar or some organic corn tortilla chips or dried sugar laced fruits?

What I realized is while the digestive problems tortilla chips or chocolate produced were easy to deal with (gas, loose stools), they seriously crush my productivity.  They cause me all kinds of blood sugar problems, my emotions become gloomy, and mental clarity is compromised because I’m always wondering what if…I react, it hurts, I’m okay, I eat more, I eat less and countless others.

The “Ah Ha!” moment was that while these foods might offer a quick hit of pleasure either from the sugar or because I can participate in a social gathering without my own foods they leave me feeling USED, SAD, and generally SURPRISED that they aren’t what I’ve built them up to be.  My body and mind function so much better when I don’t subject them to these antagonists that it would be disrespectful to my body to continue.

What You Can Learn From My Story

I really can’t stress enough that the way I feel now is so much different and better than my original health goal.  I never could have predicted it.  If you can learn anything from my experiences I hope it is the fact you need a health goal to focus and direct your actions, then as you heal it should be re-examined.  Each time you figure out a new piece of the puzzle take the time to reflect on how far you’ve come and where you think you could go next.

If you are unsure how to do this, or just rather overwhelmed with all this healthy talk, I want you to know that I’ve been there and I can relate.  When I started my SCD journey close to a year ago now, I never could have related to what I’m talking about now.  That is precisely why we have spent countless hours experimenting, researching and creating the mental mind-set chapter in our book.  If you haven’t checked it out yet go here to see what you will learn.

Until next time, if you have any comments or questions about my recent breakthroughs please leave them in the comments section below.

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal – Reaching New Health Levels appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 26 Summary

Coconut is a really amazing fruit.  There are so many coconut products that are great to use in our natural diet from coconut water, coconut milks, coconut oils, and even the coconut meat.  Elaine recommends waiting 6 months before using coconut, but from what I’ve seen she was referring to the meat and milk portions of the coconut.  That means as soon as you read this you should go out and find some coconut oil and try and find some coconut water if you’re interested.  I really don’t think there is a better oil for cooking than coconut.  It stands up to heat much better than most oils and with natural anti-fungal characteristics it is perfect for people with digestive problems.

Coconut water is a naturally isotonic drink that is basically mother natures Gatorade.  It contains really high amounts of potassium and magnesium as well as full spectrum of other electrolytes.  I personally have started drinking coconut water after hard training sessions or whenever I’m feeling really dehydrated.  It tastes like slightly milky water and has a rather neutral taste to me.

While I’ve been using coconut oil for several months and the water for a week or two, last week was the first time that I tried coconut milk.  I made my normal SCD slop recipe but this time I left out all the tomatoes and added a whole can of coconut milk with plenty of cayenne pepper.  It turned the dish into a soupy Thai-like dish.  It was pretty good but I think I can do better.  In the future I’m going to continue playing with coconut milk and my goal is eat at least a can a week because of all of the amazing health properties.

GENOVA STOOL TEST

I had my appointment with my doctor a few weeks ago to discuss my Genova Stool test results.  I’m just now updating everyone because it wasn’t until last week that I’ve actually gotten around to taking action based on the results of the test.

The test results were very enlightening and its weird to say, but some what disappointing.  What I found out is I

actually have a very good amounts of beneficial bacteria (+4 out of 4 for most), however I also have some Candida albicans.  I did find out that I’m also having a slight problem digesting fats but nothing significant.  So why were these test results disappointing?  Simply because I’m never going to get my scapegoat diagnosis.  I will never be able to totally claim Celiac disease, H. Pylori, or extreme Candida.

People who have those diagnoses are probably appalled that I have some weird want to have a their problems.  They are probably right, as I get better and better, people are noticing my improved quality of life they are starting to care less about what a “doctor” says I have.  I find it strangely interesting how I should have been extremely thankful (I AM) when the doctor told me nothing was wrong but I had this big emotional let down when nothing clinically showed up.  Going forward I think I’ll stick with gut dysbiosis (sounds better than IBS to me).

That was a little tangent but back to the results of the test, based on having the +1 for Candida (out of 0-4) the doctor wanted me to start a round of an anti-yeast drug called Sporanox.  He also told me I could go at naturally with S. Boulardii but recommended at least a month of the prescription drug.  After doing my due diligence on Sporanox I’ve decided I want to give it a go naturally with diet and some helpers.  If you remember, I’ve already done a stack of undecylenic acid with berberine and while I’m sure that helped it obviously didn’t get everything.  This time I’m going to come at the yeast with a triple stack that I think is going to be more potent.  I’m going to try a stack of S. Boulardii, oregano oil and coconut oil.

Has anyone else beat their Candida by using diet and natural remedies?

Back to SCD Lifestyle

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 26 – Coconut Water is Mother Nature’s Gatorade! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 25 Summary

I had a big scare last week, after a rather enjoyable 30 seconds on the toilet I got up to see the water stained a dull red!  My heart started racing and my mind started running, my first thought was how could I have caused my fissure to act up?  Upon further examination I ruled this thought out as the blood color was too dark to be what I considered fissure blood.  Now the irrational thoughts started coming at me from every direction, “Was I actually bleeding further up in my digestive tract?” finally, I couldn’t take it so I called Jordan.

I think it is so important to have someone else to talk to who is doing or done the SCD diet, in a matter of seconds with his outside perspective my fears were squashed.  He just asked me what I changed in my diet, I was rather annoyed at first because, duh, I already asked myself that question.  Nothing, was the answer.  I didn’t eat anything different that day.  He pressed me a bit harder and asked what I had changed that week and I told him I added beets within the last 2 days.  That’s when he pretty much smacked me in the forehead and told me calm down that it was most likely just remnants of the beets I ate a day before.

So I gave it 2 days and stopped eating beets and sure enough my red stools disappeared.  I then ate some more just to test out the theory and what do you know, a day after I ate them I had red stools.  To me this is a very important reminder that it is all to easy to draw irrational and wrong conclusions when faced with a challenge that carries huge emotional outcomes like poor digestion does for me.  The basic lesson I learned… it’s important to have support from someone that has no ties to your own emotional outcome.

Other than the different colored stools, my digestion is still rocking along even though I’ve started snacking on some fresh blueberries in my yogurt.  I was pretty excited to learn that my O.D. on fresh fruit at the family party over the weekend wasn’t a digestive set back.  For good or bad I took that as a stepping stone to take a bit more liberty and start working fresh foods back into my diet.  I will continue cooking meats and vegetables, but honestly, I don’t like cooked fruit much and therefore haven’t been eating hardly any.  It is nice to enjoy some fresh fruit again!

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

This week I want to talk about SCD diet staples.  Studies have shown that most people eat the same 10-15 foods in a given week.  We all like to think that we eat an extremely diverse diet but it’s simply untrue.  As humans we are actually very predictable creatures in search of easy autonomous habits.  Taking this knowledge to heart can really help simplify the SCD diet.  For instance, two ways in which I embrace my need for stability and habit are having the ingredients on hand to produce my two favorite go-to SCD meals.  One of them takes roughly 20 minutes to make and the other about 5 minutes.

Weekly SCD diet Staple #1

Specific Carbohydrate Slop

The details of this dish vary depending on my fridge and creativity each week but the outline is always the same.  Using 1-3 pounds of

ground beef (venison, chicken, turkey etc.) brown it up in a large pan.  Next, I usually take a 1 pound frozen stir-fry vegetables mixture or a mixture of any other frozen vegetables I have on hand and put them in the microwave for 15 minutes.  As the meat browns make sure to add your favorite spices.  When the meat is cooked and the vegetables are thawed and cooked its time to drain them and combine them with the meat in the pan on the stove.  If your diet can handle tomatoes, now you can take the completely random slop mixture up to another level by adding any tomato mixture you might have on hand.  Combine the meat and veggies with sauce on the stove for just long enough to mix the flavors and evenly heat all parts (5 minutes or so).  In the end, the dish ranges from a chili like dish to a stir-fry like concoction that can be made from frozen ingredients in under 30 minutes and tastes great.  If your dish ends up low on flavor and tomatoes aren’t a part of your diet try some of the following that I use: red-wine vinegar and honey, a can of coconut milk with cayenne pepper or tons of butter and minced garlic.

Emergency SCD Legal Meal

The “Ah Crap I _______________ (forgot X at the grocery store, don’t have time, etc.) meal”

I always like to have a can of SCD legal tuna or chicken in my cupboard.  The first thing I do is reach for it and then take a survey of my fridge.  This dish is the ultimate wing it meal.  I usually keep tuna so that’s what I normally use, but the first step is to put the can of tuna in a bowl.  Now from here there really isn’t a recipe basically just throw in anything or everything you have into a bowl and heat in the microwave.  Some examples of my 5 minute concoctions include:

Tuna, Salt, Pepper, Honey and Cayenne pepper

Tuna, any cheese and spices

Tuna, spinach leaves, cheese, red wine vinegar

Tuna, any SCD legal tomato sauce (paste, salsa, marinara, Campbell’s juice, diced fresh), and anything else always tastes good

After the random combo is chosen, heat in the microwave for 1 to 2 minutes until ingredients are evenly heated.

The take away message that I’ve learned from the recipes above is that cooking SCD style can be quicker and easier than SAD cooking.  When you start with natural healthy foods it is extremely hard to come up with a combination that tastes bad.  There is just something special that happens when you combine a bunch of non-processed ingredients together. Build off my recipe framework above and try and make your own random SCD legal combo, I dare ya!  Post your successes or failures below for people to learn.

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 25 – Fast and Easy SCD Legal Meals appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 24 Summary

Oh what a good weekend, the weather here in the Midwest allowed me to fully enjoy my 3 day weekend filled with

family time and golf.  Digestion was extremely reliable and that allowed me to concentrate on being present and having fun.  Sometimes I’m still in awe of how I feel compared to 6 months ago.

Last week I made a heck of a run at making kale chips.  I’ve never ate kale before and after seeing several bloggers making kale chips I had to give it a go.  First up, the good news is kale and I are friends, no digestion issues whatsoever.  Now for the bad news, kale chips are apparently my cooking Achilles heal.  The first go round ended up with most of the “chips” being half burnt or completely burnt.  The next round I swore the chips were done, no browning and hard when they were pulled out of the oven.  But, a couple hours later they were soggy leaves of salt!

I’m really hoping that the 94 degree heat with super high humidity around here just sort of ruined them otherwise these leaves are going to end my successful baking run.  Let the record show that there were a couple kale chips that were not burnt and tasted very good with several of my non-SCD family members liking them.

In other diet news this week, I got into some fresh fruit at my family party.  The fresh blueberries and cherries tasted amazing and didn’t cause me any digestive repercussions.  I couldn’t help myself the amount of food my family puts out during parties is ridiculous.  I didn’t really feel bad about eating them because they are SCD legal but I was a bit worried that my body might not be ready.  That doesn’t seem to be the case and going forward I think I might start trying some fresh fruit here and there.

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

This week I had intended on putting some kale chip pictures out for all to see but that was big fail so instead I want to talk about how my family is changing because of my SCD journey.  As is the same for probably all people who start the SCD diet in the beginning there was plenty of rumblings from parents, siblings, grandparents, friends etc.  Some things were encouraging, but most were skeptical and it is safe to say that initially, plenty took my diet as an insult to their diet… or way of life.

In the beginning and for the majority of the first 3 months on this diet, I usually felt like the social black swan.  Probably some of those feelings were just my own insecurities but there were times in which I was in social situations and was peer pressured to go along with the SAD diet.  These were hard times for me and I ended up straying from the diet several times in the beginning during these situations.  Now fortunately, in the last couple months as I’ve really started to own my digestion and diet, some remarkable things have been happening.

Several months back I wrote a post of a family party gone wrong, I was knocked back on the fence defending the SCD

diet and my food choices everywhere I turned.  This past weekend was a totally different and an awesome change, this time I was being asked to dole out advice on everything from food to supplements to fat loss.  Never in a million years would I have imagined discussing nutrition labels, saturated fat or vitamin D levels with my grandparents.  My mom and dad now read food labels just because they are curious.  It seems the longer I stay on this diet getting better and shouting its benefits to all that will listen to me, the more people around me are unconsciously changing.  It is really exciting to see my family and friends decide to improve their lives based on food choices.

If you find yourself in a position like me fielding questions from people looking to feel better but not ready to start the SCD diet here are the top 3 things I tell everyone:

1.  Stop eating grains, all of the them!  Try it for a week.

2.  Don’t eat anything that has more than 5 ingredients on the package

3.  If you cannot pronounce an ingredient on a package you probably shouldn’t eat it

Has anyone else observed positive healthy changes in the people in their lives as a result of doing SCD diet?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 24 – The Kale Chip Fail! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 23 Summary

Wow, I’ve been extremely busy this week and this Journal entry is pretty late!  Because of that I’m going to keep it short and sweet.  Last week I had a very stable digestive week, possibly slightly improved from a BM stand point.  I’ve been trying extremely hard to get at least a cup of goat’s milk yogurt each day and I think it has been really helping my stool quality.

