I’ve been on the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) for 318 days as of today (not that I’m counting or anything…). I’m very excited about celebrating my 1 year anniversary on November 20, 2012; I’m planning a party! 😀
Since 2011 I have made very significant and celebration-worthy progress in my health and it wouldn’t have been possible without SCD Lifestyle, faith in God’s sovereign goodness and daily prayer, the support of friends and family, and a few dump trucks worth of self-control.
Overwhelmed with both my severe health problems and seeing SCD as my “last ditch effort” (oh how many diets I’d tried before!) to achieve any amount of relief from the debilitating pain and symptoms I endured 24/7, I had hit Rock-Bottom Desperation. Unfortunately, I was about equally overwhelmed with the restrictions of SCD, especially since I knew I had nut allergies and could not make baked goods (effectively making most BTVC recipes “no can do’s”). I was scared, and rightly so; my health had deteriorated so drastically in several years and I felt like I was dying and nobody really knew how to help me even though I’d done “everything right” according to what my doctors told me to do – I was the PERFECTLY gluten free Celiac, and I was still dying. I felt alone.
Then, I met Steve and Jordan of SCD Lifestyle.
I somehow stumbled across them through the ‘World Wide Web’ while googling questions I had about SCD. I read the free chapter of their SCD Lifestyle – Surviving To Thriving E-book that they offered online, and I bought the book the same day. The hot tears rolled down my cheeks as I read Jordan and Steve’s story because I could relate so personally to their challenges and I’d finally met real people who were “speaking my language” and shared my experience – I was just so relieved to not be alone anymore! I let out a big sigh of relief because it was clear that these guys knew their stuff and they were no longer just surviving gastrointestinal illness – they were truly thriving. I was hooked and I had to keep reading!
While I couldn’t possibly be more grateful to Elaine Gottschall for her life work on transforming Drs. Haas diet into its next iteration in the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, I also felt that the practical steps of making it “work for me” were missing. There were many questions I had which were unaddressed in BTVC and in online forums and message boards, and I felt that so much of Elaine’s time had been given to defending the diet and why certain foods were not allowed rather than breaking the diet down into very practical steps or addressing issues for folks who still seemed to be unable to tolerate many SCD Legal foods. After her passing, this job was left to her followers; Jordan and Steve picked up the baton and ran with it!
With Steve and Jordan as my guides, I followed their advice through their book step-by-step. As they instructed, I wrote out my commitment to do the diet with 100% fanatical adherence for at least 90 days and posted it on my blog and told my friends about my commitment so that I would be held accountable. I also emailed the guys about my three biggest fears in starting SCD, and they wrote me back which gave me the motivation and “pat on the back” I needed to get going. One of the exercises in their book told me to imagine with all my might what being healthy would feel and look like. This was a very powerful exercise for me – when you’re constantly sick, it can be scary to even hope or dream, but I bucked up against my fear of hoping and imagined what being healthy would be like and decided I was going to make my own personal goals to achieve this state as much as possible. I started the Intro Diet and slowly learned to cook for the first time in my life (wow did I have some kitchen failures – and one kitchen fire! – but that was my fault). The book breaks down how to cook each Intro Diet food including peeling, de-seeding, and pureeing. This process was very time-consuming and overwhelming to me in the beginning so I was very glad to have the pictures to guide me through the process. Surviving To Thriving really helped me cope with the mental challenges of giving up food and Steve’s stories of cheating and the consequences helped me stay on the Legal path.
The food phase charts and sample menus included in the Surviving to Thriving book were immensely helpful and I lived by them for the first 6 months I was on SCD. Now I know what I can eat and what I can’t and my list of Legal can eats is pretty small, but my GI tract is improving so I’m content. I finally have that “unshakable Food Safe Zone” because I listened to my body and followed the food phase charts in the book. The guys made the process of testing new foods easy to understand with their four day formula and even though the process felt like it took “forever” before I had variety in my diet, I knew that when I got it right I was going to be all set because I was methodical about how I tested my foods.
Journaling? Ah, that was one of the hard parts for me. While the guys say right from the beginning that your food journal will be your best friend for trying to figure out what is going right and/or wrong, I had kept food-, poop-, and other symptom-related journals for so long prior to starting SCD that I was really burned out on body-related journaling. This slowed down my progress and my ability to identify foods that were causing me problems. When I finally got around to being consistent on my journaling, I was able to really establish that unshakable Food Safe Zone…but not before I got serious about it.
On SCD Lifestyle’s website, there is frequently talk about the Four Horsemen. I mention them frequently in my blog as well because the guys have identified the major trigger foods for folks who are otherwise doing “everything right” but just not seeing the results they were hoping for. I’ve been in that camp more than a few times. Some of these foods (dairy, nuts, fruit, eggs) I was relatively quick to stop eating because of the consequences, and others I hung onto for a long time because I was emotionally not ready to “let go”. Holding on held back my progress, and if I had listened to Steve and Jordan earlier, I would have felt even better sooner.
The great thing is that every suggestion of theirs that I’ve taken has only lead me up, not down. They have never steered me wrong thus far, and given how temperamental my body is, I think that’s simply amazing! My medical case has been impossible for so many doctors to improve, yet some simple – and not-so-simple – diet and lifestyle changes have made a drastic difference. Has it been easy? Nope. I won’t lie; it’s been hard. But have the lifestyle, habit, and diet changes I’ve made been worth it? Oh you bet they have! The fact that I want to even leave my home and bathroom to go to a party I’m planning is evidence of that! 😀
I would have taken months to start SCD 100% if it had not been for Steve and Jordan from SCD Lifestyle, and I would have had much more difficulty emotionally adjusting. Perhaps even more importantly, I wouldn’t have found the tweaks I needed to get my “tough case” body on the right track because, for me, SCD alone isn’t enough – I’ve had to craft and personalize the diet to my body’s specific needs, and SCD Lifestyle lead me through that process in their book and then in the Advanced SCD Course.
On another note, while Steve and Jordan do talk a lot about SCD because their niche and focus is GI disorders, they’ve also begun branching out more recently into the Paleo community as well and into a broader view/acceptance of making a diet that works for each individual (N=1), whether it is GAPS, SCD, Paleo, or something else entirely. I really appreciate this viewpoint as I myself have had to add Atkins restrictions to my personalized SCD. I’m sometimes amazed by how one diet may work so well for person A but utterly fail for person B. Even Elaine Gottschall said that about 20-25% of people who try the SCD will find that it doesn’t work well for them. Granted, that leaves the 75-80% who are seeing good to miraculous results if they practice what she calls “fanatical adherence,” but that 25% DOES still exist, and it’s okay to be one of them.
Just as a disclosure, I wanted to tell you that I am not being paid or in any way compensated for my time in writing about SCD Lifestyle or for reviewing any of their products. I’m simply an extremely happy customer who has benefited greatly from their products and likes to write the things I’m passionate about, and SCD is one of them! I hope that this review will lead folks on the internet to check out SCD Lifestyle for themselves. Want more information about my take on SCD Lifestyle? Read here – Why You And I Need SCDLifestyle.com. Cheers!
Gutsy Girl
Naturally Gutsy 
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