Healthy low-fiber, low-carb diet...is it possible?

[Nancye50]

I'm new
I wasn't having terrible symptoms a before ended up with a perforation and this new diagnosis. What I thought was a brain-fog, lethargy funk turned into "something is wrong" with a lot of vague, intermittent symptoms.
So I feel like I can't trust my body to tell me when I'm eating something I shouldn't be. I'm keeping a food diary but am barely having pain and am feeling great on 50mg prednisone any way.

I'm just wondering how to best take care of my guts now!
It seems like so many of you do well on low carb options like paleo or SCD but I'm not sure how to work that if I'm restricting fiber from veggies, etc. Do a lot of you get to where you can tolerate that type of fiber?

I'm thinking of just focusing on juicing my fruits & veggies and exploring low-carb recipes. But maybe juicing isn't as necessary as I think I is?

Interested to hear how some of you "figured out" you diet, especially if you don't have reliable gastro symptoms to tell you what your body can or can't tolerate.

 

[bert]

Hi Nancye.

It does seem that a lot of people find that a scd/paleo or a variant diet is beneficial to their condition. I have just read the scd book but I feel that the diet is too restrictive to be a practical option for me. Paleo diets seem like a better option as they allow more carbs but I suppose it depends on how bad your condition is and what you can tolerate. There are some good posts on here suggesting that if you can't do a full scd/paleo then cutting out sugar/processed foods and all gluten is beneficial. Reducing grains seems to help also but I think it is important to find alternatives when cutting things out to maintain a good calorie intake. Good fats like coconut oil look like a good option. I have just ordered some almond flour products to try, I have made almond flour cakes before and they are quite nice but the flour is expensive.

I am just about to order a juicer myself as I feel the insoluble fibre in vegetables causes me problems. Juicing would be a great way to get some much needed vitamins and minerals without the fibre. I do also want to make some soups as these will hopefully be easier to digest. I find that soluble fibre psyllium husks help to soften my stools and make them easier to pass.

It's early days but I am hopefully starting to work out a diet that will help my condition and be something I can stick to long term. Good luck.

 

[Nancye50]

The Omega VRT350 just went on sale on amazon for $250. Their magical elves knew that's the one I had been shopping for and discounted it.

I bought Against All Grain and am interested to try some of those recipes but there are a lot of veggie noodle substitutes in there!

 

[UnXmas]

I can't handle fibre at all. I used to do best on a low-fibre diet; since having an ileostomy I have to be on a very low fibre diet to avoid blockages. But I eat a lot of carbohydrate, and this suits me very well. Processed food, refined sugars, etc. can actually be the best thing, especially with digestive problems. I eat white bread, white rice, low-fibre breakfast cereals, biscuits, cakes, etc., which are also foods recommended to most people with stomas.

Years ago I did try various low-carb diets and they just made me sicker. Now with the ileostomy my diet is very balanced - carbohydrates and protein. It's hard to find many fruits and veg that are low-fibre, but I've found some I can tolerate. I really couldn't manage if I were try to eat low-carbohydrate diet now, there wouldn't be anything much left that I could eat, and I'm finding it impossible to gain weight (I'm very underweight) as it is.

Interested to hear how some of you "figured out" you diet, especially if you don't have reliable gastro symptoms to tell you what your body can or can't tolerate.

If food is not causing you symptoms, there's really no need to change what you're eating, unless of course you have other areas of your health besides Crohn's that could benefit from dietary adjustments (needing to gain or lose weight, needing more fruit and veg in your diet, etc.). I don't think there's anything particularly harmful in grains, processed food, sugar or all the other foods and food groups that get ruled out by some of the diets out there. I certainly feel much, much better eating all these things than I did when I tried giving them up. I do think juicing can be a good way of getting vitamins without the fibre though, and can see why that could be a good option for many with Crohn's and other digestive issues that make fibre hard to tolerate.

Interested to hear how some of you "figured out" you diet, especially if you don't have reliable gastro symptoms to tell you what your body can or can't tolerate.

