Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 3 – Bring on the travel and fat loss!

Steve Wright, Co-Founder of SCD Lifestyle Steve, has finally broken down and started his path to intestinal healing. After many years of undiagnosed digestive warfare in his body, this series of weekly posts will take you through his experiences, thoughts, and struggles on the SCD diet. Check back and follow his progress:

Week 3 Summary

Following up from last week, I successfully traveled home for the weekend (a 5-hour road trip). During the week, I made extra large batches of meat, veggies and fruit. I put enough for four meals in some Tupperware and packed them in a cooler using some ice packs. I was then able to eat eggs in the morning and have a standard lunch and dinner for both Saturday and Sunday. Other than not being able to eat or drink anything other than water for the 10 hours of total driving, it was pretty painless. Usually, I would have been sucking down some fast food or coffee the entire time. In the end, I think I felt better not eating anything and I saved money. This last week was rather regular, as I added some new foods to my diet and my BMs leveled off after last week’s sickness.

Mental and Body Changes

This week, my bowl movements seemed to return to how they were during the first week of the diet. I’m only having BMs every couple days and they are pretty dried out and small. That tells me I need to continue to up my good bacteria balance and possibly start the SCD constipation protocol. I will continue to monitor them and will give my body a week to adjust to the yogurt, before I start anything from the protocol. Over the course of the week, I noticed that stomach uneasiness (growling and making noise) was significantly down. The past couple weeks, after about half of the meals I ate, I would experience some level of uneasiness. I also had zero bloating all week, which was amazing! I did experience some gas most days, however not at any level that I had before starting the diet. Mentally, I didn’t notice too many changes this week other than my sleep schedule was all over the place causing some drowsiness during the day.

Fitness Goals

This Wednesday, I measured my waist and weighed in at the gym. Since starting the diet 20 days ago, I am down 1.5 inches in my waist measurement and 10 pounds on the scale. Both of those are great to see, however I know that approximately half of both of those numbers are due to carrying less water weight and less inflammation in my gut. I’ve done several short-term diets in the past in which I cut out all the carbohydrates and this water drop is predictable for my body. Carbohydrates and other processed foods always cause me to retain more water, which is usually concentrated in my waist region (usually gut for men, hips and butt for women). For the other .75 of an inch, I am positive it is fat loss, as I’ve been haphazardly tracking my calories and usually I’m eating between 1400 and 1600 a day… which is very deficient for me. My current calculations put my calorie needs somewhere between 1900 and 2100 to maintain weight. One interesting side effect of the diet I noted, during the intro diet and the beginning of phase 1, was I was having an extremely hard time getting to 1500 calories a day. On several days, I recorded only about 1200 calories. And the amazing thing was that I was aware of it as it happened. I just couldn’t eat any more soup or meat! The water loss and difficulty in reaching an amount of calories that maintain your weight is the main reason that most people experience some level of scale weight loss when they start this diet.

I will be continuing to track my progress and purposely stay in a calorie-deficient state in the coming weeks. My goals are to lose another 2.5 inches from my waist and roughly 15-18 pounds of scale weight, over the next 6 weeks. I did get in 4 weightlifting sessions this week, but I skipped the cardio work (I hate cardio!).

Diet Details

This week, I successfully introduced acorn squash and raw bananas. I never noticed how nutty acorn squash tastes compared to other squashes. It has been a nice side effect of the diet to start actually tasting foods for what they are and not masked with all kinds of additives or starches. At this point in the diet, I think I have enough variety of foods to take a week off and play around with the SCD yogurt. I received my yogurt starter and yogurt maker in the mail this week. I’m planning on attempting my first batch early in the week using goat milk. If I get bored before then I might pick up some spinach to try.

One Line Thoughts On The SCD Diet

• I believe that most people will see a significant 4-8 pound drop in scale weight the first week of the SCD diet, due to the body retaining less water
• My current hypothesis is that many other people will continue to lose fat mass for the first month and continue to do so on the SCD diet, specifically due to the fact that they are not consuming enough calories
• I tried some red pears this week, I must say they trump green pears in flavor
• Special thinks to my Mom for turning me on to the red pears and helping me make a large batch before I traveled home
• My carb cravings are definitely subsiding, however my appetite seems to be rising
• For better or worse, the diet has definitely been impacting my social life at work. I am now no longer being invited to go out for lunch because people know that I am now brining my lunch every day

My big question this week is how was everyone else’s bowel movement timing during the first couple weeks on the diet? Were they irregular in timing like mine? I think I’m just scared of constipation, because for the first time in my life I’m not using the bathroom 5 times a day. I’m also secretly happy about this new found fear! Sssh… Don’t tell anyone! See you next week.