Still at it

Well, so much for posting more often.  :)

But here I am, fifteen months on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and doing very well.  My episodes of gastrointestinal distress seem to be coming less frequently, and are shorter-lived when they do happen.  I would say that I'm at about 95%, and I'm very happy with that, despite the occasional hiccup.

So what's new?

I've almost finished reading Jimmy Moore's "Keto Clarity," which describes how a ketogenic diet can help with a variety of problems.  There is definitely a slight emphasis on using a ketogenic diet for weight loss -- Moore himself used to weigh over 400 pounds -- but it's only a slight emphasis, he also discusses a lot of other problems that can be managed better or eliminated by adopting a "keto lifestyle": diabetes, migraines, dementia, and many others.

While I haven't gone full-tilt into a ketogenic version of the SCD, I've ended up just inside the keto fence by default: through more and more testing of foods, I found that the more fruit I ate, the more likely I was to have GI difficulty, so I'm down to about one cup of frozen berries in the evening and that's it for fruit.  Since I eat almost no honey, and since other sweeteners are illegal on the SCD, I've just ended up eating very low-carb.  And since I lost a bunch of weight early on and am happy to eat as many calories as I can, I'm eating plenty of butter and cheese, so my diet is also relatively high-fat.  And those two things put together almost define a ketogenic diet; the only thing missing is "moderate protein," and I think that was already the case.  If I was seriously trying for a state of ketosis, I'd probably have to add more fat and decrease the protein slightly, but this seems to be working for me, so I'm going to keep going in this direction.

Speaking of cheese, I continue to be slightly surprised that I seem to be able to tolerate many different types of cheeses just fine.  They are all SCD-legal cheeses (legal because the way they're made eliminates virtually all lactose), but I'm still a bit surprised, simply because of the decades that I spent believing that ALL cheeses were a problem for me.  My favorites these days are Jarlsberg, Gruyere, and Parmiggiano Reggiano, but others that I enjoy are Manchego, Gouda, Pavino, and a couple of varieties from Unie Kass (a Dutch cheese-maker) named Robusto and Reserve.

I'm still flummoxed about why SCD yogurt seemed to be so helpful when I introduced it a couple of months into the diet, but came to be something that brought on GI problems a couple of months after that.  It's either the casein, the galactose content, or the high dose of probiotics that each serving contains. Based on my success with cheese, I've all but eliminated casein from the equation.  My suspicion is that it's the amount of l. acidophilus that it contains, and that, for some reason, while I needed a lot of this early on, too much of it now causes an overgrowth situation.  But given my experience with carbohydrates, I'm not ruling out the possibility that the galactose is a problem. In any case, I tried a test a month or so ago of 1/4 cup of yogurt once a week, and I got mixed results: the first week, I experienced a bit of stool softening the next day; the second week, I experienced no problem the next day, but diarrhea the day after.  I don't know if either of those were from the yogurt, but I discontinued the test.  A couple of weeks later (just a few days ago), I started testing again, this time with a heaping tablespoonful once a week.  I noticed no problems after that first attempt, we'll see what happens after the second one in a few days.

I still seemed to have trouble with nuts the last time I tried them, so I haven't had any in a month or two.  I'm going to try again soon, this time with pecan butter (homemade).  I would really, really like to be able to add nuts into my diet, as they're a healthy source of fiber and micronutrients, and they make great portable snacks.  My biggest problem with them is being able to stop eating them after a reasonable amount!

And I've continued avoiding wine for the past month.  I look forward to trying to get that back on the menu as well.

It takes so long to introduce new things at this point.  Trying to keep everything stable in between weeklong tests means that I can't really change much during that week; the most I'm willing to try is two concurrent weeklong tests, with each item three or four days apart, but even that decreases the possibility of being able to definitely identify what caused a problem if one occurs.  Having to wait so long is frustrating, but I'll continue to do my best with it in the hopes that I'll be able to continue increasing the foods that I can eat without causing major distress.

Onward!

One year

Yep, it's been a year.  I've been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for a full year.  I haven't posted here for several months, but I've definitely continued on the diet.