I found out through a lot of trial and error, but my symptoms do react to my diet. It was difficult to figure out the low-fibre diet suits me best, and I spent way too long trying all sorts of extreme diets (cutting out dairy, wheat, grains, processed food, blah blah blah) when I should have realised that since they were making me feel awful, trying the next restrictive diet and cutting out the food that the next book/website/nutritionist said was evil was never going to help. But I was very young at the time (teenager) and so desperate to get better - and I was very gullible and believed what nutritionists and other alternative health practitioners were telling me. When I finally saw the light it was a much easier process to figure out that cutting down on fibre helped quite a bit.

When I got my ileostomy, having been on a low-fibre diet for the first six weeks after surgery as recommended by my doctors, I tried reintroducing the foods liable to cause blockages, and found that each time I got a blockage or partial blockage very quickly, and the correlation and severity of symptoms made it clear what the problem was. Most people with ileostomies don't have this much trouble with fibre, my stoma just can't cope with it for some reason!

But as I said, if food is not actually making you feel bad or doing you any harm, why the need to change and give things up? You can only go by your own symptoms or follow dietary advice that relates to longer term health where you can't see the effects yourself (e.g. we know that we need fruit and veg to be healthy, even though we can't see an immediate improvement if we eat some). The success of working out a diet for yourself this way relies on your ability to judge the source of the information you're getting.

 

[Nancye50]

Thanks for replying UnXmas. I'm still at a fairly high dose of pred but my bloodwork shows my inflammatory markers are looking great. I've been loving my "white carb" diet for now.
I am just really feeling a lot of pressure (both from myself and reading up) to be as healthy as possible going forward.

 

[UnXmas]

Thanks for replying UnXmas. I'm still at a fairly high dose of pred but my bloodwork shows my inflammatory markers are looking great. I've been loving my "white carb" diet for now.
I am just really feeling a lot of pressure (both from myself and reading up) to be as healthy as possible going forward.

I understand. It's just that different people have different definitions of "healthy". For many people with digestive issues, healthy does not equal unprocessed food, lots of fruit and veg, etc. When my stoma nurses talked me through the diet I had to follow following my ileostomy surgery, cakes, sweets, biscuits, etc. were among the most beneficial foods they recommended, while fruits, veg, nuts, seeds and wholegrain cereals were to be avoided. Because with an ileostomy I also need more salt than the average person, they advised me to eat crisps and add salt to meals.

While having an ileostomy may be an extreme example, I think for many people with Crohn's and other digestive issues "healthy" eating follows similar lines.

I also believe that the typical Western diet is generally fine for most people - though obviously there are many varieties within that diet - sometimes the normal Western diet seems to be taken as synonimous with MacDondald's, but there are many healthy versions of it as well.

I guess I'm just saying that based on my own experiences and reading and observation of others, I don't see any superior health value in following alternative diets - including low-carb ones such as paleo and SCD - and find that trying to follow such restrictive diets is more trouble than it's worth. They exclude you from joining in on social meals and require you to, at least in the early stages, put a lot of time and mental (sometimes also financial) effort into diet which could be better spent on other things.

Of course someone who enjoys learning about nutrition and experimenting with diet and who does not value being part of the main culture of food around them will have a very different experience, and if my attempts at trying alternative diets had resulted in noticeable improvements in my symptoms, I may well have sacrificed these other factors in order to feel better and be healthier, but that just wasn't what happened at all.

Sorry, this is just something I've come to feel very strongly about, as you can probably tell. Trying to make myself better through diet was just such an all-round failure for me, I hope to help others avoid all the stresses I went through.

 

[Nancye50]

Thank you so much for putting that out there and explaining it so well. You've been so helpful.
I'm reeling from all of the information out there, not to mention crazy from pred.
I'm still excited about the juicer and am still taking the juice plus capsules I'd stockpiled as they came in with the gummies for my kids.
Such a good point about the social aspect too. I've missed out on a lot in the last few months already!