I did add a few new variables to my diet last week.  I added watercress to my diet and didn’t react to it.  I couldn’t find any watercress by themselves instead I found a frozen vegetable mix that contained watercress.  I made what is going to be a new  staple in my diet… a quick and dirty stir fry.  I browned 2lbs of ground meat and added the whole package of mixed veggies.  I then added some red wine vinegar, a bit of honey and some spices (salt, pepper, cayenne pepper) to achieve a very nice sweet and hot flavor.

I also added some jalapeno peppers to the my diet.  I started by using some fresh peppers de-seeded and cooked in a dish early last week and then later I found some pickled Jalapeno peppers that don’t have any extra ingredients.  I used them in my quick and dirty stir fry above to add a bit of PoP!  Just be careful with the Jalapeno’s, they can really inflame the digestive track if they aren’t used in moderation.

My allergies are still killing me and I’m having a hard time breathing through my nose but when I can breathe I can usually smell!  At this point I really just wish I could breathe better (don’t get into see the allergist for another couple months).

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

Over the last month I’ve attended several events in which I knew I would love a summer cocktail but wouldn’t be able to drink anything the host was providing.  With the 4th of July holiday weekend approaching I figured I would share my current favorite SCD legal summer cocktail recipe.  After trying several recipes I have to thank Carrie Floyd over at Culinate Kitchen for posting the Kimmy drink because it is by far my favorite.  I put an extra spin on the original recipe and made a party sized batch so I will put those measurements in quotes. The prep time is a bit more than usual because of the mint syrup but it’s not as bad as the many summer cocktails that contain pounds of fresh fruit that need to be diced up.  It has an awesome fresh taste that is somewhere between a gin and tonic and a mojito.  The drink can also be made non-alcoholic by removing the gin and using extra club soda (non-flavored carbonated water).

The Kimmy

1 shot gin – (1 fifth of gin, I like Tanqeray)

1/4 cup lemon juice (juice of 6-8 lemons)

1/4 cup lime juice (juice of 6-8 limes)

1/4 cup mint simple syrup (see how to make mint simple syrup below)

Carbonated water to taste (2 liters of soda water)

Mint leaf for garnish

Make sure to pour the drink mixture over a glass of ice when serving and if your making the party sized drink use a container that is around 1 gallon in size.

Mint Simple Syrup

1 cup of mint leaves

1 cup of honey

1 cup of water

Step 1. Bring mint leaves, honey and water to a boil in a small sauce pan then reduce heat

Step 2. Simmer for about 15 minutes, strain into new container making sure to force liquid out of leaves

I want to wish everyone a safe and fun holiday weekend (for readers in the USA).  If anyone else has a great SCD legal summer drink recipe please post it below, Thanks.  Relax and Enjoy!

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 23 – SCD legal Summer Cocktails appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 22 Summary

Man I really hope these journals don’t get boring but honestly my digestion has been very stable lately.  I am still not quite where I want to be, but usually I’m averaging a 3 or a 4 on the Bristol Stool chart.  The reason I say I’m not quite there yet, is I’m still getting the occasional 2 and honestly I would rather be bouncing between a 4 and a 5 on the chart.  In case anyone is wondering I do average about 1.5 BM’s a day (some days 1 others 2 hence 1.5).  But overall it has been steady and relatively boring which is a good thing!

As I’ve noticed this trend it has sort of renewed my focus to push into more SCD legal foods.  I really want to concentrate on adding foods and progressing through the remaining phases.  Last week I started to make a concentrated effort to try new vegetables.  As you know I’m sort of giving up on broccoli for now but I figured I would give its cousin cauliflower a shot.

I actually don’t know if I’ve ever eaten just cauliflower, as far as I can remember its only been as part of mixed vegetables, but I really enjoyed the taste and it didn’t give me any digestion problems.  I bought organic cauliflower heads and cut up the florets and steamed them.  The first time I ate it I grated the florets down using a cheese grater to make it easier to digest and to simulate eating rice.  The next couple times as I finished off my leftovers I skipped the grating idea cause it just takes to dang long!

The second item of the week that I gave a go with was green peas.  For the peas I ended up buying organic frozen peas from Meijer.  I bought two bags and put them both into a glass bowl and then put some about a cup of water in the bottom.  I then put them in the microwave for 20 minutes on high.  The came out what I would say is about medium cooked, soft but not mush.  I put some sea salt on them and have been enjoying them for a couple days now without any problems.  I would like to caution people to really pay attention to chewing your food and especially peas as they have a outer shell that really needs to be ground up as much as possible before swallowing.

Looking ahead next week I have my follow up appointment with the doc so I will have a full report of my Genova Stool test and my blood work.  In the meantime I’m going to add the goats milk yogurt back in (its going on about 7 weeks since I last made some) to see if I can get rid of my random 2’s and get my average BM score up to the 4 – 5 range.

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

I’m thinking as this blog evolves we need to start having some more food porn and recipes for people on the SCD diet.  Now I know there are a ton of recipe sites out there but I want this section to focus on showing a newer cook that it is possible to make some amazing dishes even if you don’t know jack about being a real chef.

This week I got some frozen duck breasts from an avid hunter friend of mine and I wanted to make something special with it.  In the past whenever I cooked duck breasts it was on a grill smothered in BBQ sauce.   Now that I’m doing the SCD diet I can’t just go buy a bottle of HFCS BBQ sauce from the store and slather it on.  So I did some searching and decided to make my own recipe.

Below was my gourmet meal of the week, it was good, but not Emril POW! good.  I think this is because I messed up a few key areas.  First I cooked the duck breasts too long, they should only be cooked to medium, but some of mine ended up being well done and real tuff.  Second I boiled my sauce too long and overflowed it as well so I don’t think I used enough raspberries.  Below is my adjusted work in progress attempt at raspberry duck.

Duck Breasts

8 duck breasts

2 tablespoons of sea salt

Red Pepper flakes to taste (1 Tbl is a good start)

1 tablespoon coconut oil

Heat a large pan to medium heat while washing and drying the duck breasts.  Coat the duck breasts with sea salt and red pepper flakes.  Let the duck breasts stand for 15 min before cooking in the mean time put the coconut oil in the pan.  After the oil is melted put the breasts in and cook on each side for 3 to 4 minutes each depending on thickness of breast.  The goal here is to get them medium or medium rare.

Raspberry Sauce

1/2 cup dry red wine

1/4 cup honey

8 oz raspberry

2 teaspoon of Cinnamon

In a small pot combine the wine, honey, cinnamon and raspberries.  Bring the mixture to a rolling boil for about a minute or two.  Then reduce heat and simmer for another 10 minutes (if berries haven’t broken down you may need to mash them to break them up).  Then pour the sauce through a metal mesh strainer into a food container (use glass if possible).

If you want to get all fancy, steam and grate some cauliflower as a base, slice your duck breast and then drizzle with sauce!

Official warning: this is a work in progress, like I said, it was good but didn’t quite POP like I wanted it to….Any real chiefs out there want to weigh in on my mistakes?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 22 – SCD Legal Raspberry Duck on Cauliflower appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

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

Week 21 Summary

Another week down and another camping trip to fill you in about. But first I should mention that I tried broccoli again and this time I’m defiantly putting broccoli in the suspect category.  It wasn’t that it caused me horrible symptoms but I did notice a higher incidence of gas and my stomach made a bunch of noise after a couple meals that included it.  So until further notice broccoli is on my caution list and won’t be tried purposely for awhile.  Instead, I’m going to move on and start breaking into more vegetables in phase 3.  I’m still keeping fruit to a minimum until I get my stool test results back (Next week!).

I ran out of the anti-fungals I’ve been taking last week.  After my doctor’s appointment next week I will have a better idea of what or if I’m still dealing with bad bacteria/yeast.  I have noticed that since doing the round of anti-fungals my oral thrush is basically gone (encouraging).  But yeast problems are notoriously hard to get rid of so I’m not holding my breath. My BM’s stayed consistent last week rotating between 3’s and 4’s with the occasional 2.  I think it would good to note that I haven’t been eating any yogurt for 3 weeks now.  I plan to start again soon.

I am continuing to build my iodine dosage and haven’t had any side effects yet.  I’m currently taking 37.5 mg a day and next week I will bump it up to 50mg.  I plan on staying at that dosage for 3 full months and then dropping back down to a maintenance dosage.  I did do another zinc tally taste test and got some pretty strong taste sensations around the 10 second mark.  Much improved response after last week.  Unfortunately my allergies have got my nose so plugged lately that I can hardly breathe let alone smell.  However as dumb as it sounds I still get a big ol smile on my face when I randomly catch a wiff of some summer rain, a camp fire, or some fresh cut grass.

SCD CAMPING IS NATURAL

So last weekend I went on a guys weekend that included some golfing, fishing and camping.  It was great to get out of dodge and even though it would have been nice to catch more fish, any day on the water is better than a day at the office.  I do have to say camping SCD style is getting easier and easier.  It is natural to cook burgers on a grill, just make sure you pack your SCD legal cheese (don’t forget the Eden’s mustard if you can tolerate it!).

With all the natural foods that are allowed on the SCD diet camping can really is a breeze, this weekend I was stocked up with my standard camping diet of avocados, bananas and almond flour muffins but also I brought along a huge food container of pulled pork, cooked carrots and sautéed spinach.  I left the Lara bars home this weekend and while I do confess to eating my burger on non-cooked lettuce everything else was cooked and compliant to Phase 3.

Camping on the SCD diet, especially one that is not restricted by the phases, would be cake (almond flour that is).  I mean think of all the amazing SCD legal foods that are highly packable and taste great like raw carrots, raisins, any other fresh fruits, pre-washed and chopped raw veggies.  As far as meats go, pack the cooler with pre-cooked meats (cut up pork, chicken, etc) or just cook on the grill daily (burgers, chicken breasts, etc).  Honestly, it’s like it is NATURAL to eat SCD style while camping.  Many of my friends basically did this weekend other than their burger buns.

Now that I am thinking about it, it makes perfect sense, the SCD diet is extremely close to the Primal Diet.  My thinking is camping brings us as close as possible to the way our hunter gather ancestors lived.  It would only be logical then, that the easiest foods to eat and cook while camping would be the same ones that our ancestors did.  Never have I seen someone making bread in a campground.  Oh and it’s not really camping if you’re in an air conditioned trailer with TV, go spend the weekend in a tent and appreciate nature!

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

This past week, I was posed with a new SCD diet problem. I signed up to go on a fishing weekend knowing that at least 1 meal (usually as many as possible) would be fish and everyone I know loves to fry walleye in the golden standard Drake’s breading mix.  Drake’s of course, is NOT SCD legal, so if I was going to make this part of the trip as un-socially awkward as possible, I needed to find a suitable replacement.

I did some research and found plenty of homemade fish breading mixtures, but basically every single one of them included non-legal SCD flour. So, I decided it was time to invent my own. Without further ado:

Wright’s Walleye Breading

• 3 cups almond flour
• 2 tablespoons paprika
• 2 tablespoons sea salt
• 2 tablespoons fresh ground pepper
• 2 tablespoons garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon cayenne pepper

Make sure all your spices are SCD legal, make your own garlic powder if needed.  Just combine them in a ziplock bag and shake. You can then either bread the fish when the fillets are slightly moist or beat a few eggs up and dip them in the egg and then coat them with the almond flour mixture.  However, I would recommend the first approach… I tried both and once the almond flour got a bit of moister from the egg my mix was ruined.  This breading would probably taste great on chicken or turkey and I plan on trying it soon.

So how did the mixture stack up against the current walleye breading champion?  I loved it and most of my friends had nothing but thumbs up (all non-SCD’ers).  The jury is out on who is currently wearing the Walleye Breading Belt but I can tell you that weren’t any wasted fish with my breading on it.  The almond flour provides a very light crust (doesn’t retain the cooking oil) with a nice texture and my mix of spices has a decent kick of heat to spice it up a bit.

Let me know if you try the breading I would love to hear some more feedback!  Anyone else pan-frying or deep-frying fish out there?

– Steve

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 21 – Walleye fishing in the Saginaw Bay! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 20 Summary

Okay so my birthday wasn’t last week its actually today, but I did celebrate it with my family this past weekend.  My family overall has been skeptical but supportive of my Specific Carbohydrate Diet experience.  In our family, family meals are of high importance.

Food is a medium through which we can gather to bond, with many meals stretching over 2 hours of table time.  So in the beginning of this diet I did seem to hurt my mom’s feelings because I was excluding myself from the amount of love and time she was putting in kitchen.

Now that I’ve been doing this diet for 5 months and I have added back a pretty decent selection of foods, it has been much easier on her.  Since the beginning she has been making every effort to try and cook special meals that I can eat and the whole family enjoys.  It was always just a bit to hard in the first 3 months or so as I was eating a mixed pureed diet that was pretty basic.