I originally gave the diet a couple of weeks; then, when I saw how much things were changing (though not always for the better), I gave it a month; then, when I saw progress, I gave it a few months; then, when things got markedly better after introducing SCD-legal yogurt at two months, I was committed for the foreseeable future.  Now, after learning what I've learned, I'm committed to this way of eating -- even if, at some point, I start adding back in foods that are not SCD-legal -- for the rest of my life.

The past several months have gone between my gut doing very well -- I estimate that during those times my gut function is probably 80% or better back to something akin to "normal" -- and my gut doing not so well, though usually not as badly as it was doing prior to starting on the SCD.  Although that's frustrating after a full year on this diet, I think I've finally narrowed down the causes to alcohol, sugar (monosaccharides, of course), and, to a lesser extent, nuts.  When I cut my sugar consumption down to only one serving of fruit a day, and when I don't drink red wine, things improve dramatically.  I've toyed with the idea of giving a ketogenic version of the SCD a try, but it's already so difficult severely limiting these last few things that I really enjoy, so I haven't done it yet.

You may be thinking, "But if you know that sugar and alcohol are problems, why do you still consume them at all?"  Well, like we all do every day, I make choices.  My wife and I just celebrated our 15-year wedding anniversary with a week in Sedona (beautiful!).  I decided to enjoy quite a bit of red wine, which I love -- and I did enjoy it, despite the fact that I paid a price for it.  I had a Super Tuscan at the first restaurant we went to, a red blend named Apothic Red that was very drinkable (and that I'm going to be looking for back home!), and a Bordeaux that I found while wine tasting.  They were all great, and I enjoyed them, and if they set my gut off, well, so be it.  I've gone back to a glass of red only every week or two, and I'm sure that everything will calm back down in short order.

Fruit is also difficult to give up, given my sweet tooth, and the fact that there are so many fruits that I like (especially tropical fruits like mangos, pineapples, and dates, and summer fruits like peaches, and just about any dried fruit).  I'm still allowing myself some fruit, mostly a small serving of low-sugar fruit (e.g., strawberries or blueberries) in the morning.  But occasionally I just want more, so I buy some raisins or have a few dates -- and if they set my gut off, well, so be it.

There is also the possibility that dairy products are causing some of my ongoing problems, but I haven't confirmed that.  I plan on trying to test them out more rigorously in the near future.

In any case, I've made it a full year on the SCD, and I'm proud of that.  Until very recently, I haven't knowingly cheated on the diet (and the recent cheat was only a small portion of a dessert that was made by a friend that had a small amount of a corn syrup-containing vanilla extract in the entire recipe, and I don't think it affected me at all).  I'd be very surprised if I haven't taken in illegals a dozen times or more in the past year when eating out, despite becoming quite proficient at asking the right questions at restaurants, but I'm sure they were small amounts, and I think I'm fortunate enough that those types of mistakes/accidents are small enough that they affect my gut very slightly or not at all.

So what have I learned from being on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for the past year?  A lot!

