Day 1

My Gut My Life

Day 1

Hello, please forgive my ignorance on how to properly begin.  Perhaps the best place to start is at the beginning, oh don't worry I'm not talking about starting completely back at the point of my birth. While at some point I may go to that point today is not that day.  So I'll start with my gut.  Many images or definitions of what guts refers to may be swarming around in your brain, anywhere from stomach to intestines.  For the purpose of this blog, gut will refer to mainly my Large Intestine.  However, just to warn you some other aspects of my digestive system will be mentioned and given their due credit at times as well.  About 13 years ago I was diagnosed with an Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD), for those savvy gut people you know that there are a couple different types out there.  For me my winner is known as Ulcerative Colitis, well actually I have been told that I have something that is in between UC and Crohn's.  

Well since being first diagnosed I have under gone many trying years.  With multiple medications, hospital stays and medicals test out to wazoo.  However, this post is not about all of that.  The reasoning for my post is that I'm trying something new.  A couple years ago I heard about a diet that was suppose to help people in my circumstances. It is known as the Paleo diet.  I was very skeptical when I did my first search about this new diet.  It's founding principles is to have you eating things that humans living in the Paleo ear would have been likely to eat.  In other words cutting out the high processed foods.  Meaning eating lots of veggies, fruit and yes meat. Not sounding bad so far.  However, my skepticism came in my disbelief that this diet was suppose to help me someone with UC actually feel better.  I mean anyone suffering from UC knows that upon diagnosis you are told to avoid high fibrous foods which this diet seemed to have a lot of.  Even recommending Nuts and seeds in it a big no no for my current diet.  So I quickly tossed the Paleo diet idea out as just a crazy and yet another unrealistic diet for me to do.  Fast forward two years and again the Paleo diet has re-entered my world.  So this time I brought it up to my GI doctor.  The result of that talk was a discussion about how everyone needs to find what will work for them, and that's not just for people with IBD.  She assured me that I could give the Paleo diet a try but just pay attention to my body to modify it how I needed to.  

So I've determind that I am going to give it a 1 month trail and see how I feel as I go.  If the claims are right I should start to feel better then I already do (I feel pretty good right not I've been flare up free for 7 years now), have more energy, and lose some weight in the process.  So let the trial begin.

What I've done today.  Today I decided to start the process by buying some products that the diet recommends.  Such as Almond butter and Coconut Oil.  I tried the Almond butter on some celery and it actually wasn't that bad.  Still not peanut butter but good in its own way.  So for 30 days I am going to try and use Almond butter in place of peanut butter.  I also plan on making Paleo Salad dressing and a Paleo dinner.  We will see how that goes.