Not anymore, for my birthday this weekend my mom made a wonderful SCD legal breakfast filled with scrambled eggs, sugar free bacon and fruit followed with the Carrot Cake recipe from BTVC.  There was an enormous amount of food on the table and it was cleaned by all (Yes in my experience “normal” people usually prefer SCD food). The carrot cake was extremely moist and delicious, so much so that I don’t think anyone even missed the standard American diet traditions of frosting and ice cream (it does taste even better loaded in butter!).

My diet was steady all week last week, I started taking my supplements again.  I had minimal gas and my BM’s were a mixture of 3’s and 4’s, I would say that’s a pretty solid sign that I’m still in need of some supplemental helpers.  After being urged by my doctor and doing some of my own research, I started Iodine supplementation last week.  I’m going to start slow at 12.5mg a day and build up to a daily dosage of 50mg for something like 4 to 6 months.  The research on Iodine is so absurdly beneficial without any downsides that I’m now urging anyone who will listen to either get tested or talk to some about starting to supplement!

SMELLING UPDATE

So I feel like I’ve made some significant progress in my ability to smell.  But in the past week I’ve seen some regression in my smelling abilities.  I’m guessing it has is related to my horrible allergies right now, and I don’t get into see the allergist till November.  Today when I performed my weekly zinc tally taste test I was surprised to find that I performed worse than last week.   Which means I’m going to continue to supplementing with zinc and I need to go find some copper to make sure i don’t deplete my copper levels.

That being said I do want to make it clear that on most days I’m still smelling significantly better than I was 3 months ago and I’ve made a 180 degree change from 6 months ago.  I don’t think I can contribute it to one specific action I’ve taken but I do feel strongly that a couple specific changes I’ve made have directly influenced my improvement.   I think the biggest improvements have come from following the SCD Diet, Fish oil, Vitamin D3, Netti pot and Zinc.

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

As I’ve learned more and more about cooking natural foods and using high quality sauces and spices my eyes have really been opened into a whole new world of flavors and fun.  Before the SCD diet I think I used 4 sauces (hot sauces, sugar laden BBQ sauce, store bought Italian dressing and salsa full of preservatives) and I would have argued with anyone how good they were on any dish.  I was content in my little world of dressings, thinking I knew flavor…ha not so much.

It is not that I look down on people who still use these sauces as they can be delicious, it is just the opposite… I feel bad for them.  The fact that the 95% of people probably use store bought sauces for all their meals really makes me sad as they are missing out on a whole world of amazingness (is that a word?)  My paradigm is rapidly changing from one in which I wish I could be apart of their world (SAD diet) to one in which I feel pity on the fact that they don’t know what they are missing.

Anyways, enough ramblings, I did want to share my current spice mixture that I’ve been playing around with on everything from baked pork tenderloins to grilled chicken breasts.  It consists of a 4 main spices: paprika, cayenne pepper, cinnamon and ginger.  Now, sometimes I put other spices in there such as salt, garlic, and pepper, but the main 4 are constants.  I’m not ready to give any specific ratio yet as I haven’t perfected it, but I will say keep the cinnamon and cayenne pepper at about a 1:2 ratio and the keep the ginger at about the same amount of cayenne, then load on the paprika.  This will get a very decent spicy yet sweet mixture that has been receiving rave reviews from my family and friends.  I use it mainly as a dry rub and it really does work better when everything is measured out rather than winged because it’s easy to overdo any one of the these spices.

Does anyone else have any secret spice rub mixtures they’d like to share?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 20 – Celebrating My Birthday SCD Style appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 19 Summary

Last week was an adventure, in more ways than one…stool tests, no pills and camping, Oh My!  I stopped taking any pills last Sunday in order to properly perform the Genova Diagnostics Stool Test.  Pretty much all the digestive helpers I take would skew the test results and even though I could have continued taking my multivitamin, fish oil and vitamin D3 I figured why not give my whole body a week’s rest.  I’m a firm believer in only taking the essentials and always keeping your body on its toes so I figured my body wouldn’t mind a bit of a break.  I can’t wait for the day when I’m down to a few simple vitamins a day instead of the mountains of pills I take each week while I’m healing!

Because you have to be supplement free for 3 days prior to taking the test and then the test lasts 3 days I figured I would just stretch it out until I was back into my normal routine on Tuesday.  I’ve been on many of these supplements for over 4 months and I had a decent amount of anxiety wrapped up in quitting them.  I honestly thought that 8 days without probiotics and digestive enzymes and I might be back where I started last year.  Lucky for me that wasn’t the case.

The first couple days of the week I had quite a bit of noise and movement in my stomach after eating, none of which were painful, only slightly annoying.  As the days dragged on the noise and digestive uneasiness subsided by about day 5.  I really didn’t have any other big problems, my BM’s all week were about 80% 2’s.  Which isn’t exactly ideal but was way better than 1’s or 7’s I thought I was in for.  I was never constipated and had at least one bowel movement each day and couple of doubles (Score!).  I did only eat yogurt for the first 3 of those days as I really didn’t want there to be anything that could mess up this test.

Camping On the SCD Diet

Last weekend was Memorial weekend here in the United States and first off I would like to thank all the current members of our armed services and all of our veterans.  Without their sacrifices none of us would even have the time to work on our “health” as we would be most likely too busy dodging bullets or working in the fields.

In honor of the fact that I got a 3 day weekend, some friends and I went camping for the weekend.  For the record none of these friends are fellow SCD’ers and several I just meet recently.  In order for it to be a successful SCD weekend for me, especially on zero digestive helpers, I knew I was going to have to plan everything to a T.  In fact, after it was all said and done it was relatively easy and I had no problems at all having enough food and keeping my food separate from everyone else’s (Brought my own cooler).

I prepared a bunch of food last Thursday including chopped chicken breasts and cooked carrots for me to eat and I chopped up some lettuce and some other fresh veggies for the rest of the group that I knew I could fall back on if needed (SCD legal just more advanced in their raw form).  I also pulled out a batch of almond muffins from my freezer that I made last week.  I stocked up on plenty of bananas and avocados.  Lastly, I picked up a couple Lara bars if anything were to go horribly wrong, but it didn’t and I ended up bringing them back home with me.

For breakfast each day I ate 2 muffins and a banana, for lunch I ate my chopped grilled chicken cold with some cold carrots.  For dinner each night I ate burgers which everyone else at as well but I was using my own grill and I did the cooking so I controlled all the variables.  I did use some chopped up lettuce as “buns” for my burgers and used some of my Eden’s mustard for flavoring.  I know I’m not supposed to have uncooked lettuce just yet (its a more advanced food in the phases) but I gambled a bit in the name of camping and burgers.  I also ate raw avocado whenever I was hungry in between meals, sometimes in the morning or afternoon.

Digestively I fared pretty well, I continued having my one to two bowel movements each day with mixture of 2 and 3 on the quality scale all weekend.  My stomach was never upset and I was able to enjoy the time I had at the beach and being outdoors.  Camping while on the SCD diet ended up being much easier for me than several other social gatherings I have participated in (bachelor parties, family parties, bars etc…) and I would highly recommend people who are doing the SCD diet to look into it for a summer vacations.

Did anyone else go on vacation this past weekend?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 19 – Camping on the SCD diet appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

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

Week 18 Summary

Steady Eddy, that’s how my digestion was last week.  My BM’s are continuing to jump around on the Bristol Stool Chart between 3’s, 4’s, and 5’s.  All other digestive symptoms seem to be staying relativity stable (on a weekly time frame) for now.  Everything is not quite where I wish it was but I’m still light years ahead of December of last year.  My hypothesis is the last phases of healing and optimizing digestion will take the longest.

As for changes in my diet, I did try my hand at baking some of Elaine’s muffins from the recipe section of BTVC.  Over the course of the week I made 3 different batches of muffins, each time getting better and having the muffins turn out tastier.   But more on that later, the exciting thing was eating one or two muffins a day (Okkkay I did some other taste testing) didn’t negatively impact my digestion!  I also tried broccoli for the first time this weekend, I loved broccoli before starting the SCD diet so I’ve been itching to add it back in.  Unfortunately the jury is still out on whether my body totally agrees with it. I’m going to continue eating it over the next couple days but I did notice much more gas and bloating than normal the day after starting the broccoli.

I’m not ready to toss my steamed broccoli out just yet because my symptoms may be caused by another change I’m currently making.  After my long awaited appointment with a Pro-SCD naturally-minded doctor in my area he gave me a Genova Stool Test Kit.  Fortunately for me I get to do this sweet test that is finally going give me a much better understanding of what is happening in my body.   Unfortunately, to take the test correctly you have to stop all supplementation for 3 days prior to the 3 day test (total of 6 days with no digestion helpers).  Yesterday was my first day of no pills and also the day after broccoli so therefore I’m in a bit of conundrum.

My new found ability to smell is amazing and its continuing to improve, even though my allergies are killing me and my nose is like a faucet right now.  Since I won’t be supplementing with anything this coming week, I will test my zinc levels next week but I’m still planning on at least one more week of supplementation.

Going To The Doctors Office

As I mentioned earlier, I finally got in to see a Pro-SCD doctor (Dr. Will in East Lansing, MI), and being that this was my first appointment with a pro-SCD doctor I figured I would let everyone know what tests I asked for and which ones he recommended.  Remember I’ve been self-diagnosing and self-supplementing since January when I started the SCD diet.  The appointment went really well and we were both basically on the same page.   He agreed to check everything I requested and also brought up a couple good points (like if I continue the zinc supplementation he wants me to go get some copper) and urged me to start supplementing with Iodine.

So what did I end up getting tested for?  As I said above, I left his office with a large Genova Stool Test kit (like the size of 4 bricks!) this will give me very good snap shot of all my gut flora levels.  I also wanted to get into to see an allergist to check for food and environmental Igg allergies (delayed onset), for which he agreed to.  I also wanted to check my Vitamin D3 levels as well as just get a regular comprehensive panel to make sure all my regularly checked health markers were still in the good shape (comp panel checked out great Oct. 2009 when my blood test for Celiac disease came back negative and I was diagnosed with IBS again).  In addition to those blood tests mentioned above the Doc wanted to check my Magnesium and Vitamin K2 levels.

Introducing The Star Of The Show

I’ve been on this diet over 4 months and this is the first time I’ve tried almond flour, and lets just say I’m a better artist (cook) than I am scientist (baker).  For my first go round with this new found food I decided to try and perfect Elaine’s muffin recipe.  So I jumped right in and preceded to burn the first batch I made :).   It is true what everyone says you have to watch almond flour like a hawk, at 15 mins the muffins weren’t done but at 20 min they were 4 min over-done. Bummer but a good learning lesson (burnt or not I still ate them).

The next batch I tried to make the recipe to the exact specifications listed in BTVC.  I have absolutely no baking experience but after overfilling the muffin cups again and having them turn out looking like rocky mountains, I was getting the picture that my batter wasn’t the right consistency.  I was also really overfilling each muffin cup and only getting 9 or 10 cups full (I used a 1/3 measuring cup the first time and 1/4 cup the 2nd).  This 2nd batch was another FAIL not because I burnt them (17 mins was perfect) but because they were drier than the Sahara Desert.

The third time was the charm, because finally in the last battle with the almond four I was able to bake some moist, properly sized muffins!  I ended up using the standard amount of honey called for in the recipe but I upped the butter to a whole stick.  This made my batter much easier to work with.  In order to get properly sized muffins I used a large spoon and spatula to fill each muffin cup up to the 1/2 way mark.  By just eye-balling the muffins I was finally able to get 12 muffin cups!

So what is my almond flour muffin recipe verdict? It was a great treat, especially warmed up in the microwave and coated in butter.  But I was a bit let down, I found that I needed to treat them more like a snack than a main course or a substitute for meat or vegetables.   Almond flour seems to be like cocaine in the SCD community, on the web it gets the most attention (good/bad), recipes, and seems to cause the most problems in beginners.  Because of all the attention, I had it built up in my mind that adding this nut flour was going to be an earth shattering experience.

I had this picture in my head that it was going to provide me with an extra dimension to my diet or that I needed to add it because of all the reports of how good of a fuel it would be for my body.  But when the dust settled I found myself sweating, burnt and craving my meat, veggies and fruit.

Now don’t get me wrong, almond flour seems to have its place as a great tasting/nutritious dessert/treat, but I am not convinced that I NEED it in my personal version of the SCD diet.  What’s your relationship with Almond Flour like?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 18 – Is Almond Flour Like SCD Cocaine? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 17 Summary

When thinking about writing this weeks post, the first thing that comes up is the fact that I’m about to finally see the doctor I’ve been waiting months to get into.  Based on the fact that I’ve been self diagnosing/medicating for the last several months, I’m pretty nervous to go in and hear what he has to say.  I’m making a big talking list so that hopefully I get all the tests I would like and bring up any problems I can think of.

