Introduction:
My symptoms began around age 13. Diagnosed at 25. Numerous drugs for 2 years. Started SCD diet at 27. No drugs after that and currently 31.
Some more about me:
Live in Dallas, TX. From the east coast. Environmental Adventurer.
Current Symptoms:
No logs, irregular.
Moral Issues with My Diet and Going Vegan
Ok – I have been doing well on the SCD diet for almost 4 years now. I do not stick to the exact diet all the time and when I don’t (like this past holiday season) I sufffferrr. But I can easily kick my butt back onto the diet and fix the problems. I usually fix them to a point I am comfortable with and not 100%. Aka it is hard for me to do without sugar. I do very well living without rice, pasta, beans, soy and most bread – things that ruled my life before the diet.
Anyway, there was a span in my life I was a vegetarian for 2.5 years and I really would love to be able to be a vegan but my diet does not allow this. I have tried a few times to go back to vegetarian and I only last about a week before I throw in the towel because my UC symptoms are back in full force.
Since I probably can not go vegan I try and do a one day meatless Monday. But my guilt is getting to me. I need another way to make up for this. Any ideas on how I can balance the two in my life? If I can’t change my diet how can I convince others to do a meatless Monday and “do what I say, and not what I do”. I feel like I have this disease and these moral feelings for a reason but I don’t know how to connect them.
Currently on the no list: pasta, rice, beans, hummus, grain bread, soy, tofu
Currently eating mostly: meat and veggies (potatoes, broccoli, zucchini) and fruit
So if I went veggie I would basically eat veggies and fruit – but there are several I can’t eat (kale, grapes etc). And no tofu, no soy, no garbanzo beans. Oh and one thing I definitely can’t eat is processed foods so I fear all those frozen “veggie chicken nuggets” and things would be out as well.
Anything with too much roughage causes problems in my system. I try and stick with the simple carbs.
So my dilemma remains.
Colitis Medications I Previously Tried:
Took steroids, torpedoes (thats what I called the little butt pills that go up your butt), asacol, enemas.. etc.
Currently take no medicine and only vitamins: fish oil, multi vitamin, b complex, vit e, vit d.
written by NJM
submitted in the colitis venting area
January 24, 2013 at 2:09 pm
I was just saying today that by allowing a mosquito sucking my blood giving life to millions of mosquitos I should have balanced what I eat in numbers… But I guess the choice is if you want to live (and live well) or if you want the animals to live. We eat and get eaten (mostly from bacteria, candida and other microorganisms). I am thinking about the turtle that lays 300 eggs each year and some year not one of them survives. And I also have a cousin that has a goat farm, I was watching a slaughter of a one month old calf and the goat mom didn’t even react. My cousin told me the goat moms usually shows no signs of sorrow from loosing a calf. Maybe some animals are meant to be eaten? they have another mind from us, it’s not to programmed in the same way. I have always been thinking about these things and somehow I would also like to live life with only doing good, but maybe it is not possible. The only way to not kill another living thing is to not eat, not to even step anywhere, breathing should be ok but not much more than that. But also we host more bacteria than cells in our body, is taking care of them is also a moral? And if so, should we take care of the bad ones as well? I see it as a symbiosis, we have so many different types and I am not so sure we as humans are the one setting the rules.
Sorry for a philosophical and lengthy answer.
And also maybe you can getter better and tolerate a vegan diet by supplementing with something.. Maybe you have a hormonal or neurotransmitter imbalance making you react.
January 24, 2013 at 5:42 pm
I have found remarkable relief from changing my (20+ years) vegetarian diet to that of a gluten-free vegan one. I pay no heed to someone elses SCD theory. I was on the meanest nasty drugs and now I take nothing.
It is not as hard I as imagined it to be. After a couple of weeks you get your head around it and it just becomes normal and doesn’t affect my family at all (they are happy to eat vegan food too and just put a bit of meat on the side sometimes). Try this website: http://www.theppk.com
Good on you,
Peter
January 24, 2013 at 11:51 pm
I don’t think I understand the dilemma. There is nothing immoral about eating meat. And meat tastes really really good. I’m partial to BBQ’d steaks.
January 25, 2013 at 1:06 am
Elaine Gottschall herself said it was impossible to follow the SCD as a vegan – you need at least one egg a week. Human beings are omnivores, not vegetarians – that’s why you have canine teeth. We are designed to eat meat. But since this is a moral dilemma for you, try, as you say, eating meat only once a week, and only organic or Compassion in World Farming-raised meat, so that the animal has had a good life. Eat meat that comes from only one animal, so that only one animal has died for you (beef or salmon, for instance, rather than shrimps, where maybe 30-40 would have to die to give you a meal). This is a Buddhist approach. If SCD makes you well, you need not stay on it forever. I followed it for three years and then gradually introduced other foods, and now I eat a basically ‘normal’ diet. But then, I never cut out meat – in fact I found I craved it, and liked it bloody for the first time in my life. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.
