My second Whole30

Tomorrow I will be embarking on my second Whole30.  This is a 30 day clean eating challenge.  It's not necessarily a weight loss challenge though some participants do see weight loss. It's more about giving your body a break and letting it heal.  I do have to make some adjustments since I have the j-pouch.  I can't do a ton of raw vegetables.  Eating a bunch of raw veggies is basically a waste of time and money for me as they just don't digest well.  I highly recommend reading through the program and pretty much through Dallas and Melissa Hartwigs' site. They are brilliant.

Here is a quick rundown of what kinds of things I'm avoiding:

• Dairy- I'm pretty certain I'm lactose intolerant anyway, but oh how I love cheese. 
• Grains- I mostly avoid these already, but sometimes the call of pizza or a buttery croissant is too loud. 
• Grain/seed based vegetable oils- I don't cook with these at home but almost all restaurants use them.
• Sugar- All added sugar including my beloved maple syrup. Juice counts as this as well. 
• Legumes- I can't digest them so this one is easy.  Peanuts are also legumes though :(
• Alcohol- Goodbye wine. I don't drink a lot normally because I dehydrate so quickly but I do love some red wine.  Or margaritas. 

I'm going to be driving to the other Vancouver down in Washington (the original Vancouver btw) to visit my family.  I'm hoping to convince my sister to do the Whole30 with me because she has some crazy health issues of her own.  I would like to be able to document everything, but it might have to be after the fact due to spotty computer access. 

UPDATE 1/3/14: Obviously, this did not happen as I was sad and lazy. 

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Managing Ulcerative Colitis with diet

A large part of my experiment revolves around my diet.  I can't even remember how I stumbled upon a post of Mark's Daily Apple about inflammation, but it completely changed my outlook on how to manage my disease. I then borrowed a copy of The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet by Robb Wolf.  I loved it because he actually gets into the nitty gritty science of what is causing so many health issues.  If you get bored with the super in-depth explanations, I highly recommend Practical Paleo by Diane Sanfilippo.  She does a great job laying all the information out in an easy to understand way.

Anyway, like I said before, the big thing I try to stay away from is gluten.  I saw a huge improvement when I cut gluten completely out of my diet.  It is slowly creeping back in and my digestion is suffering for it.  I didn't really have a problem avoiding it until we moved up here, but there are just so many good and new things to eat!

I read this article from World Journal of Gastroenterology and it also has given me some guidance in both diet and supplementation.  The major beneficial dietary components it recommends are probiotics, omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and aloe.  This seems like an opportunity to add another goal to my list!

Consume probiotics, omega-3 fatty acids, antioxidants, and aloe every single day. 

I have a prescription strength probiotic that I've been taking, but I'm not very consistent with it.  Same thing with my omega-3 supplement (and now I'm out and haven't gotten a new bottle).  I love pretty much all seafood and try to eat as much as possible so hopefully that's helping.  As far as antioxidants go, I try to include a lot of different fruits and vegetables in my diet.  However, my big problem is that I don't really digest higher fiber foods very well seeing how I'm lacking a large intestine.  I think that I need to be more vigilant with taking digestive enzymes when I eat to get the most benefit from my food.

I haven't tried aloe since it was forced on me when I first was diagnosed with UC.  It was pretty horrible if I remember correctly.  I guess I'm going to have to suck it up and go get a bottle. Ugh.

I've also been taking an encapsulated whole food based multivitamin.  Without a colon (meaning short bowel transit time) I'm at risk for developing nutritional deficiencies.  This is something I have been pretty good about doing since last year.  I was having a lot or problems with just being exhausted all the time and then my hair started falling out it huge clumps. I went to my doctors a couple of times, but they said that my blood work was fine.  I finally went to a naturopath and she looked at me, bent my nails, and said I was probably anemic.  She did the blood work for that and she was totally right! I was severely anemic and therefore have been anemic for quite a while.  I can't believe the other two doctors I went to never checked for that.  She put me on a multivitamin and some extra iron.  I started feeling better a couple of months and my hair started growing back.  So I'm pretty much going to be taking a multivitamin until a doctor tells me to stop.

So there you have it.  The basis for my diet and supplementation.  I'll be tweaking things as I go along to account for my j-pouch (it doesn't like a lot of raw veggies) and how I react.  I'm still not looking forward to forcing down the sliminess that is aloe, but if it helps I can't complain too much, right?

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