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!