I don’t have any earth shattering news to report other than I baked my first SCD cheesecake this week (I’m impressed with myself).  As a matter of fact, overall in the last three weeks I’ve seen small signs of improvements in all areas of my digestion but nothing groundbreaking.

Over the last couple weeks my gas got extremely bad and then slowly it has headed back towards normal.  That trend continued last week and now I’m back to what I would consider relatively normal (a couple small farts a day that don’t smell too bad and no cramping associated with the gas).  My stools have been going back and forth between 2’s,3’s,4’s and 5’s.  I do get some stomach noise and movement (not painful) about 50% of the time after a meal.  Energy and clarity are stable and tend to correlate with the amount of sleep I get (little sleep = not good for health).

I am back to eating goat’s milk yogurt, but I sure do miss the texture and taste of the cow’s milk yogurt I was making.  The next batch I make I’m going to try dripping the yogurt to see how that tastes.  I haven’t been adding anything to my diet lately mostly because I’m comfortable where I’m at and I’ve been messing with the supplements and yogurt so much that I didn’t want to change a bunch of things at once.  Next week I’m going to take a big step forward and test my baking skills using some almond flour, it should be interesting!

I SMELL AN UPDATE

Okay, so if you’ve been following along I’ve been supplementing with zinc in order to try and help my ability to smell.  I’m happy to report that it seems to be working, maybe its a placebo effect, but I know that my allergies have been acting up and my ability to breathe through my nose is much worse than what it was a month ago (the neti pot everyone morning reminds me).  However my smelling has been around a 5 or 6 most days and up to a 8 or 9 on occasion!

I re-performed the zinc tally taste test this morning and my results have dramatically changed in the past 2 weeks.  Two weeks ago I started supplementing with 50mg of zinc gluconate a day and for the last week I’ve been taking 100mg a day.  When I performed the test this morning, as soon as I put the solution in my mouth I noticed it tasted slightly sweet, then after 5-7 sec it started to change tastes to a metallic like taste (like if you put a penny in your mouth).  Now from what I understand about the test the metallic taste should have continued to evolve up until the 30 second mark either intensifying or changing flavors.  This unfortunately was not the case.

What this does tell me is my intracellular levels of zinc are much higher than what they were several weeks ago and I’m probably now around a level 2 on the zinc deficiency scale.  I’m going to continue supplementing at 100mg through the end of the week and retest my levels early next week.  I’m anticipating that I will be able to stop zinc supplementation sometime next week, but I will base this on the results of next weeks zinc tally test.

CURRENT SUPPLEMENT REGIME

As I’m going to see the doc this week I’m guessing my supplementation is going to change based his recommendations so I figured I would give an update to everyone.  If your are doing the SCD diet and are in any way restricted (have food intolerance/allergy or are in the early phases of the diet) I think it is extremely important for you to be supplementing to make sure you are getting all your needed vitamins and minerals as well as replacing your good bacteria and enzymes.  This is not intended in any way to be a list for everyone, this is what I take and it is put together solely based on what I am finding that I am deficient in.  Always talk things over with your doctor to make sure that they support your supplementation.  If they don’t support the SCD diet… find a new doctor!

Taken before each main meal (anything over 500 calories)

1 GI Pro Health Scdophilus 10+ (1 serving)

4 Freeda Betaine HCL (4 servings)

Taken during meals split throughout the day

6 GI Pro Health SCD Complete Multivitamin (1 serving)

1 Freeda B-Complex (1 serving)

5 Freeda Calcium Complete (1 serving)

5 drops of New Beginnings Nutritionals Methyl-Mate Sublingual B12 (1 serving)

1 GI Pro Health Vitamin D3 5000mg (1 serving)

6 GI Pro Health Omega Max (6 servings)

2 GI Pro Health Prozymes (1 Serving)

2 NOW Zinc Gluconate 50mg (2 Servings)

Split between meals

8 Thorne Research SF722 (2.5 servings)

4 Thorne Research Berbercap (2 servings)

Before Bed

2 Vital Nutrients Melatonin 3mg (2 servings)

Now that’s quite a pharmacy list of bottles, I’m honestly a bit shocked at how many different pills I take.  Someday I hope to have this list squeezed down to the bare essentials but for now each of the above supplements is needed while I heal.  Once I’m able to get a vitamin/mineral blood panel done I may be able to reduce or eliminate several but until then I’m not going to change what has been giving me great results.  In the near future I will most likely be dropping the zinc and all the Thorne products (the goal with them was to eliminate yeasts).

All you SCD’ers out there what do your supplement/medicine cabinets look like?  Hopefully there not worse than mine!

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 17 – What’s in Your Medicine Cabinent? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

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

Week 16 Summary:

Fixing my digestion can sure be frustrating sometimes.  Last week was another week that, looking back, all I can do is shake my head.  The first half of the week, my body and symptoms were all over the place.  Then, like the sun finally breaking through a cloud, something changed Wednesday and for the rest of the week I had amazing bathroom performances.  I was pegging the Bristol Stool scale at 4’s for 3 days, it was awesome!

Unfortunately my gas never went away, while it was minimized near the end of the week it is still much higher than “normal” or what I

would like it to be.  I have been with out yogurt for 3 days now so I’m not sure how that plays into the equation and I ran out of digestive enzymes over the weekend.  Looking forward to the week ahead as I will probably be all over the place again because I will finally have some supplements and I’m going back to the goat yogurt.

I did add raisins last week, I was looking for another snack type food.  Raisins can be problem foods for some because dried fruit is essentially a concentrated version of the normal fruit.  You end up getting the same nutrients from the raisin that you would from a grape but without the water which helps digestion. Also, because raisins are smaller and denser than grapes, it’s very easy to over eat them.  From a nutritional standpoint 1/4 cup of raisins is roughly equal to a cup of grapes and I’m sure there aren’t many of us who just eat a small handful of raisins.  Even though I was able to digest them, I can’t keep them in the house literally.  I ate way to many!

Learning A New Cooking Method

Sometimes I struggle to keep pork in my regular meat rotation.  Last week I picked up some pork tenderloins on sale.  Usually I would have seasoned them, wrapped them in tin foil and then baked the tenderloins at 400 for an hour or so.  The result was usually a decent flavored cut of pork that wasn’t bad to eat but it never really made my mouth water either. That all changed last week when I created the juiciest, most succulent, tenderloin I’ve ever eaten, I may now be addicted to pork!

I used a technique I learned called a dry rub.  For spices I used a salt, paprika, ginger, and cayenne pepper (but you can use any combo). The main point is don’t skimp on the quantity when your dry rubbing a meat.  I’m not including any specific spice amounts because I just winged it, but also because this is about learning new ways to cook not necessarily recipes.  The following steps are for using a dry rub spice mixture.

Tools: oven safe pan, meat thermometer, spices

1.  You want the tenderloin to be warmed up a bit before the cooking so get out of the fridge 30 mins ahead of time

2.  Pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees and heat up an oven safe pan on the stove top at medium to high heat with a light coating of oil (I used coconut)

3.  When your ready to get started wash and then dry the tenderloin with a paper towel or rag

4.  Pour your spice mixture on the meat, rubbing it into the meat and making sure to cover all sides (I created the mix in a little bowl ahead of time)

5.  Next drop your tenderloin into the pan and sear it on all sides until a nice brown outside coating is reached (about 3 mins a side)

6.  Transfer your tenderloin into the oven and set a timer for about 20 minutes

7.  Check your meat temperature, we are looking to pull it out of the oven around 150 degrees (160 is completely done according to the National Pork Board)

8.  When you achieve the proper temperature remove the tenderloin from the oven and cover it with foil for about 10 minutes (the temp will continue rising cooking it completely)

9.  After letting it sit, slice it up and it’s ready to serve, a nice spicy crunch on the outside with a tender, moist meat on the inside

Let me know what you think!  The Zinc article is still in the works just taking longer than expected.

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 16 – Learning New Cooking Techniques appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 15 Summary

This last week was pretty much an extension of the previous week’s symptoms.  I didn’t have a bowel movement for around 3 1/2 days and was starting to get pretty uncomfortable so I went out and got some prune juice.  I drank about 8 oz on Wednesday night

and 8 oz on Thursday morning and finally that afternoon the pipes started working again.  After that, I continued to drink about 8 oz a day throughout the weekend and was back to averaging one bowel movement a day.  Although I was able to shake the C, my BM’s were only of about 2 quality on the Bristol stool chart.  I also had more gas than I have had since starting the diet back in January.  I have had smelly loud gas all day everyday for about 10 days now.  I really hope that whatever is going on in there leads to the good guys starting to win the battle.

As Carol pointed out in the comments section last week, I may be experiencing the infamous 3 month setback referred to by Elaine in BTVC where she states, “At about the second or third month, there is sometimes a relapse even when the diet has been carefully followed.  This can occur if the person develops a respiratory infection or for no obvious reason.”

I’m going to continue to stay on my course with the diet this coming week and see if anything changes.  If this truly is the 3 month setback, then hopefully I will start seeing some improvements this week.  I still have enough yogurt to make it a couple more days but I’m going to do as Carol suggested and switch back to goat’s milk and see if anything changes.  Beyond that, I have stopped taking the prune juice for now and I don’t plan to use it again unless the C returns.

Is Low Zinc the Reason I Can’t Smell?

If you haven’t been following along, I have had problems over the last couple years not being able to smell.  Normally my smelling ability suffers the most during the winter but even during the summer I usually have a hard time smelling my deodorant unless its right under my nose.  Along with my asthma I am hoping that sorting out my digestive issues might once again allow me to smell.

Going forward and for ease of this post I would like to define a smelling scale.  Let’s say, for instance, that it’s a scale from 1 to 10, with 1 being I can’t smell my deodorant even if I put it under my noise and 10 being a whole day of experiencing new different smells (yes it’s like smelling something for the first time again when this happens).  Before I started the SCD diet I was probably fluctuating between a 1-3 on most days.   I’ve been on the diet now for 100 days and it has started getting better.  I seem to have my good days when I might be a 7 or 8 only to return to a 3 or 4 the next day.  Some days I can smell in the morning but not at night and vice-verse.  Lately, spurred by Anna’s comments and my love of spring smells, I’ve been doing more research in this area.

I came across some research that tied zinc levels to a loss of taste and smell (among other symptoms).  This was really interesting, I figured with all the vitamins that I take there would be no way that I was actually zinc deficient.  I cross referenced some of the zinc deficiency symptoms found on the web and it turned out I was displaying several of them.  Next, I wondered how I would go about getting tested.  That’s when I found out that you can perform a fairly simple zinc taste test at home to check your levels.  It involves putting a diluted zinc solution in your mouth and timing how long it takes you to experience a change in taste.

Originally, I was going to go all out and make my own solution, however upon more research I realized I would need to buy a bunch of unneeded sterilized equipment to make it happen.  Then I came across some other zinc tally solutions to perform the test with.  I found zinc tally taste tests from two respectable manufactures, Metagenics and Thorne, I couldn’t figure out how to get my hands on the Metagenics version so I went with Thorne.

When I received the bottle in the middle of last week, I pulled up some directions on Thorne’s website for doing the test.  The Thorne

solution is diluted compared to the normal strength of zinc tally solutions, therefore they direct the user to hold the liquid in their mouths for 30 seconds instead of a normal time of 10 seconds.  The first time I did the test I think I tested between a 3 and 4 on the scale of deficiency (with 4 being completely deficient), I made it about 26 seconds before I started noticing a sweet taste.  I repeated the test right after just to make sure I wasn’t still sleeping and it took like 15 seconds before I noticed anything.  I then did the test for the next 3 days every morning and was always between 22 and 26 seconds.

Based on the results of my home tests, I went out and bought some 50mg zinc tablets.  According to many different sources that I’ve read it appears that 200mg is the upper limit of daily zinc to avoid side affects from zinc supplementation like acute stomach discomfort (there doesn’t appear to be any long-term side effects other than a possible need to supplement with copper).  Based on that, I’m going to slowly increase my dosage each week from 50 mg to 100 mg and then topping out at 150mg  daily.  I will continue to do the zinc taste test each Monday to see how my zinc levels are progressing.  From what I’ve read, I’m guessing it will take take 3 to 5 weeks to replenish my zinc stores.

Wrapping it Up

I plan to do a more detailed post later this week on zinc and the deficiency symptoms, however, if you’re currently experiencing any loss of taste or smell you owe to yourself to check out your zinc levels.  I paid $11  shipped to get the Thorne bottle to test mine, much less than a doctor visit co-pay will run you.  As far as this setback, I’m just going to keep my nose to the grind stone and see what happens.

Just out of curiosity how many others experienced the 3-month setback?

