The Specific Carbohydrate Diet: The First Three Days

This week started my journey with the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. I had my "last meal" at Red Lobster on Sunday for lunch with my parents... can someone say Crabfest! Snow crab legs and cheesy garlic biscuits! It was so good, a perfect last meal for sure.


Monday morning started my SC Diet. Sunday, in preparation for the diet, I cooked the Chicken Soup recipe from the Breaking the Vicious Cycle book. I also made my first batch of homemade yogurt in my Yogourmet yogurt maker along with some homemade jello. These few foods are a part of the introduction diet phase of the SC Diet. This phase takes from 2 to 5 days to start the "initial die-off of bacterial overgrowth, which is one of the reasons the introductory diet is so important. It will help to clean your system out, so that you can begin to heal" (1). Once the initial 2 to 5 days of the intro diet is complete, I can start to slowly introduce foods one at a time in order of most easily digestible. Luckily, a nice site called Pecan Bread that supports the SC Diet has already put these levels of foods into phases for us. I plan to start the first phase of food introduction on Saturday.


The introduction recipes are pretty simple to make, and they are all in the book as well as online.

Pureed Carrots

The chicken soup recipe was the first one that I made. Daddy had to show me how to cut up a whole chicken, something I'm sure I will have to be shown again. Then, we had to use two pots since when I added the carrots there was no room for anything else. So, two pots; one whole chicken cut into wings, breast, legs, and thighs; one two pound bag of baby carrots (or ten large carrots peeled); two large onions quartered; four stalks of celery roughly chopped (or in my case snapped into fours). I divided the ingredients evenly into the to pots and then filled them with water, brought them to a boil and then lowered to a simmer for about four and half hours. The next morning I took out the cooled chicken to de-bone and removed the skin along with breaking it up into pieces (which was very easy since it was fall-off-the-bone tender). Then, I removed the carrots and strained the broth to remove the onion and celery. In the introduction phase of the diet you should not eat the onion and celery. I added the chicken back to the broth which now fit all into one large pot. The recipe then calls for you to puree the carrots before adding them back to the broth. So, I got to put my lovely Nutribullet to use to "blast" my carrots into a rich baby food like consistency. Once I got all my carrots pureed up, I added them back to the soup and stirred it all up. Chicken Carrot Soup! Add salt to taste.

Yogurt in my glass jar

Next, I decided to try out my new yogurt maker. I was super excited to get my yogurt maker in the mail a couple days before, so I was just dying to put it to use. I followed the instructions in the manual to make the yogurt. It was the same basic recipe that is in the BTVC book and online. First you have to warm a half gallon of whole milk to a certain temperature (use temp in the recipe you are using) which is just about boiling. Then you have to wait for the milk to cool to a certain temperature... I think mine had to get to 42 degrees C. Then, add lukewarm water up to the line in your yogurt maker. I used the Yogourmet yogurt starter, so I had to mix this with about five teaspoons of the warm milk to dissolve before adding it to the rest of the milk. When adding the starter to the rest of the milk, it is VERY important that you mix it well and it is evenly distributed throughout the milk to make an evenly consistency in the finished product. Now you should have all of your milk and starter mixed in the plastic container that goes into your yogurt maker. Place the container in the yogurt maker and let it do its thing for four to four and a half hours! Make sure to refrigerate for at least eight hours before eating.

White grape jello with scrambled eggs

The last thing I made was by far the easiest. You make homemade jello with plain gelatin mix, Welch's 100% no sugar added grape juice, and honey. First, add one cup of the grape juice to a mixing bowl and then sprinkle one packet of plain gelatin mix over the juice. Let this sit for about a minute or two. While you are waiting, warm up a cup of water in the microwave for about a minute and a half. Add the hot water to the juice mixture and stir until completely dissolved (the recipe says five minutes). Then you can add honey to taste or saccharine sugar substitute. I added honey in mine of course. Love some honey! This made about three, on the larger size, cups of jello.

Tilapia with cheddar

So, these are the things I have been eating the past three days. I've also had scrambled eggs for breakfast, broiled beef patties made with organic beef, and broiled tilapia fillets.

Chicken soup with broiled beef patties

It has not been too bad, just a lot of the same. At least it does not taste bad. Tonight I even baked some apples filled with butter, honey, and cinnamon! Yum!

Honey and peppermint tea!

Baked honey, butter, cinnamon apples

(1). "The Intro Diet - Breaking the Vicious Cycle." Breaking the Vicious Cycle. Breaking the Vicious Cycle™, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.