30 days done!

RUN 7 miles in 69 mins, around MoBot, TG, home
BIKE COMMUTE 9.2 miles

Good run, it was originally going to be a run commute but when I learned my water kefir grains were ready to pick up at LHG I changed my plans. Not sure the grains want to go for a run!

My usual Weds run is upwards of 15 miles so I've got some building to do. But for now the training plan is at 10 miles so I'm not far off. The bigger concern is the weekends anyways, can't jump right into a 25+13 weekend!

So yes the run was good, but as it's been for the past few weeks it was flat in terms of energy. There's a good reason for that I'll get to soon enough. But the feeling is like I could run all day long but no faster. There's no acceleration, pep, spark, and even my mental mood is flat too.

The reason? The SCD! Today is day 30, my first benchmark for this test to see if I can rebalance my gut flora and start to have normal BM's and more varied eating. Research for this started way back in April, and I committed to it in May figuring that the month after the Kettle race was the only ideal time for me to try it. I didn't set an end date, figuring I'd go 30 days at a time or just see how things go.

I started tapering off the illegal foods in late May. Slowly cut back my coffee from 6 cups (not mugs) to 2 cups. Quit buying foods with illegal ingredients. And cleaned out the pantry ahead of the race. The official start date was at the end of my sister's visit a week after the race. That way I could eat out with her and be more recovered from the race.

The foods I had to give up: 

• My favorite ginger/orange tea contained "natural flavors"
• My canned tuna had soy
• Canned veggies are illegal due to potential additives
• My mustard had "natural flavors"
• All potatoes, rice, and teff. My main sources of starchy carbs.
• Coffee!
• Seems there were more, but can't think of them now. 

The problems?

• Every morning a T6  on the Bristol chart. I'd wake up and have a messy BM. You could measure my symptoms by how often I had to clean the toilet :(
• Bloating most every evening
• Slowly but surely foods quit working for me, like turnips and rutabagas, so my foods list was getting shorter and shorter
• My GERD symptoms were getting worse, a squeezing tight pressure in my esophagus and more burping
• I was getting more and more fearful of what I could eat, what damages might be happening, and where this would eventually go
• I was OK in most tests, but Vitamin D deficient. Not sure if diet related, though.

The plan:

• 3-5 days of intro diet: gelatin, pureed carrots, and lean proteins
• Then every 4 days introduce a new food. I started with cooked/peeled/pureed zucchini, then over time I've worked up to ripe bananas, tomatoes, non-pureed carrots and zucchini, kabocha squash, butternut squash, cantaloupe, strawberries, blueberries, low lactose cheese, oranges. 
• I alternated between fruit and veggie, and really worked on spices and herbs in the beginning to keep things from getting too repetitive. 
• Over time I've upped the amount of fat per meal.
• This weekend I'm making yogurt!

What I've learned so far:

• So far, canteloupe is out, for now at least. And kabocha needs to be limited. 
• My energy, motivation, mental clarity all suffered in days 5-14. Those were the worst. I was alive but not awake. 
• Oh the coffee withdrawal. And on top of a sugar withdrawal. The cravings weren't bad at all though!
• Might not have been as fat-adapted as I thought?
• But my BM's quickly turned to regular T4!!! And the bloating is almost non-existent. The cantaloupe caused T6, and kabocha caused a "heaviness" in the colon. 
• I've found that betaine HCl are helpful but not required
• I'm only now just testing probiotic pills, I've been OK so far with water and dairy kefir.

What for the next 30 days?

• I want to race again, for that I'll need more energy. I'm going to introduce small potatoes on Friday and Saturday nights before longer runs and see what happens.
• At some point I need to test gels and bars again. They didn't cause direct problems before, but they certainly fed the bad bugs I've worked so hard to diminish!
• I don't want to slide back into a high-carb lifestyle like I had this spring in which cooking a potato was done before I cooked some protein. So I'll just start with the Fri and Sat potatoes for 2 weekends. But at some point I expect I'll build up to the recommended fist-sized serving of starch each night.
• I need more starch options than potatoes! Chestnuts? 
• I want to become more regular and scheduled on the probiotics, right now I forget to take the pills.