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 15 – Why Can’t I Smell? appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 14 Summary

Well, after coming off a nice new high last week, my digestive healing is on a bit of a bull pullback (stock trading talk for down swing in the middle of an up swing).  The main problem has been bowel movements.  Not really any other problems, just the fact that they are not of very high quality and I’ve had a couple mini constipation cycles (2-3days).

My first reaction as this happened last week was “AHHH F#C$, What the Beep?!?”

I can’t stand these feelings because constipation is something I’ve never experienced before doing this diet.  It’s funny to say it, but at least with D I know how my body is going to react.  I guess you could say I was a bit frustrated early last week.  All I wanted to do was get in my time machine and go back to the weeks prior when everything was humming along.  While I think this is a normal reaction for me to have initially, I also feel like there is a real danger of letting these mini setbacks cause lasting problems on my healing journey.  If I let myself start tearing apart my diet and worrying over what minute little thing has changed, it will probably end up causing more damage.

I mean, suffering less than stellar stools 90 days into the SCD diet is not that big of deal, but who am I kidding, I was hoping and praying this climb was straight vertical!

I think this is a common thought process to get caught up in on the SCD diet.  Once I started taking pride in changing myself and feeling better I’ve come to expect that I will always be going forward and always feel “amazing” (insert positive adjective here).  I want to always be making forward progress, to be adding more foods and experimenting.  But that is a trap, this is life and nothing ever works out exactly as I picture it and nothing ever stays the same.  My life is always changing, and with it too is my digestion, thoughts and emotions.  To get all bent out of shape over a slight digestive problem that in all reality is nothing compared to what I was feeling 90 days ago is a bit ridiculous.

The ups and downs of healing my digestive tract have been maddening at times but in the future I think it going to be really important for me to keep my head level when I’m having a “problem” (any type of poor digestive reaction for lack of better term) allowing my mind to wander into negative guess work thoughts during these periods is going to do nothing but cause poor rash decisions.

I think it is always really important when a change (good or bad) is observed in my digestion process, to take a look at the micro and macro levels.  Observing one without the other is an insufficient analysis.  It the same principle as looking at short term trends (how i feel today) vs long term trends (how i felt last month, 6 months ago, last year).  Focusing too much on either one can easily lead to split second decisions that take me farther away from my true path of health.

So going forward when I’m in the heat of a sugar craving, or swearing on the toilet during a bad food reaction, I’m really going to focus on taking a minute to reflect not on what might fix this situation, or what is to blame, but I’m going to try and remember where I was 6 months ago and see if this current “setback” is really all that I’ve worked it up to be.  Judging each moment accordingly can only happen when I examine each problems weight in several time periods.

So what caused my problems?

That is a great question, one in which I haven’t figured out the answer.  After more reflection, I think the problem is too many variables changed at the same time last week.  I upped my dosage of anti-fungal supplements, I changed my yogurt base from goat to cow milk, I cut the tomatoes but kept mushrooms, green peppers and white onions, added a small amount of cheese gratings, and tried a small amount of almond butter.  Now are any of the things really CRAZY or out there for me at this point in the diet?  No, but the problem was I got lazy and stopped writing down when and what I was eating.  Not to mention I didn’t separate all the changes by 3-4 days like I normally do.

Now that I’m in the guessing mode my thoughts are that it most likely has something to do with the yeast and change in yogurt.  I’m making this assumption based on the fact that usually when I try new foods and they don’t agree with me they cause fast digestion symptoms such as loose stools and other gas pains not constipation.

Go Forward or Go Back?

Now what do I do?  I’ve developed a negative change in my symptoms and I don’t even know how to fix it because I can’t determine the cause.  In the past I’ve returned to intro diet type foods automatically, hoping for some kind of immediate relief.  Which I truly think is the right move when I’m experiencing a major setback, however when it comes to minor setbacks I’m going to experiment with taking a new stance –  STOP and change nothing.

I might try eliminating the one most likely culprit but I think its very important for me to try it again soon (days not weeks).  That is what I’m planning on doing.  Constipation or not so superior stools, in my mind, indicate something is out of whack but that could be good or bad as far as I’m concerned.  To automatically rule out a food or supplement, without making sure it is the true culprit, would be a poor diet limiting move.

So I’m going to sit still for the week, I’m going to keep eating the yogurt, taking the anti-fungals and I’m going to make each of the vegetables separate and see if I notice anything else change.  While I’m not completely happy with how I’m digesting, I think it would be wrong to jump to any conclusions.

So hows everyone else doing?  What do you do when you experience setbacks?

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 14 – Don’t Lose The Forest Among the Trees! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 13 Summary

This past week was pretty epic, I added a few new foods and didn’t cheat at all LOL, no really but I did officially pass 90 days on the SCD diet!

It’s been an interesting 90 days, I learned much more about myself and body than I ever could have imagined.  Physically and Mentally this diet has been a great blessing when I stick to it.  It’s because of that I will continue on for at least another 100 days (I like to chunk big goals down) and then reevaluate my situation.

So what has changed in the last 90 days?

• I live in a new city with new doctors
• I can make my own goat’s milk yogurt (yogurt can be homemade? who knew?)
• There is Poop Score Card!
• Bought, Cleaned and Cooked 10 different fruits and vegetables I had never used before
• Now eat more beef and fish than chicken (previous diet was chicken and…. well chicken)
• No more Stomach Aches or afternoon energy crashes!
• Gas is pretty much non-existent and not-smelly (kind of a big deal for me)
• I’m averaging a 3 – 4 on the Bristol Stool Chart compared to previously playing the entire range of the chart 1-7 each week

So What Now?

I’ve come along way in just over 3 months but there still is a ways to go.  I haven’t always been the most “fanatical” in my adherence to this diet and that has most defiantly set me back from a healing standpoint. During those trying times, I’ve learned a ton about my body both physically and mentally.  I would have never guessed that processed foods and sugar affect my mental state so much.  Also, the amount of physical, continuous energy and better sleep I get when eating REAL FOOD is amazing.

I’m also starting to get into this cooking thing.  As I’m adding more and more foods into my diet I’m starting to experiment more and actually make recipes which is fun.  Now if only I could find some self-cleaning pans and counter tops…

Basically I’ve decided that while I’ve come far in 90 days, I haven’t been the strictest and honestly, my digestive system has been fighting a losing battle since my L. Bifda overgrowth almost 5 years ago.  There is no way that in 90 days I’ve come close to correcting 5 years of damage.

So I’m making another commitment to the diet.  But this time its going to be 100 days and absolutely no cheating.  It seems like to me that there are two different groups of people who try the SCD diet, the first just jump right in and for many reasons never cheat or think about cheating.  The second group tends to have more problems with the diet, sometimes even starting multiple times.  I don’t think that you’re any worse off by being in the second group, actually I think it may be a blessing.  My hypothesis is that the people in the second group probably have less intestinal damage than people in the first group.  Now, obviously I’m in the 2nd group and I need to do something different this time to help me stay fanatically adhered.  I’ve decided to experiment with some different charting and journal ideas as well as set a reward for my commitment.  All in the hopes that I can keep myself more committed and more on track than ever.

So Where Is The New Ground Zero?

Last week I added mushrooms, green peppers and I’ve been flirting with tomatoes on and off over the last two weeks.  After trying them all separately I made an amazing meat sauce concoction that I put over spaghetti squash.  I did have some weirder than normal noises at first with the mushrooms and tomatoes but so far so good after the initial uneasiness.

I am up to using 2 digestive enzyme pills after each meal and I started the anti-fungal from Thorne.  So far I’ve been dosing it 2 pills twice a day in between meals.  The directions from Thorne are vague so after some internet research I’m going to shoot for 200mg of undecylenic acid a day and adjust from there.  I slowly worked my dosage up 200mg and have been there for 3 days.  Honestly I’m disappointed I was expecting to feel some kind of die off symptoms, but so far I haven’t noticed anything different.  I’m going to stay at 200mg for the week and maybe I’ll increase after next week.  I’m still supplementing with one 10 billion probiotic pill per meal and varying the amount of betaine HCL (600mg – 1200mg) I take before each meal depending on the protein content.

I’m still taking Freeda mult-vitamins, B-complex, and calcium at standard bottle dosages daily.  I’m also still supplementing with GI Pro Health Vitamin D3 at 5000IU a day and Fish oil at 4 grams a day.  I really wish I could find a different multi-vitamin and calcium supplement because I loathe Freeda’s shipping times and their non-gelcap ways!!!

I’m going to continue progressing through the phases of the diet, I’ve almost tried all of phase 2 foods, so I will be looking over the phase 3 diagrams and possible pulling in some lower salicylate phase 3 foods.  I also added a small amount of goat cheese to the diet and will continue to experiment with it.  I haven’t tried any cheese since the bad reaction i got early on in the diet (admittedly I probably ate too much to fast who doesn’t love cheese?).

To sum it up, Today is Day 1 again, but this time I’m wiser and starting much higher on my health climb.  How is yours going?

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 13 – 90 Day Milestone! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 12 Summary

In the last week I think I’ve really turned a corner.  Not a physical corner but a mental corner.  Understanding that I’m not alone, and that I’m not the first person to act this way or have these problems really helps.  It’s one of those realizations that should be simple and yet it was extremely hard for me.  It is really easy for me to get stuck inside my head and start thinking that my experience is some how blazing a trail.  This is a trail that many people have gone down before and so while we are all unique we also not that unique.

Digestively, I think any consequences from Easter’s feast are pretty much gone, most of last week I was averaging a 3 on the Bristol Chart with a couple 2’s and 4’s mixed in.  I did start taking digestive enzymes last Monday and have slowly worked up to 1 whole pill after each meal.  I’m going to up the dosage to 2 pills each meal this coming week.

Last week I stuck to the basics eating mainly carrots and squash for vegetables with some bananas and meats.  Gas and bloating were much higher than normal at the beginning of the week probably due to eating the illegal foods but they returned to normal at the end of the week.  Mentally I was pretty much a wreck for the first half of the week, battling all of the symptoms I talked about last week.  Something finally clicked in around Wednesday that has really changed my thinking.

I’m not really sure exactly what it was but I think journaling and writing my blog post really helped me see my situation in a different light.  For me it always seems that when I write something down and then reflect on it I’m able to see it much clearer.  I realize now it is time to stop trying to act “normal” (like the rest of society) when it comes to food.  I’m different for good or bad and I need to stop acting like it is a bad thing.  If I’m going to stick to this diet and solve my health problems acting like nothing is wrong just to “fit in” around other people is not helping me.

Standing Outside The Fire

Last week was stressful not only because I was dealing with the consequences of eating illegal foods and the mental state that put me in but also because I knew that I was attending a bachelor party on Saturday.  Here I was writing about how I have a hard time dealing with being in social situations involving food and alcohol and I was putting myself right back in the line of fire.

After turning my mental corner around the middle of the week I knew I was going to have to make some different decisions to make sure I didn’t suffer a repeat from last week.  It started with a renewed promise to myself that I can and would stick to the diet no matter what.  I am happy to write that I made it through basically unscathed (yeah I had a hangover).

What was different this time?  It started by embracing the situations I was about to put myself into.  Many times in the past, I would go into an event like this already feeling sorry for myself, sad that I wouldn’t be able to participate like the old me.  This time it was different; I cooked up a large amount of food, and packed a cooler full for the trip making sure to divide out the portions and pack more than I planned to consume.  Instead of dodging questions about why I was or wasn’t eating/drinking I came right out and fully explained my situation to anyone who wanted to stick around to listen.

I was the talk of the group of course but it was different this time.  I made it very clear that this was my priority and that I wasn’t bending the rules for any reasons.  I think this single different mental approach made all the difference.  For the first time instead of socially apologizing either by words or body language for my strange diet; I fully embraced it.

I also promised myself that I was only drinking two kinds of drinks.  Vodka and soda water and whiskey on the rocks, no shots, no beers and absolutely no drinks that I didn’t witness the bartender make.  I turned down shots all night and free beers but my confidence rose each time.

I made a concentrated effort to drink water in between drinks and try to limit my consumption of alcohol in general.  I could have done better, but then when you sign up for a 12 hour baseball game/bachelor party drink-a-thon not everything is going to go as planned.  I did only eat my prepared foods and stuck to my drinking plan.  The actual limiting of total alcohol consumed is where I earned a giant F on the scorecard.  Moderation appears to be the last key to the puzzle.

Looking Forward

I’m going to stick to a basic diet this week to help my body recover from any alcohol damage that I imparted on it.  I am planning on adding butter and I’m going to start taking an anti-fungal this week (Thorne SF722).  I’m back into my workout routine which is helping.  I’m focusing on keeping the variables low for the next week or so to better understand what the anti-fungal supplement is going to do to me.  Doing more research shows that bananas are one of the worst fruits to eat when trying to combat yeast problems so I will be cutting them out.  Honey is also out for the time being.

