Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 6 – Getting the Ball Rolling!

Steve Wright, Co-Founder of SCD Lifestyle, 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 6 Summary

This past week has been a sort of roller-coaster for me. I had such a great breakthrough last week that I was really looking forward to capitalizing on it and keeping the ball rolling this week. Looking back on the week, I can see now that I’m still going in the right direction. However, during the week I thought I was starting to regress. I still managed to keep regular daily bowel movements, but the quality was all over the place. It’s not exactly what I was hoping for and in the moment I was getting pretty discouraged. It wasn’t until the end of the week when I looked back at the week in comparison to other weeks that I realized that it was indeed a good week. In my daily health battle, I had gotten lost in the trees and forgot to view my health at the forest level.

Mental and Body Changes

Mentally, this week was probably the most stressful week since I started the diet. The stress was both job and life related, but it had a pronounced affect on my sleep & overall health. Stress plays an important role in our lives and just like our bad bacteria, keeping stress at minimal levels is important to our digestive system. I truly believe this diet is a very important part of healing my body but this week has shown me more than ever it is only one piece of the means to the end. By not focusing on your emotional health and the other variables of our body as a whole, we can keep ourselves from reaching our individual digestive goals.

Physically, I experienced more gas than usual; most likely due to the daily stress. As far as my bowel movements are concerned the quantity was good but the quality lacked compared to last week. Over the course of the week, I had plenty of 2’s and 3’s on Bristol Stool Chart with one 4 and a 6 mixed into the bunch. I did add some new variables this week, which probably played a role in the changes but most likely not as much as the environment I lived in all week.

Fitness Goals

This week, I missed one gym session so I only lifted 3 times. I did however record my lowest scale weight to date at 179 down from an average of 182 last week. My waist also continued to fall this week and I’m now recording slightly above 33 inches in circumference. I’m going to continue to keep my calories suppressed and hopefully I will soon drop below 33 inches. I’m starting to question my dieting goal of 170 pounds of scale weight. I’m starting to think that actually I will need to get down to 165 so that when I bring my calories up to maintenance levels I will level off at my target scale weight of 170 pounds.

Diet Details

I kept my supplements at the same ratios as last week. But this week I added two new foods. I added green beans and avocados. I just started eating avocados yesterday, so I don’t think I am completely confident that I can handle them yet but I will continue to eat them and track the results into the coming week. The green beans seemed to work alright with my body, however I did experience abnormally high gas levels and my BMs were inconsistent all week. I will have to reserve judgment on the beans until the next time I try them (this is why it is so important to keep a journal). This week, I started using walnut oil to cook my meats and eggs in. The oil added an amazing nutty flavor to my meats. I chose walnut over almond because walnuts have a lower salicylate content than almonds. From my research, almonds have one of the highest phenol contents of any nut so I’m going to continue to be cautious of them.

One Line Thoughts on The SCD Diet

• • This week on the diet has really illustrated why keeping a daily diary of events is so important. In the coming weeks when I try green beans again, I will know if they were the culprit this week or if it was the stress
  • This week also re-emphasized the importance of charting your healing on different time levels. From a daily perspective, this week could be viewed as a slight regression. However, at the weekly level I’m still improving compared to the previous 5 weeks
  • Stress is an important factor that cannot be overlooked on this diet.
  • I’m starting to believe more each week that our digestion is not as simple as food in, poop out. It is a whole system with a large number of variables including food, enzymes, bacteria, vitamins, stomach acid strength, emotions, fitness levels and probably other variables I have yet to find. Thinking that the SCD diet by itself will heal our digestion while the rest of our lives are out of sync appears to be a fallacy
  • I’ve now run the gauntlet of spices in my cabinet when preparing eggs in the morning. In the coming week, I’m going to be searching for new breakfast foods or ways to spruce up the eggs

If anyone has any tips on how to enhance morning eggs, please let me know below because they are quickly becoming almost impossible to eat. Thanks in advance!

-Steve