Two month checkpoint

I've been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for just over two months now.  It has not been easy, and there have been times -- like during my recent trip out of town -- that I've almost abandoned it, even if just temporarily.  But I feel like I've made considerable progress in healing my gut.

For the past week, things have been good -- almost too good, making me wonder when a shoe was going to drop.  But so far, no shoe, just relatively normal gut activity.

Although I'm not certain, I believe this turn for the better is due to SCD yogurt.  The day after we got back from our trip I made another batch of yogurt, which was ready to eat on Tuesday.  Tuesday morning was bad, but that was half-expected: traveling in general has always messed with my gut, sending it one way and then the other for a couple of days after a trip.  So when everything seemed completely normal on Monday, I knew it wasn't that simple, and wasn't surprised when I blew up on Tuesday.  I went ahead and started eating yogurt that afternoon, one large spoonful after each meal.  On Wednesday night or Thursday morning, I upped it to two large spoonfuls after each meal.

Since Tuesday, gut activity has been pretty normal, even a slight shift in the other direction (though there are many who suffer from IBS-C, a slight shift in that direction is usually a welcome change for those of us with IBS-D!).  I've kept my diet very simple, adding back in a couple of things, but mostly keeping it to eggs, meat, and a simple rotation of well-cooked vegetables, so the yogurt is the only thing that seems to make sense as the positive influence.

Of course, this could just be a random shift.  Not only have I had the "roller coaster" experience on this diet, but I've read that it's extremely common for gut activity to be highly variable when starting out on the SCD.  And yet, you get to know your body after a while, and sometimes one explanation seems more likely than another.  Just a gut reaction, if you will.  :)  To me, right now, the yogurt seems the most likely explanation.

It also fits the pattern from a couple of weeks ago.  I made my first batch and started eating it a couple of days before our trip.  I kept eating it up through the morning of the trip, and my gut activity was minimal.  I stopped eating it during the trip, and things didn't go so well.  So perhaps with a steady stream of incoming good bacteria via a delivery method that gets most of it where it needs to go intact, I do okay, and without it, I don't.

Time will tell.  I'm making another batch right now, a full half-gallon instead of a quart, and I'll be upping my intake to a few large spoonfuls after each meal tomorrow.  Even if there are setbacks, if the overall trend continues positive, I'll keep up with the yogurt.