To wrap it up, don’t be fooled by my story, avoiding alcohol is probably a better approach on this diet.  While I feel a renewed confidence in my ability to handle my self at the bar, it is a poor position to put myself in while doing the SCD diet.  If you have any doubts in your ability to handle it, the best approach is water.  If the situation does arise make sure you plan accordingly and bring pre-made foods in a cooler, silverware, and plan for at least one extra meal so you don’t find yourself in a compromising position.  Lastly, you’ve made a great choice doing this diet to help yourself, there is no need to apologize to anyone for the special needs we have.  If you make a big deal out of any situation so will the social group.

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 12 – Standing Outside the Fire! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 11 Summary

Happy Easter and Baseball Season everyone!  Hopefully you were all able to spend some meaningful time with your families this last weekend like I did.

As you know broken records repeatedly play the same tune over and over.  Well I’m approaching that same song, with this post.  I committed to writing this journal to help others and to use it as tool and for me to stay committed to the SCD diet.  Unfortunately to stay true to you and to myself I need to come clean on a few accounts.

Well, first things first, I ate some illegal foods this past week, mainly Easter candy.  Secondly I got into the wine pretty heavy several times last week, obviously not helping my health.  Lastly, this isn’t exactly a bad thing but I do feel like it needs to get out in the open, over the past couple months I’ve been following Brad Pilon’s Eat-Stop-Eat book and completing occasional intermittent fasting.

I purposely do not keep any SCD illegal foods in my apartment because I don’t want to have the temptation to try and cheat.  However, in a bout of cravings and feeling sorry for myself, I bought some candy late in the week and devoured the whole bag even though while I ate it I was disgusted with myself and it didn’t even taste good after the first couple pieces.  Then I did it again once I got around my parents house which was chock full of Easter candy.

Did the wine and candy make me feel awful mentally and physically?  Well of course it did!  I experienced the usual extreme energy surge and then crash, I had smelly gas and I didn’t have a solid poop for a couple days.  To some people that sounds horrible but to me those are short term consequences that I’ve been living with for so long that I’m not afraid of them.  What I can’t handle and hate with a passion are the mental side effects I get like a horrible attitude, lack of energy and zero focus or clarity.  The cheating always launches me into a depressed, lethargic former state of myself.  Which makes the vicious cycle worse because then I am unhappy and looking for quick gratification sources of happiness.

So Why Did I Do It?

That’s the same question I’ve been wrestling with all week.  Especially when I can freely admit to myself and Jordan that as I ate the candy I didn’t even like how it tasted or how it made me feel.  I think it has a lot to do with two things.  The first of which is that I’m stuck in limbo land; I don’t have a disease diagnosed by a doctor to relate my problems to.  All I have is a list of symptoms that I’m not happy with.  I’m reaching, guessing and going after these problems on my own.  I don’t have a doctor helping me or much support from family or friends to fall back on.

Jordan has talked about his non-wavering ability to stay committed to the SCD diet as a result of his Celiac Disease diagnosis and the long-term health consequences that will result from not taking care of himself every single day.  For him, a decision to deviate from the diet carries much more scary, long-term consequences than just a day on the toilet.  I think this is the disconnect in my mind, I currently don’t have or know what to expect in the long-term and so all I can focus on is the short-term consequences. Which is obviously not the way to approach the SCD diet as it is not a “quick fix” gimmick diet but rather a whole health approach way of living.

Secondly, I’m only in the preliminary stages of research into what is happening between my mind and body, but I did locate a study showing that sugar elicits a pleasure response higher than cocaine in rats.  Also, there is some interesting links between yeast/bacteria overgrowth and sugar/alcohol in the small intestine.  These articles at this point are a little over my head but from what I understand the toxins released by the bad guys negatively effect neurotransmitters in the brain.  This happens when the bad guys release salsolinol which affects levels of dopamine (Reward system) and serotonin (related to addiction) causing opioid (hard core drugs) like responses in the brain.  What that all means is that the yeast and bacteria are releasing chemicals into your body that trick your brain into craving more fuel for them to live on (sugars and starches).

Based on the list of symptoms that indicate Candida overgrowth I exhibit almost all of them including: mental symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, quick to anger for no reason, worry, loss of interest in activities, and bouts of mini depression cycles.

I’m not inferring that my actions last week or any previous week were uncontrollable.  Only that I wasn’t totally in the drivers seat and that the “bad guys” in my gut have been, and continue to, cause the release of very addicting chemicals in my brain that take my focus off of my healing and drive me to find a quick fix for the withdrawal symptoms.

So Where Do I Go From Here?

My plan is to get back to the basics.  Get back to my goals of mental and physical health and to achieve them by following a strict SCD diet.  I am also going to continue my path deeper into the research on yeast and bacterial overgrowth in the small intestine (which I believe is my biggest problem).  I’ve already ordered some natural herbal anti-fungals that should be arriving soon and I’m planning to start them in the next week or two.  Additionally, before I start any anti-fungals I’m going to try out some digestive enzymes.

In the coming weeks, other than adding a few simple things to my diet such as butter and possibly some new vegetables out of phases 1 or 2, I’m going to be restricting all honey intake and cutting out almost all fruit.  Once the anti-fungals kick-in with a strict SCD diet I’m expecting a significant “die-off” and will probably return to the intro diet soup as needed (this should be interesting to monitor because if you remember during my initial into diet experience I didn’t experience too many “die-off” symptoms).

I have finally made it back into the gym this week and the stress relief it brings me is something I’ve been missing the last couple weeks.  This one thing in and of itself may be what I have been missing lately.  I think cravings, whether societal or chemically induced, produce great amounts of anxiety in me.  My constructive outlet for all this energy is weightlifting.

I hope everyone continues to follow my journey even in these trying times and that I can still contribute to others by sharing my struggles.  Till next week….

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 11 – Avoiding the Broken Record! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 10 Summary:

Moving to a new city and into a new apartment is always a bit of an adventure.  I have moved more times than anyone I know in the last 5 years and I still have not figured out a better way of doing it other than trial and error.  So my last week has mostly been crazy to say the least.  I had stock piled a bunch of cooked SCD legal food just in case I happened to burn down my new kitchen (every stove is different I swear).  I stuck mainly to the basics, of squash, chicken and fish all week because I wanted to help reset my system after the past couple weeks of turmoil.  Many people will actually return right to the intro diet if they feel that they’ve had a major stumble but I didn’t have the means at this time.

I’m happy to say that the new stove cooks just fine and I visited almost every grocery store and farmers market within driving distance of my new place.  I highly encourage people on the SCD diet to do exactly that: drive around and spend a decent amount of time taking a mental stock of everything a grocery/health store has to offer.  It will save you time in the future when you’re looking to add new foods to your diet and also allow you to do some decent price comparison.

Mental and Body Changes:

This last week has been really great for me.  I was able to eat SCD legal and start to return to where I was 3 weeks ago.  I’m still not there completely but I did see a return of daily bowl movements in the 2 to 3 range in quality.  I had very little gas all week and almost no bloating.  I experienced some daily stomach uneasiness where my stomach was making some weird noises after I would eat but no associated pain.  Mentally, I noticed a dramatic difference in the amount of constant energy I had.  I really do feel the effects that non legal SCD foods take on my body.  Even if I wasn’t seeing that much of difference in my body, as long as I have the mental benefits of clarity and sustained energy I would stick to this diet.

Fitness Goals:

I still haven’t secured a gym membership but I have evaluated the gyms in the area and plan to start working out again this week.  It looks like it may be a couple weeks until I’m going to be able to get in to see a SCD friendly doctor or a new chiropractor, which is a bit of a drag but I’m not going to let it hold me back.

Diet Details:

Many people will return to the into diet to start over again after a series of weeks like I’ve experienced, however I didn’t have the ability to do that with my limited cooking availability.  Instead I ate an almost fruit free diet all week that included meat and butternut squash with some green beans.  I also returned to eating SCD legal yogurt everyday.  In the next couple weeks I will probably stay focused on proven foods I know that I can tolerate just to help reset my system.

In light of more research we have been doing here at SCD Lifestyle I’m more convinced than ever that I’m experiencing some gut permeability issues coupled with SIBO (small intestine bacteria overgrowth).  I have no way of proving that I’m experiencing Candida overgrowth but it is either that or some kind of fungal bacteria imbalance in my small intestine.  Based on the new research and my symptoms I’m going to really restrict my fruit and honey intake going forward.  Also, because I’m not going to be getting in to see a doctor anytime soon I’ve decided to order some herbal products to help try and kill off any bacteria/fungus/yeast problems.  I also will be ordering some digestive enzymes in the coming week to help address any gut permeability issues I have.

I’m planning to stagger the start of all the new supplements to try and gauge their individual effectiveness as well as their combined powers.  I will break everything down next week after I get my shipment or products.  Until then I’m going to switch over from supplementing with 3 billion Lactobacillus Acidophilus 3x a day to 10 billion pills 3x a day.  This along with a constant supply of yogurt should keep my system fully pumped with good bacteria until I can eliminate any residual bad bacteria or fungus.  Lastly, its been 6 weeks since I started using Betaine HCL for my low stomach acid, I’m starting to experience some systems of higher stomach acid that haven’t happened before so I will probably start tapering off on my dosage.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet:

• Always remember that no two stoves or ovens are the same, there is an adjustment period when moving so don’t fret to much about burnt food (for peace of mind you should check the fire alarms in the new building anyways!)
• It’s a good idea to visit every farmers market, health store and grocery store in your area to understand the nuances of SCD legal foods each offers and their different price points (helps save money, gas and time)
• If you are using Betaine HCL to treat low stomach acid and you are not sure what happens when you overdose, rest assured you haven’t.  When it happens you will know it! It feels like an intense warmness and or burning that is coming from way deep in your stomach.  If it happens grab some baking soda and take a ¼ teaspoon in 8 oz of water to help neutralize the acid levels in your stomach
• I think gut permeability issues are probably being experienced by most people on the SCD diet, if you are not seeing the results you are looking for it would be wise to look into using some form of digestive enzymes.  I have avoided them for a while thinking that my system should be able to heal itself but the research indicates avoiding them will only allow the vicious cycle to continue.

Do you usually refer back to the intro diet after a setback or just scale back a little?  Share your thoughts…

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 10 – Starting a New Beginning! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 9 Summary

I have finally completed my move!  It’s taken a solid 3 weeks of packing, moving, job transitioning, and finally unpacking but it is done.  Last week my eating was all over the place, I didn’t always have my proboitics, yogurt, betaine HCL and sometimes properly prepared SCD legal food.  I was forced to basically adapt during the days of

moving on the fly.  This caused me to eat a whole bag of what I thought was SCD legal trail mix (although probably not) and advanced un-cooked vegetables and fruit.  Also as I was staying with family and friends and eating food cooked by them I’m sure some of the meats I ate were not entirely SCD legal.  In the mist of all this upheaval I also passed the 60 day mark of trying to adhere to the SCD diet.

Mental and Body Changes

Last week I really started to understand the mental effects of eating SCD legal foods that my body is ready for vs. advanced foods or illegal foods.  Mentally the stress of life finally caught up to me, so emotionally I was all over the place.  I could tell when I was able to eat properly prepared SCD legal foods and had my supplements near by I had much better energy, focus and no mental fogginess.  I also experienced much more upper respiratory mucus production that had previously been slowly getting better.

From a body perspective I was all over the place when I was unable to take my supplements or I ate things like more advanced foods I experienced much more gas than normal.  On a couple occasions after meals I had some bloating.  My bowel movements were extremely erratic however I never experienced any diarrhea or constipation.

Fitness Goals

I am still trying to transition into a new city with new insurance and doctors so I still haven’t seen the inside of a gym.  I am hoping by the next week’s update I will have found new doctors and started working out at a new gym.

Diet Details

This week it really hit me in the forehead how important it is for me to make sure that I’m using all the tools available in order to get healthy.  Without taking all my supplements and eating the foods that I know do not cause me problems I will have less than optimal digestion.  For the most part I ate SCD legal this last week.  But I ate things like whole nuts, dried fruits and probably ate some spice mixtures and oils that are not SCD legal.  In the coming weeks I will not be focusing on adding or advancing in the diet, but stabilizing my digestion with my current diet.  I want to get back to the health levels I was at about 3 weeks ago.  As my symptoms start to clear up and my bowel movements start improving again, I will start adding new foods again.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• There really is no excuse for forgetting to take supplements or drugs if getting healthy is your goal
• Having a journal and reflecting on the past couple weeks has really helped me to drive home how much better I feel when I’m eating SCD legal
• Your social circle will get used to your diet somewhere around 50-60 days in, at least mine is and actually start to help you stay focused and positive

Has anyone else noticed that the SCD legal/ illegal food rules are pretty much the same as the Paleo Diet? Or Primal/Caveman Diet?