January 25, 2013 at 1:25 am
Hey NJM,
For you I would recommend to just buy organic meat. I buy my meat at a local husbandry where I can see how the animals are living. This decreases the guilty conscious a little. Maybe you could try the same…
I can totally feel you here! I followed a vegetarian (and almost vegan) diet before I started the SCD. In the beginning, I tried to stay vegetarian on the SCD but then slowly introduced fish, chicken and beef. It was impossible for me to benefit from all the advantages of the diet (e.g., the bone broth) without the meat. I keep telling myself that I will go back to being a vegetarian once my symptomes have subsided but I have to figure that out as soon as I see a light at the tunnel
Greetings from Germany,
Polly
January 25, 2013 at 2:26 pm
I too fail to see the moral dilemma. Humans have been eating meat since the dawn of time. There is a reason vegetarianism makes you feel worse. Our bodies are meant to digest meat by evolution. If you are worried about the treatment of animals (although, this too is irrelevant), you can eat kosher meat which is known to be treated more humanely. There is no moral dilemma here.
March 27, 2013 at 11:35 pm
Have you seen the videos of “kosher” meat animals being slaughtered? Much worse than the regular slaughter horrors. Posters saying nothing immoral about eating meat and who cares about animal cruelty are missing the point. Every individual is allowed to have their own feelings on the subject and that does not make them incorrect. This person does care. Stating you do not care for humane treatment of animals is not going to change this persons moral issues nor will it help them find alternative types of meals to eat
January 25, 2013 at 10:38 pm
i understand what you mean. i was vegan for 5 years before i started SCD. i cried as i took my first bite of tuna. my health has gotten a little better since doing SCD- not remission- but this positive change tells me that adding meat back in was the right thing to do. i’ve been following the diet since august 2012 and have really gotten used to it.
morally, i hate that i have to consume animals and wish i could be a healthy UCer that follows a vegan diet. that’s just not in the cards for me and i’ve accepted it. i thank my animals for giving me nourishment and always buy humanely raised meat. you have to do what is right for you. you can still love animals and follow SCD as hypocritical as that may sound.
January 27, 2013 at 7:46 am
Hello NJM,
I can understand what you are going through. I am a vegetarian and don’t eat any meat or fish. I am currently in a remission and have been since last August. I was taking Lialda but it wasn’t helping me so I decided to try the natural route. Each person is different and you must figure out what works best for you. I saw a post by “Bev” who is a regular contributor and I am following her regimen. I take Vitamin D, Astaxanthin pills 4mg, L-Glutamine, and a multivitamin pill everyday. I also mix Prebiotin in juice. And I also take a probiotic called Renew Life. You can go on the websites for Prebiotin and Renew Life to see which would work for you should you decide to try this. I am off all medications and feel great. I will keep doing this as it is working. I can’t tell you what to do but I can tell you what is working for me. I eat fruits and vegetables and I do eat eggs and have Lactaid milk. And I do eat pasta. Also I do eat the “fake” chicken and “fake” meat.
February 24, 2013 at 10:37 am
Hey NJM,
I follow the SCD and I’m vegetarian, and I’m living without medications. I had pretty severe UC before the diet, never was in remission without high doses of prednisone. Now my diet sustains me and it’s awesome.
I feel really good about how clean I eat. I was vegan before UC and into the first few years, but the crazy amount of soy was killer. Eventually I reintroduced eggs and fish, and for a year was totally carnivore again, but it grossed me out too much to keep up with that. I wasn’t following SCD at the time, though I didn’t eat dairy or gluten or soy.
Now I still eat eggs and some fish occasionally, but otherwise have no animal products, no dairy and follow the SCD without many illegals at all. I make yogurt out of homemade nut milk, and saurkraut and kimchee do my body well. I occasionally eat seaweed, agave, or carob when I’m eating at a raw vegan restaurant. No negative consequences but I wouldn’t include them in my normal everyday diet. Some people are shocked by how narrow my diet is but I don’t see it that way. I mainly eat vegetables and it rules. Over the years I’d limited my diet so intensely that I don’t miss much. I don’t go out of my way to recreate eliminated foods like baking grain-free or making veggie burgers. I eat pretty simply. The first 6 months of SCD I didn’t eat raw foods at all because I had to do some significant healing, and I didn’t eat fruits or honey or any sugar or legumes yet. That was pretty much just eating for sustenance, steamed vegetables, vegetable purees, nut butters, and eggs and some fish. It wasn’t the most fun menu but food was practically my enemy by then. Once I advanced in the diet I started introducing way more adventurous concoctions, which pretty much translates to different salads. I mainly eat salads now and I’m symptom free. I also take some supplements like L-Glutamine, b12, etc.
Anyway, vegetarian SCD is possible, you just have to really love vegetables in their pure forms and make some room for eggs at least. Free-range organic, practically guilt-free.
Goodluck!