Back To SCD

I have decided to go back on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) 100% (well, maybe I'll still eat a bit of chocolate?). For the past year, especially during my pregnancy with Leo when morning sickness practically forced me to ingest soda crackers, I've eaten many "illegal" foods and luckily the Crohn's hasn't been really bad...but I haven't felt as good as I did during the previous two years on the SCD with no cheating. My biggest symptoms have been slightly increased stool frequency and bloating. But nothing bad enough to make me completely stop eating grains and sugar. Once you start again, I warn you, it's pretty darn hard to stop.

Our pediatrician thinks that 2-month-old baby Leo may have a milk protein intolerance (fussy, spitting up, flecks of blood in his stool), so I have had to eliminate dairy from my diet since it passes through my breast milk. The good news is that after three weeks, Leo's symptoms are nearly gone. The bad news is that it's hard for me to get enough calories if I'm eating SCD without the legal yogurt, cheese, and butter. And most of my go-to SCD recipes contain some form of legal dairy, which means I need to rethink my meal repertoire once again. As a quick fix for this problem, I've been trying my luck with a more traditional dairy-free diet minus wheat. I have been eating oat flour bread and some rice, potatoes (usually in chip form), sugar, and corn products nearly every day. I've still been eating SCD legal almond flour muffins and cookies, made with coconut oil instead of butter. (If I eat the legal stuff it will negate the illegals, right?)

Although I am not feeling really bad, I am starting to worry that I'm on the path towards it. The past couple weeks I've started noticing more mucus in my stool and some small streaks of red blood in the mucus. Also, my tummy is pretty tender if I press on it; if I have baby Leo stand on my belly it feels bruised, for lack of a better description. I could continue to eat this way and see how I do. My gastroenterologist says he can give me a round of prednisone if I have a flare while breastfeeding. But I worry that if I end up with a bad flare, I might have to go back onto the heavy meds like 6MP, and I'd have to wean Leo. I hated how I felt on 6MP. I don't want to go there again.

So, now it's back to SCD for real but MINUS dairy for Leo's sake. It will take some creative thinking. It was hard enough to do SCD in the first place, but once it became my norm it was much easier. Without yogurt, cheese, and butter, I will need to eat more meat, eggs, avocados, and olives to get the calories. SCD legal deli meat for lunch and a veggie and a fruit, and a couple legal coconut macaroons seem to fill me up. Also, I'll need to bake more almond flour treats, like the yummy muffin recipes on bethsblog, to curb my cravings for the "real" baked goods that my hubby and kids eat (and maybe I'll come up with a decent dairy-free SCD bread loaf). And eat more larabars and peanut butter. I know I can do it, it's just especially hard because I'm really hungry from breastfeeding and really tired from having a new baby, and because I've had a taste of all the yummy illegal foods that I hadn't eaten for so long.

For some reason I have this feeling of entitlement, like I've paid my dues and now I should be able to eat what I want. But I have to keep telling myself that being healthy is the most important thing. Especially since I've got three young kids to take care of. I wish to be lucky enough for SCD to heal my gut. To be able to return to a healthy version of "normal" eating. Now I'm realizing that I may have to eat SCD indefinitely...this is hard for me to swallow.

5 Comments

I'm so glad you admitted to feeling entitled to stop doing the diet because you paid your dues. I've often felt the same way but when I go WAY off the diet (1 chocolate chip cookie vs 12 cause you think since you can tolerate 1 you should be able to tolerate 12 and because you're pregnant what better time to stuff yourself?) I end up sick...landed myself in the hospital when I was 3 months pregnant with a bowel obstruction (I've heard it's not typical, but I get obstructed if I eat poorly for three days or more) which was enough to scare mr into being very strict for the rest of the pregnancy . Breastfeeding now and agree that we have a healthier diet than most. My iron levels were great during the pregnancy because of all the meat. My little one is in the 95% in weight. Sometimes docs just don't know about the diet enough to give the right advice.

Question: docs usually recommend starting kids on rice cereal. Im Anxious that my little one may have inherited crohns and concerned about the rice (even though I didn't have my first flare up until 19 and was brought up on pasta!)
Did you feed your babies rice?

I read the book and understand the chemistry of foods and made my own "SCD chocolate". Cocoa powder is only 7% starch, with 4.9% good amylose starch and 2.1% nasty amylopectin starch. It also has 4% pectin, another possible concern. Thus it compares well with many legal vegetables. The biggest problem with commercially made chocolate is that it is made with nasty sucrose. Note that the official SCD bans chocolate completely, possibly due to caffeine content.

I mixed 1 T honey, 1T coconut oil, and 3T cocoa powder to make a dark chocolate which tastes good and doesn't seem to cause problems if I limit myself to about 0.5 T per day. If you like sweet/milk chocolate, you could try adding more honey and/or SCD yogurt to it. If you really want chocolate, make your own, and don't eat a lot of it! This at least minimizes the potential harm.

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