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 9 – Settling Back Down! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 8 Summary

After last weekend’s episode of eating illegal’s, I’d hoped that I didn’t do to much serious damage to my healing process.  I’m happy to report that I think I’m going to make a full recovery (whew! I know)…in a couple weeks.  The beginning of this week I experienced a couple days of higher than normal gas with BM’s that were all over the map.  In the middle of the week during my haste to pack up my belongings to move this weekend, I ran out of my Betaine HCL,

yogurt and my multi-vitamin for several days.  All three were on my list to make and order last week and I totally forgot.  Running out of the multi-vitamin isn’t that big of a deal, just rather annoying.  But if you’ve been following my progress until I ramped up dosages of Betaine HCL and yogurt I didn’t see a huge jump in the quality of my bowel movements.  I was out of Betaine HCL and yogurt for about 4 days.  During this time I could tell my digestion process was slowed, I had more gas and bloating than I’ve had in weeks, it sucked!

Mental and Body Changes

Mentally this last week has been extremely stressful because of the packing and moving.  I completely forgot to order more supplements and this caused all kinds of complications for my diet.  I really wish supplement companies had some kind of auto-ship program that would send me my monthly supplements so I would never run out!  My bowel movements were less than spectacular all week.  I also experienced the most gas and bloating I’ve had since the first or second week of the diet.  I really did forget how nice it is not to have stomach aches after eating and not worrying about trying to pass smelly farts in the office.  In the future I will be spending more time reflecting on how I used to feel before I started this diet.  After 50 plus days I could have never imagined it would be so easy to forget about how bad I felt on a daily basis.  I think my experience has taught more than ever how important it is to keep a journal and to do weekly reflections on that journal.

Fitness Goals

This week was another week of several trips to the chiropractor’s office and zero trips to the gym.  Sort of disappointing from a fat loss, muscle building standpoint but the relief of my neck and back pain is well worth the tradeoff.  The next week is going to be a transition week in which I probably won’t be able to hit the gym again but after that I’m putting my nose back to the grind stone.

Diet Details

This week from a diet perspective, I wasn’t really focused on introducing any new variables.  I did add some tomatoes to my diet.  I seemed to tolerate them well but I will have to wait and try them again in the coming weeks because my physical symptoms were all over the place this week.  In the next week, I’m going to return to a rather basic diet to try and stabilize all of my physical symptoms.  I finally got my supplements in the mail so I will add those back in and hopefully everything will start to correct itself.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• Staying on top of your medications and supplements is very important so you do not run out.  I wish someone offered a monthly auto-ship option so I don’t always have to worry about running out!
• Journaling is important no matter how far you are in the diet, our memories are much shorter than we think they are
• For me, it was way too easy to forget about how I felt before I started this diet.  I am going to start focusing more on reflection of my diet journal
• Eating a bunch of illegal foods caused my body more trauma than I thought it would, it is going to take more than just a couple days to return to where I was before I cheated

Share a story of how miserable you were before you started the diet, remember how bad it was…

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 8 – Remembering How Far I have Come! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 7 Summary

After the roller-coaster ride last week I thought this week would be a rather low key return to working on my health and this diet.  Boy was I wrong!  I’m going to come right out and tell everyone I cheated, I fell off the diet for a good 24hour period this weekend.  I’m not really happy with myself for it and trust me I paid a hefty price for it.  I had a multitude of life events come to a head this last week which included, learning that I have some pretty bad stuff going on with my spine, accepting a new job in a new city, and trying to deal with two going away parties.  Excuses aside I shouldn’t have cheated I had plenty of food in the fridge and planned on staying firm with the diet but I allowed myself to succumb to social situations and consume way too much alcohol.  That being said I am renewing my vow to the diet and getting back on the horse.

I’m going to treat this like a learning lesson.  For lack of a better way to explain my thoughts on it I’m going to try and relate it to something.  For me it’s like having the NBA championship on the line I choked and missed a free throw, the easiest shot in basketball, and my team lost.  The best thing to do now is to pick myself back up and go back to work, forget about the whys, remember the pain, and renew my motivation to my goals.

Mental and Body Changes

Before the weekend I was experiencing similar patterns as last week where I was averaging at least one decent bowel movement a day (usually a 3 or 4).  I went out to the bars on both Friday and Saturday and in my alcohol induced thinking allowed myself to reason that I had already done enough destruction with all the alcohol so what would some illegal foods really do?  Well after eating a burger, some sweets and some late night pizza all washed down with copious amounts of alcohol my body was pissed!  I made many trips to the bathroom on Sunday and not one of them was a good time.  Hopefully my body can bounce back this coming week and I will get back on my true healing path without too much damage to the process.

Fitness Goals

This past week was a set back for my fitness goals in more ways that one.  Last Sunday I started experiencing some weird back and neck pains and decided to get myself checked out by a chiropractor.  It turns out I have quite a few problems with my neck and back most likely stemming from old sports injuries when I was younger.  The chiropractor has asked me to take a couple weeks off from lifting in order to try and let my neck and back heal up while she makes some adjustments.  Considering my current problems are probably the result of not listening to doctor’s advice when I was younger I plan on heading her advice this time around.

Oddly enough when I mentioned my digestive issues to my chiropractor she taught me about another part of my body that wasn’t working right.  It turns out my ileocecal valve is malfunctioning.  She told me she sees this in many of her patients who also have digestive related issues.  With some re-training and adhering to the SCD diet it sounds like it can be very easy to correct.  I’m just in the beginning stages of learning about the valve and I’m planning on doing a post later as I learn more.

Diet Details

Before the wheels fell off the wagon this week I did add two new variables into my diet.  I tried peaches for the first time and also added some hot sauce to my eggs so that I could continue eating them.  I did some research on some hot sauce products and after talking with Crystal Hot Sauce representatives I think I can say it is SCD legal.  I didn’t react to it however I would caution anyone else who tries it to approach it just like any other new food.  The only ingredients in the product are cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar and salt.  From the company representatives I learned that the vinegar is distilled, white vinegar from corn and that the salt is non-iodized table salt.  Some people may question that fact that the vinegar is made from corn but it appears that almost all vinegars are made from corn (according to pecanbread white vinegar is legal).  I don’t claim to be a chemist, however, from what I’ve learned about the distilling process I don’t believe there are any original corn starches left.  That being said don’t say I didn’t warn you!  Make sure you try it for a couple days before you know that it isn’t affecting you.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• If you are already seeing a chiropractor ask them to check out your ileocecal valve
• If you ingest an illegal food on the diet make sure you stop after the first, don’t let your mind talk you into becoming a runaway train and derail all your progress you’ve made while on the diet
• If you do cheat knowingly…then you will pay!
• While you are paying the piper for your actions renew your commitments and decide to move on and not let one day stop you from achieving your goals!

Anyone else want to share any dark cheating stories?

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 7 – The Wheels Almost Came Off! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 6 Summary

This past week has been a sort of roller-coaster for me. I had such a great breakthrough last week that I was really looking forward to capitalizing on it and keeping the ball rolling this week. Looking back on the week, I can see now that I’m still going in the right direction. However, during the week I thought I was starting to regress. I still managed to keep regular daily bowel movements, but the quality was all over the place. It’s not exactly what I was hoping for and in the moment I was getting pretty discouraged. It wasn’t until the end of the week when I looked back at the week in comparison to other weeks that I realized that it was indeed a good week. In my daily health battle, I had gotten lost in the trees and forgot to view my health at the forest level.

Mental and Body Changes

Mentally, this week was probably the most stressful week since I started the diet. The stress was both job and life related, but it had a pronounced affect on my sleep & overall health. Stress plays an important role in our lives and just like our bad bacteria, keeping stress at minimal levels is important to our digestive system. I truly believe this diet is a very important part of healing my body but this week has shown me more than ever it is only one piece of the means to the end. By not focusing on your emotional health and the other variables of our body as a whole, we can keep ourselves from reaching our individual digestive goals.

Physically, I experienced more gas than usual; most likely due to the daily stress. As far as my bowel movements are concerned the quantity was good but the quality lacked compared to last week. Over the course of the week, I had plenty of 2’s and 3’s on Bristol Stool Chart with one 4 and a 6 mixed into the bunch. I did add some new variables this week, which probably played a role in the changes but most likely not as much as the environment I lived in all week.

Fitness Goals

This week, I missed one gym session so I only lifted 3 times. I did however record my lowest scale weight to date at 179 down from an average of 182 last week. My waist also continued to fall this week and I’m now recording slightly above 33 inches in circumference. I’m going to continue to keep my calories suppressed and hopefully I will soon drop below 33 inches. I’m starting to question my dieting goal of 170 pounds of scale weight. I’m starting to think that actually I will need to get down to 165 so that when I bring my calories up to maintenance levels I will level off at my target scale weight of 170 pounds.

Diet Details

I kept my supplements at the same ratios as last week. But this week I added two new foods. I added green beans and avocados. I just started eating avocados yesterday, so I don’t think I am completely confident that I can handle them yet but I will continue to eat them and track the results into the coming week. The green beans seemed to work alright with my body, however I did experience abnormally high gas levels and my BMs were inconsistent all week. I will have to reserve judgment on the beans until the next time I try them (this is why it is so important to keep a journal). This week, I started using walnut oil to cook my meats and eggs in. The oil added an amazing nutty flavor to my meats. I chose walnut over almond because walnuts have a lower salicylate content than almonds. From my research, almonds have one of the highest phenol contents of any nut so I’m going to continue to be cautious of them.

One Line Thoughts on The SCD Diet

• • This week on the diet has really illustrated why keeping a daily diary of events is so important. In the coming weeks when I try green beans again, I will know if they were the culprit this week or if it was the stress
  • This week also re-emphasized the importance of charting your healing on different time levels. From a daily perspective, this week could be viewed as a slight regression. However, at the weekly level I’m still improving compared to the previous 5 weeks
  • Stress is an important factor that cannot be overlooked on this diet.
  • I’m starting to believe more each week that our digestion is not as simple as food in, poop out. It is a whole system with a large number of variables including food, enzymes, bacteria, vitamins, stomach acid strength, emotions, fitness levels and probably other variables I have yet to find. Thinking that the SCD diet by itself will heal our digestion while the rest of our lives are out of sync appears to be a fallacy
  • I’ve now run the gauntlet of spices in my cabinet when preparing eggs in the morning. In the coming week, I’m going to be searching for new breakfast foods or ways to spruce up the eggs

If anyone has any tips on how to enhance morning eggs, please let me know below because they are quickly becoming almost impossible to eat. Thanks in advance!

-Steve

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 6 – Getting the Ball Rolling! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

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 5 Summary

I’m very excited to say I made a major breakthrough in my healing process this last week. Towards the end of the week ,I finally stopped having intermittent bowel movements and I’m happy to report that I have had one movement a day for the last 5 days! So, what caused my slight constipation breakthrough? As far as I can tell, two major factors seem to have caused it. The first being that I upped my SCD legal goat yogurt intake to a cup a day and the second is that I started to supplement with Betaine HCL.

Mental and Body Changes

Mentally, I didn’t notice too many changes this week. I did feel a bit run down during the middle part of the week but I’m attributing that to a general lack of sleep as I had a couple of late nights. In order to compensate for some daytime sleepiness, I did consume a cup of black coffee on three different days without any digestive regressions. Going forward, I’m going to continue to try and strive to avoid coffee (it tastes so good once it hits your lips!). The big breakthrough of the week was in my bowel movements. For the last four weeks, I’ve been only averaging one movement about every 3 days and the movements were not very good quality – usually a 1 or a 7 on the Bristol Stool Chart. The last half of this week, however, I started having one movement a day and at first is was a 2 or 3. But by the weekend I was starting to have 4s daily!

Fitness Goals

This week, I made a renewed effort to keep my calories under 1500 per day. I weighed in down another 3 pounds and I’m also down about ½” on my waist. I’m looking to lose about another inch to inch and half on my waist, which should correlate to approximately another 10 pounds of scale weight lost.  My goal is to try and complete this in the next 3 weeks. I will continue to track and update everyone. I’ve continued my 4 weightlifting sessions a week, however I’ve stopped doing any cardio for now. This is mostly because this week I’ve started wearing my Vibram Five Finger shoes while working out and I want to give my feet time to adjust before I start any type of walking or running again.

Diet Details

This was a week of many changes for my diet. I added several new foods and supplements. In hindsight, I probably added a bit too many variables at once to be completely certain what has caused this great improvement in my digestive tract. However, I feel very certain that it can be boiled down to upping the amount of good bacteria I was taking in and using Betaine HCL. I was already eating about a cup of yogurt a day starting on Monday and continued this throughout the week. It wasn’t until I gradually built up my dosage on the Betaine HCL around Wednesday that I actually started to see the magic happening (had my first quality BM – a 3 that day). I started the Betaine HCL on Tuesday at one 300mg pill before each meal; I continued to up the dosage daily until Wednesday at 3 pills a meal. I decided to continue upping the dosage on Thursday to try and reach my upper limit for HCL intake but stopped at 1200mg (4pills) a meal for now (why push a good thing).

