Cleansing/crohns diet

Hi themrsrockstar,

The Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD) and Paleo Diet are two diets people often try, and I follow the SCD. The best diet for you is whatever makes you feel better and not worse, but eliminating processed food and making everything yourself can only help, I think.

This was my shopping list for this week. Some of these foods are pricey but I feel better when I eat higher quality food. I only cook for myself. Also, if you search Google for Paleo recipes you will find a lot of healthy options. What foods do you like?

Grocery List:

6 or 7 Bananas (some ripe, some almost ripe and some green to space them out)
2 avocados
green beans
asparagus
carrots
mushrooms
tomatoes
zucchini
red bell pepper
basil
garlic clove
yellow onions
lemons
limes
2 dozen eggs (organic, cage-free)
2 lbs. organic chicken breasts
1 lb. Boar's Head brand reduced sodium turkey breast slices
Wild Caught Salmon
Wild Caught Canned Tuna (no additives)
Vanilla Extract (without additives)
Clover Honey
Olive Oil
Coconut Oil
Yellow Mustard
Baking Soda
Peppermint Tea
Almond Butter (no sugar added)
Cashew Butter (no sugar added)
Almond Flour (to make homemade almond milk)

I make paleo bread out of cashew butter and eggs, and then make sandwiches with the turkey breast slices. Sometimes I add avocado, sometimes yellow mustard.

I eat fish at least twice a week, usually with a side of green beans or asparagus (if it's in season), drizzled with olive oil and a little lemon or lime zest and juice.

I bake chicken for dinner quite often. I pick out the recipes beforehand and buy whatever is needed. I make 2-3 servings of everything I make so that I have leftovers/can piggyback meals. There are tons of chicken recipes out there.

You can make so many kinds of omelets. I eat eggs almost every day because they are so versatile. I like them hard boiled too...sometimes I make half a dozen to last a few days.

I eat a banana almost every day. Bananas are very gentle on my stomach and are nice, portable snacks.

Read the book "breaking the vicious cycle" which goes into detail about the SCD diet.  I have been on this diet for 7 years and have not had one flare or symptom in that time.  I also healed healed two rectal fistulas with that diet.

This is not a diet you can do on and off. You have to have 100% fanatical dedication or it will not work.

themrsrockstar, I will say, salads are something I haven't been able to eat, even when following SCD. Everyone is different though. The foods I can't eat are: apples, pears, popcorn, lettuce (I can tolerate baby spinach salads every once in a while), corn, anything super high in fiber like cauliflower, Brussel sprouts or broccoli.

The best thing you can do is keep an exact journal of everything you eat and how you feel afterwards. Sometimes it can just be a bad Crohn's day, but a lot of times it can be food that is the culprit. Just be careful of roughage starting out because it can really hard to digest! :)

I forgot to add that I LOVE avocado and eat it all the time! On the Slow Carb Diet - 4 hour Body by Timothy Ferris

This is the Breaking the Vicious Cycle website with more information about the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. The book is available on www.amazon.com.

http://btvc.webfactional.com/home/

The foods I listed are all SCD legal. You just have to check your meat, spices, nut butters, etc. to ensure they don't contain any added sugar, starch or other additives. Also, bananas must be ripe with brown spots and no green when you eat them.

If you decide you want to stick with the diet, it's beneficial to buy in bulk and some items are easier to find online.

I buy almond flour, dried fruit and nuts from Nuts.com.

I typically buy almond butter and cashew butter from Vitacost.com. The brand I buy is Once Again (it has a raccoon on the label) and it has no added sugar, salt or preservatives. Once Again also makes a delicious peanut butter, which is SCD legal. I also buy Redmond Real Salt brand salt from Vitacost because all of the salts at my local grocery store have anti-caking agents added.

Good luck! I hope you'll post an update!

Of course, happy to help! I'm sorry that you are so stressed. I can relate...I was laid off at the end of January and haven't found a new job yet. It's scary, but everything will work out.

Some of the food on the diet is quite expensive...I usually check out my grocery store's flyer to see what produce is on sale that week. Bananas and green beans are always inexpensive. Zucchini, squash and cauliflower are pretty affordable too. I buy frozen, wild caught fish in bulk from a wholesale food supplier that also has a few stores open to non-retail customers. I know you said you are worried about finances right now, but after things improve, and if you like the diet, you can really save a lot if you are willing to buy more at one time. I try to avoid health food/specialty stores because they typically have a significant mark-up, so that is why I buy what I can at my local grocery store and online. Trader Joe's is an exception, but I don't live close to one.

I hope to see you on the forum again soon, themrsrockstar! Hang in there!

The best thing I ever did was change my diet. I am eating things I never would have thought I could. I started very slow with juicing, very slow. A little every few days for a long time, then slowly increased. Then I slowly changed to a vegan diet. BEST thing I ever did. I would research and try, but I wouldn't suggest cold turkey overnight, our system has to adjust. My colonoscopy med free is better, not cured by any means but better, I have to treat my pain but after bad experiences on biologicals changing my diet was easy. There are many people who share success with different diets, find one that you think you can handle and take a while. I took 3 years to fully change.

The Boars Head turkey breast slices I buy are wheat/gluten free with no additives, 0 carbs, 0 sugar. Will you please advise what makes them illegal? The nutrition info. is listed here:

http://boarshead.com/products/turkey/421-our-premium-46-lower-sodium-turkey-breast-skinless

Hi dfdavedf,

Yes, I do remember reading that U.S. companies are allowed to omit up to 5% of non-allergens from their ingredient lists, which means their products may contain additives. The Boar's Head's website highlights that their products contain no fillers, gluten, artificial flavors, colors or trans fat, and to me, this is the equivalent of a letter. I can see why some would prefer to reach out to the company personally, but I have not done this.

I am wondering, is there a master list of SCD legal spices/oils/coconut and almond products on the internet? I have several SCD cookbooks and thankfully these reference legal items, and that is why I purchased Red Boat fish sauce, Natural Value coconut milk, Simply Organic spices and Great Lakes gelatin. Where did you find this information? If there is a list out there, it would benefit me and others reading this thread, so please let us know if there is! I rely heavily on/trust the cookbook authors and their product source recommendations.

The SCD has really helped me, and I would hate for someone to think it is too difficult or intimidating. It requires a lot of time and effort but it is worth it. Before I started the diet, I had diarrhea 15 times a day and kept getting infections. It started with a very painful bacterial infection, and then I had several yeast infections after that. It was awful, and I was getting pretty depressed. I have been on the diet since January of this year and I haven't had a single infection (yay!) and overall my energy is just so much better. My skin looks better. I am still bleeding and have some pain but I have shown enough improvement to continue with the diet. I hope you have seen improvement as well and that it continues to help you.