• I think the most important thing that I've learned is that diet affects everything.  In some cases, and for some people, drastically.  Unfortunately, in most cases I think it doesn't affect people drastically, so they think their diet is just fine.  The problem is that over months and years it's causing internal problems, and by the time one or more of those problems develops and becomes serious and chronic, diet seems to be the least likely candidate as the cause.  This is the way I now view the vegetarian diet that I followed for over 20 years: I believed it was healthy (and, to be honest, I still think it was healthier than the Standard American Diet, or SAD), but it was actually doing internal damage that made recovering from whatever the hell happened during/after my appendectomy 10 times more difficult.
• Going further down the diet road, I've learned not just that diet affects everything, but a lot about the ways that diet affects the human body.  I think the most important area is how excess carbohydrate consumption -- especially the processed carbohydrates that are so prevalent in the SAD -- changes human metabolism, affecting everything from gut function to insulin resistance and other hormone activity, all of which is almost entirely for the worse.  Too much to write about here, but I highly recommend the recent documentary "Fed Up," as it touches on this subject; it doesn't go into as much detail as I would have liked, but I'm sure it would have been information overload for the general population if they'd included all of the studies that I've read about.
• Old habits die hard.  I have a sweet tooth, and early on, not feeding it with the M&Ms, and candy bars, and cookies, etc., that I'd become accustomed to was very difficult.  It definitely got easier over time, and in fact at some point I started seeing the massive checkout lane displays in stores without any desire at all to buy something.  But those old cravings still resurface sometimes; most recently, I had quite a few during my anniversary trip after dinners out at nice restaurants, since virtually all nice restaurants have nothing to offer for dessert that isn't full of wheat, sugar, or both.
• Thankfully, I've learned that all my friends are perfectly happy to try to accommodate my dietary needs, even though it's far more difficult now than it was when I was "just" a vegetarian, and that most restaurants are as well (though most don't understand the degree to which the restrictions should be taken, e.g., marinades, seasonings, etc.).
• I've learned how to grill just about everything.  Quite proficiently, I might add!  :)

In addition to things that I've learned, or more accurately because of the things that I've learned, some of my beliefs about diet and lifestyle have changed radically:

• When I learned over 20 years ago that a gram of carbohydrates has 4 calories, and a gram of protein has 4 calories, but a gram of fat has 9 calories, I fell hook, line, and sinker for the low-fat approach to eating.  While I recognized that not all calories are equal -- given the same number of calories, a diet consisting entirely of Coca-Cola and french fries would be vastly inferior to a diet of fresh fruits and vegetables -- I thought that mild calorie restriction simply through severely limiting fats -- especially saturated fats -- was healthy.  This has been reinforced over and over in the media, and recommended by many, including the U.S. government.  I now know that this is not only not the best approach to a healthy diet, it is actually very unhealthy, and is (mostly) based on faulty science going back 60 years.
• Along those same lines, although I didn't become a vegetarian for health reasons, I certainly believed for all those years that whole grains were a good choice in terms of health.  Now, I still believe that whole grains are, in general, a better alternative than heavily processed grains, primarily because they contain more fiber, which will at least slow down the process whereby the body breaks the grains down into sugars; with this process slowed down, there's less of an impact on the body's insulin production system, so the likelihood of insulin-resistance is reduced, or at least the time it takes to get there is lengthened (at least that's the way I understand it).  But I no longer believe that they are a good choice in general; in fact, I think they're a poor choice, and the fact that they are a better choice than heavily processed grains is pretty faint praise.
• Speaking of vegetarianism, I no longer believe that it's possible to get optimum nutrition from a vegetarian diet, especially the low-fat, grain-centric vegetarian diet that is fairly common in the West.  Note that I didn't write "adequate" nutrition: there are millions of people worldwide that eat a vegetarian diet for their entire lives, and live in what would appear to be good health the entire time.  Everyone is different, and I think it's entirely possible for a human body to do well on a vegetarian diet; but I think it's more likely that someone on a vegetarian diet will appear to be doing well, maybe for years, but will in fact be doing damage internally very slowly.  With the exception of a few critical nutrients (e.g., B12), it's true that it's possible to obtain most nutrients that are usually obtained from animal products from plant foods instead; the problem is that this is often not done, and is almost never done for all of the nutrients that it should be.  How many vegetarians are aware of how important zinc is, and how to obtain it when the foods richest in it (beef and lamb) are not part of the diet?  (With my hummus addiction, I suspect I actually did well in this area without even trying!)  Yes, you can get it from pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds; but how many of those are you eating on a daily basis?  For those on a low-fat (especially low saturated fat) vegetarian diet, what about the fat-soluble vitamins, A, D, E, and K?  In addition to just getting all of the nutrients that are often lacking when animal products are removed from the diet, there's also absorbing them: there are so many interactions between micronutrients, and often a plant-based source of one may provide what seems like an adequate amount, but it turns out that it's much more poorly absorbed than the same amount from an animal-based source.  So I just simply no longer believe that it's possible to obtain optimum nutrition from a vegetarian diet: humans evolved eating lower animals, and by and large the human body still operates optimally using that approach.
• My thoughts on eating a vegetarian diet in order to prevent the death of animals have also changed.  It's easy to think that if you don't eat red meat, you're not contributing to the death of an animal.  But the sad truth is that smaller animals die all the time in the cultivating of plants, whether it's because of chemicals (which is, of course, reduced when organic alternatives are chosen) or from harvesting machinery (which will happen whether the produce is organic or not).  It's simply impossible to live without having a negative impact on those farther down the food chain.  While I don't like that thought, I now accept it.  Since I still believe it's best to have as little impact as possible in that regard, I do my best to purchase animal products from local farms that treat their animals humanely (aside from that whole slaughter thing at the end); fortunately, this has added health benefits (e.g., the fatty acid profile of grass-fed beef vs. conventional beef).
• I used to say that I'd eat a vegetarian diet even if it was proved that a vegetarian diet would actually shorten my life by a few years.  But I've changed my mind on that.  Not because I'll do anything just to have a few more years, but because I believe there's a higher likelihood that my quality of life will be better for however long I live if I eat a diet that is relatively low in carbohydrates, devoid of grains, and includes animal products.