I’m now fully progressing into Phase 2 of the diet. I added pineapple and asparagus this week with good results. I decided that going forward, for new foods I try, I will to continue to puree them the first time I eat them but after I know that they do not cause me any problems I’m going to stop pureeing them. (I need whole food texture!) After eating pureed fruits and vegetables for a month, it was an amazing gift when I consumed some un-pureed foods!

The other new supplements I added this week were 4 grams of Omega 3’s from fish oil and 10,000 IU of vitamin D a day. By adding these, I could have potentially negated my ability to understand the effects of the Betaine HCL. I don’t believe this to be the case because I started using them on Monday (and have supplemented with them in the past) and it wasn’t until Wednesday that I observed the changes in my BMs. This to me shows a clear correlation with higher Betaine HCL dosages and better digestion. I truly believe that from a digestive standpoint the Betaine HCL was the breakthrough ticket for me.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• • Every person who is experiencing digestive issues should check their stomach acid pH levels to verify that they are making enough acid to properly digest food
  • Being able to chew food is underrated!
  • I don’t need cardio to lose fat mass
  • Everyone doing the SCD diet should use the Bristol Stool Chart to track their changes. I believe we should use it like a report card without guidelines to properly measure our progress we are left to our interpretations, which can lead us astray
  • Unless you get plenty of sunlight every day, most people probably are deficient in vitamin D
  • If you’re experiencing ankle or foot pain, you owe it to yourself to check out the latest research on barefoot running

The post Steve’s SCD Healing Journal: Week 5 – Finally a Breakthrough! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 4 Summary

This is a big week for me because I get to celebrate my 30th day on the SCD diet. I am 1/3 of the way through my 90-day commitment to this diet! I needed to return home for some family business in the middle of the week, which forced me out of my normal routine. This cut out most of my weightlifting sessions and forced me to spend a bunch of time doing extreme batch cooking early in the week in preparation. I did manage to introduce some new phase 1 foods, along with SCD legal yogurt.

Mental and Body Changes

My mental and physical symptoms seem to be staying pretty constant. Physically, I had more bowel movements this week than last, which is a good sign. I believe it is probably related to the introduction of the yogurt, because as the week went on I was slowly increasing the amount of yogurt I was eating and I also recorded a rise in the number of trips to the bathroom. I think this is a great trend. And as I slowly get up to a ½ cup to a full cup of yogurt a day hopefully it will really help my gut to continue healing itself and relieve any lingering constipation issues. Mentally, I didn’t notice any changes probably due to not being in a set schedule all week.

Fitness Goals

Since I traveled home for half of the week, I only made it to the gym a for a couple of weightlifting sessions. I will check my measurements and weight this up coming week and update everyone.

Diet Details

This week, I made my first batch of homemade goat’s milk yogurt. I swear I was slowly heating the milk, but the Super Bowl was starting and I figured a couple more notches on the stove dial wouldn’t hurt anything. Man was I wrong! I scorched up the goat’s milk pretty bad with plenty of it burned to the bottom of the pan I was using. Once I figured out what I had done, I freaked out and tried to find some info about burning the milk while making yogurt.  My online search was unproductive so I did what any man short on time would do and devised a way to strain the scorched milk chunks out before I put it in the yogurt maker. I thought I was the smartest person in the world, until I tasted my fresh yogurt a day later. The taste of the yogurt started off like any other unflavored yogurt I’ve had, but finished with a very distinct burned taste. In retrospect, I should have started over with fresh milk! So let my error be a lesson for anyone else trying to make goat’s milk yogurt, heat up the milk very, very slowly and if you do manage to burn it…throw it out!

I also tried some sautéed spinach this week. It was a great change of pace from the very starchy carrots and squashes I’ve been eating over the last few weeks. As the weeks have started adding up, I’ve gotten very sick of eating plain or spiced up eggs in the morning. So, I went searching for a phase 1 alternative breakfast. I stumbled across this great recipe for SCD legal banana pancakes (original recipe link broken).

The first batch I whipped up, I tried not to use any oil in the pan. But after several experiments I will say it is possible to execute the recipe without oil. However, I got fed up with crumbled banana pancake balls and added some olive oil to my pan. The oil made all the difference when it comes to creating an actual flip-able pancake. I wasn’t planning on adding any olive oil into my diet just yet, but I was so frustrated in the moment that it just sort of happened. Luckily, I didn’t react to the oil or pancakes, so I think I’m going to leave the oil in my diet for now. This will allow me to progress further with my meat cooking and start sautéing meat on the stovetop, instead of broiling everything. I think this is a good next step as baring any setbacks I’m going to start adding some phase 2 foods to my diet.

One Line Thoughts on the SCD Diet

• Heat your milk for the yogurt slowly! And if you burn any of it dump it out!
• The past 30 days have gone extremely quick, it seems like just yesterday I was making the intro diet soup! I can’t wait to see how my body has changed at 60 days!
• For people with genetically gifted digestive systems that haven’t met a food they couldn’t properly process, trying to explain the SCD diet is like talking in foreign language. They just don’t understand the concept that a food may taste good, but it will make you feel sooo bad!
• I didn’t experience any “die-off” from introducing the SCD legal yogurt. However, I think it is really helping move food through my system.

Does anyone else have a good story about the first time they made yogurt or am I the only one who managed to mess it up? Thanks for reading, see you next week.

Back to SCD Lifestyle

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 4 – Learning how to make goat’s milk yogurt appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 3 Summary

Following up from last week, I successfully traveled home for the weekend (a 5-hour road trip). During the week, I made extra large batches of meat, veggies and fruit. I put enough for four meals in some Tupperware and packed them in a cooler using some ice packs. I was then able to eat eggs in the morning and have a standard lunch and dinner for both Saturday and Sunday. Other than not being able to eat or drink anything other than water for the 10 hours of total driving, it was pretty painless. Usually, I would have been sucking down some fast food or coffee the entire time. In the end, I think I felt better not eating anything and I saved money. This last week was rather regular, as I added some new foods to my diet and my BMs leveled off after last week’s sickness.

Mental and Body Changes

This week, my bowl movements seemed to return to how they were during the first week of the diet. I’m only having BMs every couple days and they are pretty dried out and small. That tells me I need to continue to up my good bacteria balance and possibly start the SCD constipation protocol. I will continue to monitor them and will give my body a week to adjust to the yogurt, before I start anything from the protocol. Over the course of the week, I noticed that stomach uneasiness (growling and making noise) was significantly down. The past couple weeks, after about half of the meals I ate, I would experience some level of uneasiness. I also had zero bloating all week, which was amazing! I did experience some gas most days, however not at any level that I had before starting the diet. Mentally, I didn’t notice too many changes this week other than my sleep schedule was all over the place causing some drowsiness during the day.

Fitness Goals

This Wednesday, I measured my waist and weighed in at the gym. Since starting the diet 20 days ago, I am down 1.5 inches in my waist measurement and 10 pounds on the scale. Both of those are great to see, however I know that approximately half of both of those numbers are due to carrying less water weight and less inflammation in my gut. I’ve done several short-term diets in the past in which I cut out all the carbohydrates and this water drop is predictable for my body. Carbohydrates and other processed foods always cause me to retain more water, which is usually concentrated in my waist region (usually gut for men, hips and butt for women). For the other .75 of an inch, I am positive it is fat loss, as I’ve been haphazardly tracking my calories and usually I’m eating between 1400 and 1600 a day… which is very deficient for me. My current calculations put my calorie needs somewhere between 1900 and 2100 to maintain weight. One interesting side effect of the diet I noted, during the intro diet and the beginning of phase 1, was I was having an extremely hard time getting to 1500 calories a day. On several days, I recorded only about 1200 calories. And the amazing thing was that I was aware of it as it happened. I just couldn’t eat any more soup or meat! The water loss and difficulty in reaching an amount of calories that maintain your weight is the main reason that most people experience some level of scale weight loss when they start this diet.

I will be continuing to track my progress and purposely stay in a calorie-deficient state in the coming weeks. My goals are to lose another 2.5 inches from my waist and roughly 15-18 pounds of scale weight, over the next 6 weeks. I did get in 4 weightlifting sessions this week, but I skipped the cardio work (I hate cardio!).

Diet Details

This week, I successfully introduced acorn squash and raw bananas. I never noticed how nutty acorn squash tastes compared to other squashes. It has been a nice side effect of the diet to start actually tasting foods for what they are and not masked with all kinds of additives or starches. At this point in the diet, I think I have enough variety of foods to take a week off and play around with the SCD yogurt. I received my yogurt starter and yogurt maker in the mail this week. I’m planning on attempting my first batch early in the week using goat milk. If I get bored before then I might pick up some spinach to try.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• I believe that most people will see a significant 4-8 pound drop in scale weight the first week of the SCD diet, due to the body retaining less water
• My current hypothesis is that many other people will continue to lose fat mass for the first month and continue to do so on the SCD diet, specifically due to the fact that they are not consuming enough calories
• I tried some red pears this week, I must say they trump green pears in flavor
• Special thinks to my Mom for turning me on to the red pears and helping me make a large batch before I traveled home
• My carb cravings are definitely subsiding, however my appetite seems to be rising
• For better or worse, the diet has definitely been impacting my social life at work. I am now no longer being invited to go out for lunch because people know that I am now brining my lunch every day

My big question this week is how was everyone else’s bowel movement timing during the first couple weeks on the diet? Were they irregular in timing like mine? I think I’m just scared of constipation, because for the first time in my life I’m not using the bathroom 5 times a day. I’m also secretly happy about this new found fear! Sssh… Don’t tell anyone! See you next week.

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 3 – Bring on the travel and fat loss! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

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.

Back to SCD Lifestyle

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 2 – Overcoming Sickness appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.

Week 1 Summary

Well, today is day 6 on the SCD diet. I have successfully survived 4 days on the intro diet and I’m now transitioning into phase one of the diet. Other than making quite a mess of my kitchen, everything went smoothly. I started the diet Monday morning and it turned out to be a long and surprising week, but, in retrospect, I think I had it easier than most. My “die-off symptoms” only lasted about 2 days. The rest of the week was an uphill battle in which it seemed like I cooked, cooked and cooked (with lots of sleep too).

Mental and Body Changes

I decided to go dairy-free for now, as I’m pretty confident that I have some type of lactose intolerance and figured it best to start the diet on as simple a diet as possible. I experienced some bad BMs and mental fogginess / clarity problems during the first couple days. I was experiencing some stomach uneasiness after breakfast all week, so I cut out eggs for the time being to see if that would help. I’m still not sure if they were the culprits but I will try and introduce them in early next week and how my body responds. My BMs were all over the place at both extremes from D to nice and solid during the week, so I would say that is an improvement and I will chalk up the inconsistency to die-off and my body starting to heal itself. Late in the week, I have been starting to notice that I have a much steadier energy flow after lunch when I would normally been scrambling for a coffee. (For the first month I’m giving up all caffeine and alcohol.) My sinuses seemed to start clearing up as well. However, the weather changed and now they are back to being plugged up.

Fitness Goals

This week, I did 4 weight lifting sessions and 2 steady state cardio sessions. This will be my blueprint for now but could change at any time. The workouts went great and I really don’t see this diet negatively impacting my fitness goals in any way.  I actually expect it to help me, by eliminating the possibility of binging on junk carbohydrates. I am using the Freeda vitamins at full-serving dosages of 3 multi-vitamins caps, 5 Calcium caps, and 1 B-Complex cap. For the week, I was down 2 pounds.

Diet Details

At this point, I’m only eating carrots and pears along with broiled meats. But my plan includes introducing some butternut squash in the next day or two as long as I’m still feeling good. After that, I’m looking ahead to some apples and then hopefully break into the bananas near the end of the week! I’m also planning on starting on some probiotics this week.

I did do some experimenting this week; the third time that I made carrots I used my steamer. I was able to produce the same level of cooked and purred consistency in 45 minutes, instead of 4 hours of boiling. Based on this test, I’m going to continue trying to use steam to replicate boiling and therefore cut down my time in the kitchen when preparing vegetables.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• • The intro chicken soup is much better tasting than I expected
  • Purred carrots taste a lot like squash and I really like them
  • Try steaming your carrots for 40-50 minutes, instead of boiling
  • You really don’t need to add much water when making pureed pears
  • I think it is almost impossible to understand how much meat one must consume on this diet
  • If you thought you cooked in bulk before, double that and you have SCD proportions
  • If you’ve never used your oven’s broiler, check clearances before cooking things that plump up (burgers) it will save you a big headache!

Anyone else have some one line wisdom for the first week on the diet? How about good stories? I only set the fire detector off twice…

The post Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 1 – The Intro Diet Conquered! appeared first on Healthy Gut Company.