Day 90!

I've survived 90 days on this diet!

Good things:

• I apparently have pretty awesome will power
• I lost a lot of weight (too fast), and have stabilized at a pretty good weight for my size, hooray!
• I'm a lot less bloated than I used to be
• I'm eating a lot less sugar and hardly any chemicals
• I have a little less anxiety over food, since the rules of the diet are pretty clear cut.  Before the diet i was very overwhelmed with all of the conflicting advice!  
• I like knowing that I might have taken a major step toward healing my body, even if I can't see it yet

Bad things:

• I'm still missing out on a lot nutritionally since I'm having so much trouble introducing new foods.  
• Life is complicated, so when I have bad days I never know if it was some random factor from life (stress, germs, hormones, sleep) or a new food.
• The diet is a lot of work, often overwhelming.  Sometimes I need a convenience food!  Bananas are the closest thing right now... but unfortunately it seems to be nearly impossible to buy a ripe banana, so if I haven't planned ahead properly (or if my family eats them) it's a problem.
• I'm still sick.  Quite sick.  I appear to be physically healthy, but I still can't leave the house.  My quality of life is currently pretty low in that regard.  Interrupted sleep and lots of bathroom anxiety.  
• So, so many of the recipes recommended for this diet include dairy and/or eggs... both of which I've ruled out for a while.  I don't even plan to try nuts or peanuts again for at least a few more weeks... BORING.  I need to hurry up and find some vegetables that I can introduce successfully!!  What vegetables don't cause gas or irritate?  So few!  Everything is either a nightshade, a legume, or related to broccoli.  And greens are out too... since spinach was a big fail.  I'm serious... what else is there?  I'm currently eating carrots, winter and summer squashes and asparagus.  Next up is... beets?  Is that all there is?  I might try tomatoes or peppers soon too, even though they're nightshades.  Dying to add in garlic and onion, but they're crazy gas producers...

Moving forward, I:

• Will stick to the rules for at least a little while longer, hoping to get a stretch of relatively little stress and germs, see if i can finally establish a baseline of "safe" foods
• Will consider adding in digestive enzymes to see if they help
• Will continue with Entyvio treatments
• Will continue with the idea of reintroducing foods to try to pinpoint intolerances
• Will avoid eggs at all costs (I think that's what sent me into my recent downward spiral... which is in alignment with past experience)
• Might relax the rules of the diet if I don't see major improvement kick in soon... things like jarred applesauce and canned tomatoes might become acceptable in my m ind... right now they're "illegal" because they MIGHT be made with sugar that isn't listed on the label.

Desperation Recipe of the day: Coconut oil glazed frozen banana coins

Ingredients:

• Frozen banana
• Liquid Coconut Oil (microwave for 30 seconds if solid)

Instructions:

1. Slice frozen banana into coins
2. Dip in coconut oil, place on a plate or parchment for a moment to so that coconut oil will harden around banana
3. Consume immediately (banana melts fast and turns liquidy and weird)

Disaster

Google just asked me if I wanted to buy a domain and link my blog automatically... so I searched for "Lizwantscookies.com" to see if it was available.  It is!  But I don't feel like buying it since I have no readers anyway.  However, I thought that some of the "related" suggestions were really funny... such as "lizwantspersonallyidentifiableinformation.com"

Anyway, I still don't know if the SCD diet is going to work for me.  Today is day 81, and my digestive system is a mess!  But I can't say it's the diets fault, I tried introducing some new foods and things went haywire.  They say that you're supposed to wait 3 days between every new food (or spice!), but sometimes that's just not practical.  I needed to get some new nutrition in fast because of how fast I was losing weight, so I only waited a day or two and now I don't know what triggered my latest problems.  There's also the possibility that these troubles aren't food related at all, but that I'm experiencing the common "3 month flare" that people sometimes see while following this diet.  No one knows for sure why some people experience a flare in their symptoms after 3 months, but the theory is that it has to do with the life cycle of bad bacteria in the gut.

So my latest issues could be from:

• Apples (I went a little crazy and had more applesauce than I should have...)
• Almonds (I went a little crazy and had more baked goods than I should have...)
• Eggs
• Peanut butter (one of my top 3 favorite foods... the others are dark chocolate and strawberries)
• Vanilla
• Baking Soda
• Calcium Supplements
• 3 months on the diet

Unfortunately, I think eggs are the culprit.  I've suspected egg ever since feeling cold-like symptoms within minutes after biting into a hard boiled egg one morning, and I've gone very long stretches without them.  I tried twice to add them back into my diet last spring, and both times were quickly followed by disaster.  I allowed that it could have been coincidence... but after recently adding eggs back in things quickly fell apart again.  3 times is tough to chalk up to coincidence!  So I will again be avoiding eggs for a lengthy period of time.  Too bad... they're so full of nutrition and great for baking, plus mayonnaise would have been a nice way to add some variety to the endless menu of meat.  It was really wonderful to be able to include pancakes, muffins, and cookies in my diet for a couple of days!

So, I cut all of these new things out of my diet again, and I'm going to tryyyyyy to follow the 3 day rule once my symptoms improve a little.  If they ever do...

I'm still waiting to see if the Entyvio infusions will help, I'm about 3 weeks into the treatment, and reportedly 50% of people with Ulcerative Colitis see a response by 6 weeks.

Fingers crossed that SOMETHING starts working soon!  I would really like to be able to write a post saying things are improving... and it'd be so great to take my kids to the park now that the weather is improving and not be completely freaked out about the park having no bathroom.  I've been dealing with debilitating symptoms for 15 months straight, and haven't ever fully been in remission since being diagnosed 3 years ago.  ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!