It's been a challenging year.  Many thanks to all those who have helped me get through it: my beautiful wife Jenny, friends and family, and the good folks in the Breaking The Vicious Cycle - SCD Yahoo! group (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BTVC-SCD/info).  I hope that in the coming year I can learn more about what, specifically, my body does and doesn't tolerate, and that I can continue to learn about how food choices affect the human body.

Hopefully I can manage to post here more often as well!

Five months

Today marks five months on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.

I haven’t written much lately because there hasn’t been much of interest happening with my gut lately.  I’m still on a roller coaster, but it’s a very gentle roller coaster these days.  A few weeks ago things were less than ideal, but for the past week or so my gut has been functioning more or less normally.  I keep waiting for a shoe to drop!  I’m sure that I’ll have another setback at some point, but as long as I keep moving two steps forward and one step back — instead of one step forward and two steps back — I’ll be happy.

I’ve added in a few foods recently.  Foods that I added previously and wasn’t sure whether I was reacting to badly or not: oranges and pecans.  This time, I’m adding them in a bit more slowly: for example, instead of snacking on a random amount of pecans every night, I’m eating 1/4 cup every other day.  If I don’t seem to be having any problems after a week, I’ll try almonds, and maybe bake something with almond flour again.

I also bought a jar of Bubbie’s pickles.  I love pickles, and Bubbie’s have no sugar added and have probiotics in the brine.  As an added plus, they’re delicious!

I’ve had a few cravings lately.  We stopped in at Safeway to get some Halloween candy, and I really wanted some M&Ms.  But I could tell it was almost entirely a psychological reaction: I wasn’t really thinking about the taste, it was all about the ability to buy the bag and the act of eating them.  Fortunately, the cravings that I’ve had have been very easy to ignore.  As far as I know, I’ve been strictly SCD-legal for several months — and the only times I may have eaten something that’s not legal in the first couple of months were accidental.

I grill-roasted a turkey breast last week, and it came out well.  With that under my belt, and several SCD-legal recipes for cranberry sauce and mashed butternut squash and a few other traditional-esque Thanksgiving recipes, I think I’ll survive the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday.  I fully expect to be giving thanks that my gut is on the mend!

Transplant what?

On the day after my four-month SCD anniversary, I thought I'd share some news on the latest possible treatment for IBS that's getting a lot of buzz these days.

It's known by several names.  Fecal Bacteriotherapy.  Fecal Microbiota Therapy.  Stool transplant.  Yep, you read right, stool transplant: you take someone else's poop and transplant it into your colon.

Although it might sound absurd at first, once you think about it, it makes a lot of sense: there's a very diverse little village of bacteria in your gut, and if some parts of the population overgrow and others are suppressed or removed altogether, the entire system can start malfunctioning.  Badly.  But if you repopulate the village with a bunch of happy bacteria from the well-functioning village down the road, everything starts working properly again.

