Steve’s SCD Diet Healing Journal: Week 24 – The Kale Chip Fail!

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

Week 24 Summary

Oh what a good weekend, the weather here in the Midwest allowed me to fully enjoy my 3 day weekend filled with

family time and golf.  Digestion was extremely reliable and that allowed me to concentrate on being present and having fun.  Sometimes I’m still in awe of how I feel compared to 6 months ago.

Last week I made a heck of a run at making kale chips.  I’ve never ate kale before and after seeing several bloggers making kale chips I had to give it a go.  First up, the good news is kale and I are friends, no digestion issues whatsoever.  Now for the bad news, kale chips are apparently my cooking Achilles heal.  The first go round ended up with most of the “chips” being half burnt or completely burnt.  The next round I swore the chips were done, no browning and hard when they were pulled out of the oven.  But, a couple hours later they were soggy leaves of salt!

I’m really hoping that the 94 degree heat with super high humidity around here just sort of ruined them otherwise these leaves are going to end my successful baking run.  Let the record show that there were a couple kale chips that were not burnt and tasted very good with several of my non-SCD family members liking them.

In other diet news this week, I got into some fresh fruit at my family party.  The fresh blueberries and cherries tasted amazing and didn’t cause me any digestive repercussions.  I couldn’t help myself the amount of food my family puts out during parties is ridiculous.  I didn’t really feel bad about eating them because they are SCD legal but I was a bit worried that my body might not be ready.  That doesn’t seem to be the case and going forward I think I might start trying some fresh fruit here and there.

SPICE OF LIFE RAMBLINGS

This week I had intended on putting some kale chip pictures out for all to see but that was big fail so instead I want to talk about how my family is changing because of my SCD journey.  As is the same for probably all people who start the SCD diet in the beginning there was plenty of rumblings from parents, siblings, grandparents, friends etc.  Some things were encouraging, but most were skeptical and it is safe to say that initially, plenty took my diet as an insult to their diet… or way of life.

In the beginning and for the majority of the first 3 months on this diet, I usually felt like the social black swan.  Probably some of those feelings were just my own insecurities but there were times in which I was in social situations and was peer pressured to go along with the SAD diet.  These were hard times for me and I ended up straying from the diet several times in the beginning during these situations.  Now fortunately, in the last couple months as I’ve really started to own my digestion and diet, some remarkable things have been happening.

Several months back I wrote a post of a family party gone wrong, I was knocked back on the fence defending the SCD

diet and my food choices everywhere I turned.  This past weekend was a totally different and an awesome change, this time I was being asked to dole out advice on everything from food to supplements to fat loss.  Never in a million years would I have imagined discussing nutrition labels, saturated fat or vitamin D levels with my grandparents.  My mom and dad now read food labels just because they are curious.  It seems the longer I stay on this diet getting better and shouting its benefits to all that will listen to me, the more people around me are unconsciously changing.  It is really exciting to see my family and friends decide to improve their lives based on food choices.

If you find yourself in a position like me fielding questions from people looking to feel better but not ready to start the SCD diet here are the top 3 things I tell everyone:

1.  Stop eating grains, all of the them!  Try it for a week.

2.  Don’t eat anything that has more than 5 ingredients on the package

3.  If you cannot pronounce an ingredient on a package you probably shouldn’t eat it

Has anyone else observed positive healthy changes in the people in their lives as a result of doing SCD diet?