How do you SCDers do it...?

I dunno how you do it; I really don't. I'm not really one for food cravings or eating for comfort, but over the last few days I have just been craving chocolate, sugary cereals, and anything else that is processed, sugary, refined carbohydrate junk. It all went wrong on Wednesday when I went with my mum to babysit my nephews. She bought my nephews their usual chocolate treat, but there was no need as there was a bowl filled with loads of mini packets of chocolates and sweets from Halloween. I spent all day wanting to eat those chocolates. Then we had dinner with lasagne and garlic bread - I love garlic bread and haven't had it for years, so I ate a few pieces of that. Then afterwards I had about 4 packets of the chocolates.

The next day I ate the chocolate bar my mum had bought for my nephew. Also had a bit of my dad's brownie in the coffee shop. Today I avoided chocolate, but I must have scarfed nearly half a box of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes just now because I was so utterly, utterly fed up. Had a carbohydrate-laden lunch and a 'healthy' dinner of steak tuna (which I very rarely have because of the price), salad and a yoghurt. Maybe the lunch and the yoghurt didn't help, but I have felt like cr*p all evening. Gut ache, lethargy, feeling poorly. I'm not ill enough to lie down and sleep, but I'm not ill enough to do anything beyond mind-numbingly surf the net or watch TV. Didn't even feel up to watching a film and that was before the pig-out on the cornflakes.

How do you do it? No matter how I try to eliminate the unhealthy stuff there's always something. Cereal, cakes in a coffee shop, bread (love bread), etc. etc. I am so sick of being surrounded by temptation constantly and then there's Christmas not very far away... And trips to restaurants. There's absolutely no way on earth I'm going to a restaurant, only to eat, I dunno, plain meat without a sauce and no chips, bread, or a dessert. I'd rather not go to a restaurant at all than watch everybody else scoffing all manner of tasty things. And then dinner at other people's houses... It just goes on. I'd rather not go to people's houses if I can't eat what everybody else is having. Except if I refuse to eat with other people, effectively that would kill off a social life.

On top of that, I practically work myself into having a nervous breakdown over what I'm going to eat some days. Today was one of those days. I dithered in the supermarket for what felt like hours. I agonised over tomorrow's dinner for 20 minutes solid, then ended up changing my mind at the last minute before paying and putting it back. I then completely lost my temper in the car park over getting out (it was tricky) - more than I normally do. Afterwards I felt dreadful about it. My mum said a bit later I had so stressed myself out in the supermarket that that was probably why I was so stressed out in the car park. I hadn't considered that, but it sounded right.

*finally starts to wind down a bit...* Long story short, I can't carry on this way. I'm gonna have to make a decision on what to do about diet. I'd still like to do an elemental diet just to take the constant stress out of deciding what to eat for a few weeks. But I'm not deluding myself that's going to be any type of long-term answer.

In the meantime, I think I should give up on the junk. Beginning to think I should give up on cereal too, but it's so hard to get out of the mindset that cereal is all there to have for lunch. Well, cereal and the occasional omelette or sandwich. I do like eggs, but I would get desperately sick of omelettes 7 days a week fast, especially if I go low-carb and can't even have any bread with them.

Thanks once again, HW, for letting me vent. I was feeling so upset, but I have calmed down a bit now... :-/ I'll pay for the cornflakes when I'm trying to sleep probably, but right now I don't feel any worse...

My main motivation for sticking to SCD comes from all the good benefits I've received. I felt terrible pre-SCD, and now I feel good. I don't want to go back to the way I was (and I sure don't want my fistulas to return), so it's easy for me to turn down non-SCD food. I do like the smell of non-SCD food (like fresh bread baking), but I don't feel particularly bad about not eating it. It's kind of weird, but just thinking about the taste of something, like my grandma's homemade Christmas candy, is satisfying. I sometimes dream about her candy at night, and shovel it down (hey, it's a dream, why not ). But I don't have any problem turning it down in real life, because I know it would make me sick.

My second motivation is that I can now eat fresh fruits and vegetables, whereas I couldn't tolerate them pre-SCD. Tonight, I shall indulge in my mom's wonderful creamed cucumbers, a favorite of mine from way back. The strawberries this summer were fantastic! I can even eat raisins and other dried fruit (which seem like a delectable dessert to me, they're so tasty!).

Third would be that I'm not deprived with SCD food, it's really quite good. And SCD desserts are fantastic! I had a pecan flour cinnamon roll today, which was gooey and yummy, much like the top of a sticky bun. I'm going to make some pecan butter brownies tonight, and this weekend I'm going to make cocoa butter cupcakes and a cherry clafouti. There's no shortage of tasty foods .

Fourth, I've learned too much about the crap that is processed food to ever eat it again without guilt at what I'm putting into my body. Reading about how they go about processing foods (like that pink gunk at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/10/04/mechanically-separated-meat-chicken-mcnugget-photo_n_749893.html ), and about the yucky ingredients in things, and I can no longer get real enjoyment at eating those things.

Oh, and I got off biologics too!

SCD really isn't as hard as it looks. It appears intimidating initially, but becomes second nature before long.