So how is this accomplished?  Well, it's been done in a few doctor's offices as a treatment for stubborn c. diff. infections.  But because it's still a fairly new procedure and hasn't received FDA approval, it's more commonly done as a DIY project.  You get a blender, some poop from a sympathetic donor, a turkey baster, and... well, you get the picture.  There are several threads going right now in the forums at http://www.ibsgroup.org that were started by people who decided to give it a try; a couple appear to be unqualified successes for people who have suffered from IBS for years.

Recently, a doctor in Canada came up with a way to extract the bacteria from someone's poop and pack them into pills that can be swallowed, rather than having to insert them via the other end of the pipe.  The whole process is described in this article.  It's not much different than taking any of the bazillion commercial probiotics that are out there, these capsules simply contain a much more diverse population of bacteria.

Both approaches -- the procedure done by a doctor and pills created for a specific patient -- have given a lot of people some new hope.  It may be somewhat gross to think about, but most people who suffer from serious IBS symptoms for years or decades would be willing to try just about anything.  Unfortunately, regulatory approval takes a long time, so it's unlikely that either approach is going to be widespread anytime soon.  But there's always the DIY approach.

And what do I think about it?  Since the Specific Carbohydrate Diet has helped me a lot so far, I'm going to continue on this path for the time being.  My biggest concern isn't the "gross factor," it's the lack of data about which bacterial families/strains are necessary for proper gut function, and in what ratio.  And which of those families/strains I'm low on, or are missing from my gut completely.  I mean, if the bacteria that I'm missing are the members of the community who are in the book club, and my donor happens to have an overabundance of bacteria that belong to a motorcycle gang, well... I just don't want to accidentally make things worse, that's all.

But it will definitely be in the back of my mind as an option down the road.

The Nonsense That Is Homeopathy

A few days ago I ended up in a contentious exchange about homeopathy in a Yahoo! group that I belong to. This group is dedicated to the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, and I've gotten a lot of good information and ideas from several of the long-time members. Sometimes discussions veer a bit from SCD-specific questions and comments to more general health-related topics; in this case, someone had posted a question about whether or not anyone was planning on getting a flu shot. Someone responded that she didn't get a flu shot, and if she came down with the flu she'd take a homeopathic remedy named Oscillococcinum, and that prompted me to get on my homeopathy-is-nonsense soapbox.

I don't remember when I first became aware of homeopathy, though I'm guessing it was sometime in the 1990s: I became a vegetarian around 1990, and vegetarianism and veganism seem to go hand-in-hand with "alternative medicine" (sort of funny that I'm now following a diet that almost no vegetarians follow, yet many of the followers are very into alternative medicine!). In the late 1990s or early 2000s, I wrote this article for the Straight Dope website mailbag column on something called "color therapy." Towards the end of the article, I write, "It shouldn't take much research, however, to find treatments that are similar in that they a) look or sound as though they might have a beneficial effect, and b) are not supported by one piece of scientific evidence. Try typing 'homeopathy' into your favorite web search engine." That last sentence started a flame-filled thread in the Straight Dope forum dedicated to mailbag pieces that went on for a long time. But the article isn't dated, and I can't remember whether I wrote it before or after Cecil's main article on homeopathy, located here. In any case, by that time I'd read enough to be a firm non-believer in homeopathy.

Homeopathy was created by a German physician named Samuel Hahnemann back around 1800. The hypothesis behind it is "like cures like": the same substance that produces symptoms of disease in healthy people will cure similar symptoms in people who are ill. We're already starting off on shaky ground -- I mean, how many people who find out from a throat culture that they have strep throat are going to be willing to swallow a capsule full of streptococcus bacteria? -- but it gets better: the substance is diluted to make the remedy, and the more diluted the substance is, the more effective it will be. With that, I believe the whole concept moves into the realm of fantasy. In his article, Cecil mentions "one cold remedy with a dilution of 200C, which mathematically is less than one molecule per all the known matter in the universe." Far less, in fact: a 200C solution means that the substance has supposedly been diluted to one part in 10 raised to the power of 400 (that's a 1 followed by 400 zeros), and it's estimated that the number of atoms in the known universe is 10 raised to the power of 80. Now, to me, that estimate seems awfully low: the universe is a big place, right? But even if you simply think of it as one part per all the known matter on earth, the concept is still pretty absurd. It's generally understood that once something has been diluted past a point far below this, there's not much chance that even a single atom of the original substance is contained in the remedy dose. And guess what? Oscillococcinum is a 200C remedy.

