Let food be thy medicine

Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.
Hippocrates

Today I started the so called Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). The goal is to reset your (immune) system and find out what foods you can and cannot tolerate. The first couple of days you start with a very limited choice of foods; basically chicken(broth), eggs and cooked carrots and then, you slowly start adding new foods.

After my colonoscopy I noticed I felt a little better the first two days. Then, it gradually went back to the before situation. More or less by accident I stopped eating yogurt. I love yogurt and I used to eat it every morning, but about two weeks ago I ran out of yogurt and I was too tired to go to the store just to buy some yogurt. So, I decided to do without yogurt until I had to do groceries again. Later that week I had my appointment with my gastroenterologist (GI) and told him about my experience after the colonoscopy. He suggested I try either the SCD or Low FODMAP (the details are slightly different, but it basically comes down to the same). I choose the SCD (because it has a wider variety of allowed fruits) and started reading. Since regular yogurt isn’t allowed on the diet, I didn’t bother to buy yogurt anymore and about a week and a half later I realized I felt a little better and had some more energy. I know it may be a coincidence, but it did occur to me I had not eaten yogurt for over a week.

My GI gave me a referral to a registered dietitian who has experience with the SCD. Since it’s a very restrictive diet, it’s nice to have some help with it. My first appointment is in March, the earliest available moment. I didn’t want to wait that long to start with my diet so I took a week to prepare and started today.
This morning, my breakfast consisted of cooked carrot, an egg, dry curd cottage cheese (this doesn’t contain lactose, I had never heard of it, but luckily they sell it at whole foods) with some honey and cinnamon mixed together and baked for about 20 minutes. In the oven it actually smelled pretty good. I wish it had tasted as good as it smelled, but it was edible and it definitely beats eating meat 🙂 . The first two days will be most challenging, then I can start adding things back in to my diet. For now I will keep experimenting with the carrots.

Mr. M. is very supportive and he even said he will join the diet (for dinner), so I won’t have to cook different kinds of food. Since I still don’t like to cook yet, I really appreciate that and I feel blessed with such a supportive husband. Luckily (unprocessed) meats are allowed so that’ll make it a little bit easier for him.

Definitely to be continued 🙂 …