Ivy, with SCD they recommend taking a nice hot epsom salt bath to deal with the aches and pains that can happen when decreasing carbs. I still love them after 2 years!

I spent around a month or so decreasing SCD-illegals before starting the diet. One week I stopped drinking Boost, one week I stopped eating ice cream, one week I stopped drinking pop. I ate my last slice of funfetti cake with cream cheese frosting and my last glass of milk at around 10:00 PM November 30, and started SCD the next morning. Man, that was some good cake! I've heard though, that once your body adjusts to eating foods with a natural amount of sugar, that super-sugary stuff no longer tastes good. It might be true, because foods like raisins taste like candy to me now.

@Ivy - That's the thing. I'm an opinionated person in general, but there are some things I just look at, shake my head, and say "I have no idea". Climate change is one of them. Low-carb diets are another. I do find the idea that our digestive tracts haven't evolved to cope with grains a compelling one on the surface, but I'm not sufficiently persuaded. Does it really take a million years to evolve a better mechanism for digesting grains? Evolution can happen on a fast scale as well as a slow one. And did primitive man really not eat any starchy foods for a million years? I'm sceptical about that. I know that cultivation of grains didn't start until about 10,000 years ago, but what about all the wild potatoes, etc. lying around in the ground countless millennia before that? I dunno. I'd love to read a book about this.

I'm inclined to agree with you, though, Ivy. Grains themselves are probably not the problem: it's how we produce them. (And meat, too, but that is another story.) The western diet is just awful, for the most part. Go to any supermarket and aisle upon aisle will be given over to pure rubbish. People continuously graze on rubbish between meals. Meals themselves often aren't any great shakes, given how many people can't cook a simple, fresh meal from scratch. And we are an unhealthy, sickly people as a result: if it wasn't for modern medicine our health would probably be in a much more dire state than it currently is, but we are protected from the consequences of our own food choices to some extent.

Well... it took me ages to type that and now I don't have the energy to reply to spookyhurst's post :-/

*musters it up* I dunno. It doesn't help me much, personally...

I think what it boils down to is this: If the SCD diet worked for me, would it be worth adhering to long-term, possibly for the rest of my life? Obviously for some people the answer is a resounding "yes!". For me it's unanswerable. I simply don't know. I do have respect for people who can do diets like the SCD, but in all honesty I don't in any way want to do it. I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place - the Crohn's and a diet which simply has no appeal for me to follow. Food has always been very important to me - possibly too much so. When I go out, the thing I always look the most forward to is the grub. I live for my next meal. My diet has already become quite a bit more bland and boring, but if I go on the SCD... No offense, but that will basically kill the enjoyment of food altogether for me.

I seem to be the only one who feels this strongly about having to change their diet. It's not like I want to eat nothing but processed foods all day long - the last few days have been a bit of an anomaly. I actually want to eat more organic, fresh stuff. Grow a few veggies. But the motivation just ain't there. So very, very demoralised about the whole thing right now. Thanks, Crohn's. You have wrecked one of my few pleasures in life and for that I absolutely hate you.

I agree 100% NCOT.

I went right into SCD the day after I first read about it. I stuck with it for 4 months. I got so many benefits from doing SCD, my results cannot be marginalized. I refused meds during that time and I was doing great. I made straight A's that semester for the first time in my life. I had more energy than I could even comprehend. I never got tired when playing basketball and football with my friends.

After about the 4th month though, when I was still doing well, I slowly started to cheat. I guess my problem was just sticking to it, because I did get better. One of my roommates had a fresh papa johns pizza sitting on the counter and said I could have a few slices if I wanted. My head started to play tricks on me. I can't even describe what the taste of cheese pizza taste like after going 4 months not eating any grains. I had those few slices and hated myself for eating them. The next few days I slowly started to fall off the wagon. I figured I already cheated once so it's ok for me to cheat again, and the rest is history. I got sick eventually and had to go back on Remicade.

There are just so many negatives to this diet. For one, MONEY, I can't afford to buy all of the expensive meats all the time. It quickly puts a dent into my pocket book. TIME, I'm a terrible chef in the first place, so when I would spend all this time cooking up certain things only to have the food taste like crap in the end is a terrible feeling.

This is the thing about this diet, you have to weigh the benefits vs the risks/negatives. Right now at this point in my life in college taking classes and working, it's just not feasible for me to be on a diet like this. I don't know if I will ever be able to get back on the wagon. But I have a deep respect for the people who can stick to this diet.

Poppycocks, SCD doesn't require organic produce or grassfed meats, so it's perfectly okay to buy the cheaper conventional stuff. Yeah, organic and grassfed are better for you, but plenty of people have gotten well without them. The key is to watch the ads for sales, and to buy produce in season (much cheaper then when they have to import from warmer areas). When a store has chicken on special dirt cheap, buy several of them and freeze. The only thing I find expensive is the nut flour, but I don't use much of it, so it's not too horrific a shock on the ol' pocketbook.