It's my belief that Hahnemann's ideas were (somewhat) reasonable at the time. This is over 200 years ago, and the concepts of atoms and molecules were apparently just gaining ground. But given the problems with the genesis of Hahnemann's hypothesis when he ate some cinchona bark (described in the Wikipedia article on homeopathy), and given what we now know about the properties of matter and the mechanisms of disease, the system defies logic and, more importantly, the laws of physics.

So when the subject came up in this group, a group of people who are very concerned about their health and who I've gained some great insight from, I felt compelled to explain what I know about homeopathy in the hopes that these good people would not waste time, energy, and money on something so worthless. Because I've found that most people who take homeopathic remedies know virtually nothing about homeopathy, they simply know that it's "alternative" so it must be better than what the doctor would give you, and a friend told them, "it works." As they say, no good deed goes unpunished.

I concluded a post where I described the basic concepts of homeopathy with this: "I know that people will believe what they like about homeopathy, as well as other forms of treatment and other concepts. But I will continue to rail against homeopathy anywhere it's mentioned, because I find it unconscionable that homeopathic remedies continue to be marketed to good people, like the people who belong to this group, who are trying desperately to regain their health. I urge anyone who has used homeopathic remedies in the past to read up on the subject; the Wikipedia article is a good start, and there is a lot more material out there."

That garnered this response from the poster who brought up Oscillococcinum: "You may want to think twice before railing against something you have no experience with." But that's poor advice: I don't need to experience a car crash to know that it would be bad for me; I don't need to experience self-trepanation to know that it would be a bad idea.  My response was, "One needn't experience something in order to apply critical thinking skills and come to a negative conclusion."

Another group member went on a long rant about why the people of the group are sick and tired of traditional doctors.  I understand that, and to a certain extent I can say that describes me pretty well.  But he writes, "we really don't have time to decide whether homeopathic remedies work or not, we don't have time to wait for researcher's answers."  This is the attitude I find most disturbing, the "don't bother me with the facts, I'm on a mission" approach.  I get the frustration, I really do.  But ignoring well-established laws of the physical world won't get you closer to realizing your goal; it may even send you down the wrong path if you get what you think is a positive response.  Not to mention the fact that, in the case of homeopathy, you don't have to wait for researcher's answers: homeopathic remedies have never been shown more effective than placebo in all of the numerous well-designed, peer-reviewed trials that have been performed.

The Oscillococcinum poster had this to say about her experience (just before advising me to "think twice"): "It is impossible for me to believe that a 6 month old baby who is so sick that he cannot raise his head and who is suddenly transformed to a happy child playing merrily with his toys on the floor 10 minutes after being prescribed the correct homeopathic remedy is experiencing a placebo effect. This happened time and again with my children. If not for that, I might question it too. But I have seen it with my own eyes too many times to not know there is something there."  I responded that without knowing any of the variables in play at the time, I couldn't offer any explanation.  But of course, there are many possibilities: the flu wasn't the cause; the child was going to start playing with his toys in 10 minutes regardless; the remedy had inactive ingredients (as if it had any active ingredients!) like sugar that gave the child energy; the child had been fed 30 minutes earlier and the food was just kicking in; etc.  I didn't bring any of that up, because I didn't want to get into a long drawn out discussion of what caused a child I didn't know to perk up five or ten years ago after taking a homeopathic remedy with an ingredient list that I didn't have access to.  She wants to believe it was the homeopathic remedy, and I'm sure there's nothing I can say to change that; I'll never believe that something that has no trace of a substance that supposedly reduces flu symptoms could actually accomplish that (in ten minutes, no less), and there's nothing she can say to change that.  I simply explained that my intention in discussing the subject is never to offend or belittle, just to educate, and if sending my thoughts through the ether sounded like an attack at any point, I was sorry.  Then I said I'd get off my soapbox, and hoped she wouldn't be surprised if I got back on it in six months if the subject came up again.  And added a smiley.  You just can't tell how people will read things when their sacred cow is involved.

