Troubleshooting the SCD Diet: How to Pinpoint the Foods Stopping You from SCD Success

My body and I communicate really well, now that I have been on the SCD diet for a over a year. When I work on introducing a new item, I can quickly detect how my body reacts to the new food and whether or not I should continue trying to mix it into my diet or not.

In the beginning, things were not this way. I was still so sick that it seemed like everything I ate was causing problems and I was chasing my tail trying to figure out what was causing all the problems. I was stuck in an SCD holding pattern for months… and I couldn’t figure out what to do to improve and move forward. I learned the hard way how to pinpoint foods that were causing me problems and stopping me from SCD success. After I figured out the basic process, I needed to go through to get rid of foods causing a problem, my health advanced quickly and things haven’t slowed down since.

The basic rule of thumb is 4 days. Try completely eliminating a food item for four days to truly gauge how it was impacting your digestion. At times, I have found that I notice a negative reaction goes away relatively quickly – within the same day. But other times it has taken up to 4 days for me to realize that the food was negatively impacting me. I can’t stress enough that when you are trying to troubleshoot the SCD diet, it is vital that the rest of your diet remains consistent with the go-to foods that you have confidence in. If you deviate from this and can’t figure out what’s causing the problem, you will be a mess trying to play around with your diet to figure out exactly what triggered it.

Here’s a quick breakdown of how to troubleshoot the SCD Diet and take your healing to the next level.

–  Start by eliminating one of the big three: The protein in eggs can be a trigger for many people with digestive diseases. Once I realized that I was eating eggs at a couple meals a day, I tried life without them for four days… and it was incredible! I felt better very quickly and found a way to make due without egg and still don’t eat them to this day. Start with egg and see if you experience any changes (remember, keep everything else the same). If it’s not egg, be happy you can still eat them and move on to the next step.

–  The next big offender is dairy. Dairy also has a protein that is very reactive and eliminating the cow’s milk yogurt and cheese alleviated many of the symptoms I had that were still bothering me. Once I went dairy free for four days I was at a level of health that I never thought possible. Don’t panic if you can’t have dairy. You can always try goat’s milk products in place of cow’s milk products, because the protein is a little different and you might have better luck. If you’re like me and that doesn’t treat you well either… then it’s on to almond milk yogurt and no cheese for a while, but very much worth it!

–  If you try eliminating egg and dairy and are still having issues… look to high concentrations of sugars. By that, I mean start with juices. There is a lot of SCD legal sugar packed into the Welch’s Grape Juice that caused me to still have horrible gas. Once I stopped the grape juice, the gas stopped and I felt better than I ever could have imagined. I also had to take a little break from guzzling honey because that high intake of sugar was driving some horrible gas, even though it was SCD legal sugar.

–  If the big three are not causing your issues, keep narrowing the list by applying the same principles. If you are eating any raw food, like ripe bananas or avocados, give those a rest for four days and see how it goes. Sometimes, those can cause issues with people in the beginning as well. Otherwise, keep picking different items that you eat frequently and whittle the list down until you see the positive change you are looking for.

Believe it or not, most of the time it’s just one food that is keeping you from SCD Success… find that one food and eliminate it and you are well on your way to feeling amazing.

What has been your experience troubleshooting the SCD Diet? Share your tips and tricks in the comments below…

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