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If you haven’t heard, you have to check out this new Online Cooking Class I’m taking. Watch the video below to see what you’ll learn if you sign up. I don’t know about you but I always seem to have a hard time learning to cook from just a static cook book. Trust me I…
When I first read about SCD legal yogurt, I was immediately put off. But it is the difference maker. If you tolerate dairy, eating it is a must.
I’m not sure how many in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet world are aware of the Primal or Paleo communities but they share all the same basic tenants of diet. I bought Mark Sisson’s Primal Blueprint months ago and loved it. So, when Mark launched his Primal Blueprint Cookbook I jumped at the chance to own a…
A common fear of many people who follow the Specific Carbohydrate Diet is that they won’t be able to get enough calories to gain/maintain weight on the diet. I never thought it would be a problem for me however I was surprised after starting the diet to learn how much I needed to eat.
This mindset shift is the Number 1 most important mindset to starting the SCD Diet right. Here it is: I no longer live to eat, I eat to live!
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.
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!
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).
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.
After my post last week, Steve had the idea to mess around with some citrus fruits on chicken to see how it would taste. So last weekend I picked up some Otto’s chicken thighs and a couple organic oranges and gave it a shot. All in all it turned out pretty well. The orange flavor is much more subtle in the chicken than the lemon, but it has a sweeter taste to it, giving the chicken a nice moist citrus kick that made it a good hot summer night treat. Here’s how I made it:
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 like to head down to the city market on Saturday’s because there’s a vender there called Otto’s Chicken that has the most reasonably priced non-hormone, non-antibiotic, free range chicken that I have been able to find to date. I will usually pick up some breasts or thighs for during the week, but I always grab a fresh 5 lb whole chicken for an amazing weekend feast. Don’t forget to grab some fresh organic lemons while your out! Here’s what I do…
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.
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).
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 the time being. 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 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!
Last week I posted that I had found some research indicating that my lack of smell might be related to zinc deficiency. This week I want to give a high level overview of how zinc might be impacting your life and give you some great resources if you want to learn more about it.
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.
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.
Well, fittingly, 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 very high quality and I’ve had a couple mini constipation cycles (2-3days).
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.
Phenols and Salicylates could be holding you back from getting healthy. Find out in this post what they are and why giving them attention matters.
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.
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.
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