She got the last word with this bit of condescension: "Well you know, we all have our own little box from which we view the world. Some people, through experience, have expanded their box and it's a bit bigger in some areas than other people's so they have a more expanded view. This is fine. It's when someone tries to force others who have a gained a larger view through experience into their own more limited box because they cannot see anything else - that's when things become annoying."  At least I've got the laws of physics and good critical thinking skills in my box, little though it may be.  And "forcing" someone into my little box?  Really?  People get so wound up.  I've never tried to force someone to believe anything about homeopathy in all the times I've discussed it, verbally and with written text.  How would I even do that?  "You'll stop believing in homeopathic remedies or I'll come down this ethernet cable and MAKE you stop believing!"  Sheesh.

And finally, this: "if you cannot see the purpose of something, by all means you have a right to your view, don't use it. I ask that you give the same respect to others who have a different experience."  Respect?  Gee, I'm not sure I've got room for that in my little box.  I'm guessing that "respect" to this person means "not explaining the premise behind homeopathy to someone who mentions it," whereas I prefer to think of respect as "trying to educate someone about something that is a waste of their time and money."  But to each his or her own.  You just might want to give some respect if you expect some in return, and here's a hint, telling someone that their worldview box is smaller than yours doesn't carry any respect points.

I've already learned quite a few things from this poster about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, both in response to questions from me and in response to questions from many others.  She posts frequently, and I'm sure I'll learn more, and I'm sure we can be civil.  I imagine if I ever met her in person I'd find her perfectly likable, and we'd have a perfectly friendly conversation.  The whole exchange was just really disappointing.

At least I got the homeopathy-is-nonsense word out there again.  I'd offer the same advice to anyone reading this: if you've taken homeopathic remedies in the past, do yourself a favor and read up on the whole system.  Or I might just have to come down this ethernet line and make you disbelieve.

What I Miss - And What I Don't

Sorry I haven't been posting.  I've been quite busy with house projects and other activities.

A brief update: I'm still doing quite well, though my symptoms have come back to a small degree.  I believe this was due to the introduction of peanut butter and nuts, but it's difficult to say for sure; I discontinued the use of both last week, and I'm giving my body a week or two to re-adjust.  Some SCDers have reported developing sensitivities to foods while on the diet, most notably dairy products.  I hope that's not the case with me, as I really think the homemade SCD yogurt has helped a lot, but if it is, I'll deal with it; when my current batch of yogurt is gone, I'm going to take a break from making yogurt for a week or two and see how my body responds.

I still believe that I'm better off than I was before starting the SCD, and I hope to continue improving.

A couple of weeks ago, Jenny and I went to see a movie.  We enjoyed the movie, but the movie theater experience isn't quite what it used to be for me.  I almost always had some popcorn at the theater, and usually some candy too: M&Ms were a favorite of mine, as were Reese's Pieces.  Looking at the options in the concession case, I realized that there is nothing that I can eat in movie theaters any more.  Popcorn is a complex carbohydrate, and as far as I know all of the candy that's available is sucrose-based.  When we went to a movie a couple of months ago I took some dates with me, and it was nice to be able to have a snack in the theater; but it's just not quite the same.

So that got me thinking about things I miss, now that I'm on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  Here are a few:

• Chips and hummus.  For some who know me well, this goes without saying, as I used to have some chips and hummus once or twice a day before the SCD.  Usually Mission brand corn chips, and just about any brand and flavor of hummus.
• Chips and salsa.  Who can resist Chevy's salsa?
• Subway Veggie Delite sandwiches.
• Dark chocolate.  Surprisingly, I don't think of this one very often; I thought every evening would be torture, since I used to have chocolate while watching TV on most evenings.  Still, every once in a while, I do crave it.
• Being able to go out to eat whenever I want.  It's not so much that I love restaurant food, it's just the ability to decide at the last minute that it would be nice to go out.

