Diets, diets, diets. . .What's an IBDer to do?

Elizabeth Roberts Living With It Author & IBD Patient Hello, I am a freelance writer and editor living in... Send Message Subscribe: Elizabeth Roberts

Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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For 31 years of my life I never thought about what I was eating. I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, and never gave it a second thought. I wasn't a fast food junkie by any means, but did enjoy things like french fries, Doritos, ice cream, and Coca-Cola, as well as watermelon, sweet corn, Yopl...

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Restrictive Diets
Mary Lee
Wednesday, August 13, 2008 at 01:18 PM

I totally understand! Being on a gluten-free diet for 17 years meant a lot of change. I could get used to that because there are so many gluten-free items now available, including beer and pizza. The kicker was the microscopic colitis two years ago. I am so restricted that it has taken a lot of fun out of eating. In addition, I'm trying to lose weight and have been successful - 25 lbs so far. But it isn't worth eating what I shouldn't.

Mary Lee

Thanks for the info!
Ali
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 05:41 PM

I have read a lot on the SCD diet, and it is just so restrictive that I have never been able to follow it... so it's good to know there are other options. I had never heard of the rotation diet - maybe I'll give that a try. My UC issues have been kind of on the fringe for a couple months now. I had a terrible flare at the beginning of the year, was put on Prednisone to stop it, and was tapered down very slowly. For the past couple weeks that I've been off the Pred, I haven't really been "normal," but it hasn't been a flare either. So I'm trying to experiment with diet to see if that helps. Thanks for the pointers!

re: Thanks for the info!
Elizabeth Roberts
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 05:58 PM

Ali, Mary Lee,

Glad you both found this blog helpful and useful.

Ali, Do go ahead and try out some of the diets, but do them one at a time, go into each with a lot of patience and commitment. And do each for at least a month. This will give your body time to see if it's working for you. There's a lot of good info. on the internet about all these 'diets' so do a lot of reading first and go into a new diet attempt well armed with info. to help you through.

Also, since you're coming out of a flare you should probably talk about any drastic diet changes, like the SCD, with your doctor just to be sure you're a-okay to move forward with it.

Good luck, and keep me posted on your progress.

re: re: Thanks for the info!
Elizabeth Roberts
Friday, August 15, 2008 at 06:04 PM

P.S.

Another tip - some of these diets can have you adding a lot of fruits, veggies, nuts, grains, etc. that can be hard on an IBD gut. Move forward with these foods cautiously and if you end of up new or old symptoms after eating a particular food STOP and don't eat it again until your symptoms are completely gone.

I'm not any particular diet at the moment, but almost a melange of the rotation diet, the low res. diet, and the SCD. The SCD is almost too hard for me 'cause I just can't eat more than 2 veggies or 1 fruit per day (even if I cook them like they suggest) and then I find myself always feeling hungry. The hard core SCD people with disagree with me on this, I know, but I actually do a variation of it where I allow myself to eat rice and potatoes, and soy. But I'm sure not to eat any of these foods on back-to-back - which is in keeping with the rotation diet - and things seem calm and happy.

Figure out what works for you and do that.