Getting Started with Specific Carbohydrate Diet

If you’re looking into the SCD Diet (Specific Carbohydrate Diet), or have made the decision to try it out, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is to get the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle. With all of the websites out there, like this one, that talk about SCD it can be easy to think that you can get everything you need without the book. However, the best information comes directly from there. It gives a great background to the diet and is the most definitive resource for following the diet.

There are some great SCD sites out there as well, but the book is the best place to get started. For a very quick start you can also check out the official website, where you will find a lot of information, legal food lists, and the intro diet. This is not a diet to enter into lightly because you do need to be fully committed. I don’t recommend combining this diet with any other (Paleo, gluten-free) in the beginning. Once you’ve been the diet for a period of time and your symptoms have been gone for a long time you can thing about expansion. We’ll be talking about that later in the series.

For me, I bought the book about two months before I made the decision to commit. My symptoms weren’t terrible as I mentioned in my last post so I was able to take some time. You might be at the point that you’ll do anything to relieve your symptoms, so you may embark a little sooner than I did. You can start on the intro diet while your’re reading through the book.

As you’re looking through you might find it a little intimidating. I know I did. Cooking with almond flour? That seemed strange. Double-checking everything I ate to make sure it didn’t have anything bad, basically having to make everything because most store-bought food didn’t work. I had never cooked a squash in my life or heard of dry curd cottage cheese. This wasn’t going to be easy.

But, even though my symptoms weren’t terrible, I was starting to become a little desperate. Upset stomachs sometimes kept me prisoner in my apartment and I never knew if what I was about to eat would cause distress. I was very frustrated so I decided to take the plunge.

Next week I will discuss the intro diet. This week I’m going to leave you with a little getting started checklist.

Get Breaking the Vicious Cycle
Choose your starting date
Clear out any illegal foods you can
- You may have to leave foods for your other household members, but try to get rid of anything you know might be hard to resist
Tell your family/friends that you’re doing this – explain how important it is to follow it 100% and that you can’t make exceptions for any reason – birthday, holidays, etc
Get a yogurt maker
- You don’t need almond flour right away, but the yogurt maker is important – I’ll talk more about yogurt soon

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Sherry Lipp

Founder at Happy Gut For Life

Sherry is a Certificed Holistic Gut Practioner, author, and recipe creator. Sherry started the Specific Carbohydrate Diet in 2000 and has been creating delicious, grain and gluten-free recipes ever since. She is the author of the Don't Skip Dessert SCD cookbooks.