And thinking about things that I miss got me thinking about things that I don't miss:

• Pretty serious morning attacks of diarrhea.
• Not being able to eat breakfast, lest the morning attack continue all the way until lunch or later.
• Occasional worrying about whether or not I remembered my morning or evening dose of Loperamide.

I'm sure there are other things that fit into both categories, but those are what have been on my mind lately.

Three months

Yesterday was my three month anniversary on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.  I'm still very happy with the outcome so far, although the past several days haven't been ideal.  I tried a peanut butter experiment last week, and kept the rest of my diet neutral in terms of foods, but I was eating a bit more fruit mixed in with my yogurt and had an occasional additional piece of fruit, and I was eating a bit more cheese than previously.  So I'm still not sure whether it was the peanut butter (a small amount each day over three days), or the additional fruit, or just random timing that has seen my gut slightly unhappy.  Still, "slightly unhappy" is substantially better than it used to be, so I'm not worrying about it.

My body has seen substantial changes over the past few months.  I've lost enough weight to go from a 33" waist to a 30" waist; I'm not sure how many pounds that represents, because we don't have a scale in the house, but I imagine it's around 15.  I look really thin, but I've always had a pretty slight frame, and I feel fine, so I'm not concerned about the weight loss at all.  I've read that substantial weight loss is very common in the first few months of the SCD, and that it's not hard to gain it back after your body adjusts.

My back is smooth, so my dietary change seems to have had a positive impact on my mild eczema.

Most importantly, my gut seems to be functioning much more normally.  I hope to see continued improvement over the next few months, since I plan to continue on this path for the foreseeable future.

Since I still think that sugars are more of a problem for me than anything else, my plan is to continue to introduce more vegetables over the next month and not experiment much with fruits (fruits right now amount to an over-ripe banana in the afternoon, and a small bowl of homemade applesauce at night followed by some dates stuffed with dry-curd cottage cheese).  Spinach seemed to be a problem early on, so I've left it out of my diet.  I'm going to try it again soon, as well as other leafy greens, like bok choy and kale.

I'm also very eager to try nuts again, although I've read that introducing nuts and peanuts too soon is a common mistake.  It didn't go well a couple of months ago, so I'm going to hold off on whole nuts a little longer, and simply add in something made with almond flour occasionally and see how that goes.

As I was eating breakfast the other day, Jenny said, "Another very colorful breakfast.  I think you get more vitamins than anyone else I know!"  I think that's true: I think I'm eating more vegetables now than I was when I was a vegetarian!  Usually two different kinds at every meal, sometimes three, and fairly large servings at that.  I'm trying to be very conscious of the amount of meat that I'm eating: while I think that it has helped me, I'm still not altogether happy about it, and I think that 1/4lb. to 1/2lb. of meat or fish at each meal is more than enough.  I hope to decrease my meat consumption to 1/4lb. per serving over time.

There have been other changes related to this diet as well.  Having one meat-eater and one vegetarian in the house has been a challenging transition.  Our food bill is much higher than it used to be, as my taste in meat is rather high-end: I recently bought a tuna steak at $25/lb. (fresh ahi was so much better than canned albacore!), and my favorite cut of beef is a NY steak, recently on sale at $16/lb. (however, the food bill is at least partially offset by the fact that we don't go out to eat nearly as often as we used to).  I'm sure it would be cheaper at Safeway, but I think the quality is much higher at Whole Foods.  Of course, I buy cheaper cuts as well: I've become much more cognizant of the cost of different cuts, and look carefully before buying.  But having been disappointed by a few cheaper purchases, I'm still willing to pony up for something I know I prefer.

So there have definitely been challenges.  But overall, I'm pleased with the progress.  So on I go.