NCOT, sometime take a look at some SCD recipe sites. You may find that the food looks better then you envisioned. For example, these are some favorites of mine:

http://comfybelly.com/ - most are SCD legal, and she tells which ones aren't. You can actually search the site for only SCD, only dairy free, etc by choosing a category on the right side, but you can't see the yummy pictures unless you click on each individual recipe.

http://milkforthemorningcake.blogspot.com/2008/08/comforting-cocoa-butter-cupcakes-dairy.html - This is the site that I'm making my cocoa butter cupcakes from. She also has gluten free recipes, but she clearly states which are which.

http://heal-balance-live.blogspot.com/2009/07/recipe-review-wendys-cinnamon-rolls.html - here's the cinnamon roll recipe I love so much

http://nomorecrohns.com/desserts.aspx - I love the vanilla ice cream and honey lemon curd recipes here.

I'm sorry, I wish I hadn't made this thread.

I just give up. It's like being lost in a forest. Dunno where I'm at with food. Like today. It's 4pm and all I've had are 3 cups of tea and nibbled at some of my mum's red cabbage. It's not a dish she normally makes, so it's not something I've had before. I rather liked it and I didn't have an immediate bad response to it, but yeah, in terms of calories that's not going to keep me going. As soon as I eat enough to "keep me going", I'll suffer all evening long. And it literally does not matter what I eat. There is not a meal in existence that I can eat and go "oh yeah, I'm absolutely fine after eating that."

I'm sure I've turned a raving neurotic. I can scarcely believe that there was a time when I used to eat dinner and feel the same after it as I did before it. Idea just seems ludicrous to me now. Sorry everyone for wasting your time.

tsitodawg, how I wish I could have a garden! Homegrown fruits and veggies are so tasty . Glad to hear your diet is doing good things for you!

If this diet causes you more stress than Crohn's itself, get off of it

No, that's just the prospect of starting it... >.>

I seem to be pretty much the only person with Crohn's who gets affected by eating full stop. Not just by eating certain things but by eating everything. It's depressing, but **** it I'll deal. Don't eat or eat very little = feel better. It's as simple as that. It's what I've done today and neither my stomach nor lethargy is plaguing me at the moment.

I've said this before but this time I mean it. I don't care about calories. I simply only care about not feeling like **** for hour after hour every single day.

Do you feel bad in the mornings or is only the evenings? Many Crohnies but definetly not all feel worse in the morning, but we have quite a few like you who feel worse in the evenings. I get your frustration though, sometimes when I feel bad even boring and plain soup makes me sick. Danged if you do danged if you don't. Hugs!

Look, I think all severe Crohn's people get neurotic about food at some point.

Why not forget about calories and "good" and "bad" and just concentrate on doing the best you can? Obviously, a whole bowl of nuts might do you some harm, but trying small amounts of various foods, and eating lots of little snacks a day instead of trying to eat three full meals, might be the best you can do. And there are lots of vitamins in cabbage - I think you've done yourself a favour there.

Don't forget, NCOT, that if you're deficient in certain nutrients - and there's a good chance you are - the very thought of food can become offputting. I know I get devastatingly queasy when I'm low in potassium and that, of course, makes it even harder to eat the nutrients I need. Other deficiencies can have similar effects.

fwiw, I think it would be good if you could have a full set of blood tests to have your nutrition status thoroughly checked, and then be referred to a dietitian.

You were talking about making an appt to follow up after your MRI - did you do that? And if so, how long until your appointment?

Ivy.

Please stop apologising for yourself, NCOT. You're fine. Truly. There's nothing wrong with going through a rough patch.

btw, I got so neurotic about food at one point that the hospital dietitian still remembered me, years on. I was an inpatient at the time, and it was her sorry job to find something that I would eat...

No. We reached a bit of a stalemate. She ended up setting a bare minimum for consumption (protein was her biggest concern) and said that, while she wasn't overjoyed at even that amount, she would, at least, stop nagging if I managed to eat that amount.

Food can be scary. We need it, but it's hard to keep on eating when it causes pain and makes you feel so frighteningly miserable. I, too, wish you had access to some sort of enteral feeding. I think it might take the stress off a bit.

If you look in your supermarket, you might be able to find a drink that's marketed as some sort of nutritional supplement or meal replacement. Sustagen is a big brand here, but you don't seem to have it in the UK, but here's a link to the website, just so you'll see what I'm talking about:

http://www.sustagen.com.au/

Even if you can't get in to see a dietitian, it might be good if you could have a drink like that, and just drink one or two a day, just to keep yourself going. Obviously, try to find one without a lot of added fibre, as that could do you damage, and it'd be good if you could find one that was reasonably low in sugar, and also without those scary artificial sweeteners that can do IBDers so much damage (look for endings in -ol, e.g. sorbitol).

Resource is a drink often given to cancer etc patients here, and could also benefit you. I could buy it off the shelf at my hospital here, but it seems that it's a little more regulated there. Perhaps you could explain your problem to your local pharmacist, and ask his / her advice?

Just one safe drink that could start building you up could be really helpful. And it can help a lot to know that you have ONE thing that is safe and nutritious, that you can use when all else fails.

Ivy.