u/Arbawk — reddlx

5 months after my setback post: back on track, ~50+ safe foods now

I posted this thread 5 months ago. I had been making progress with diet expansion, from Carnivore, mixing in IBD-AID, and eating more. Then I had a major setback: a week of hellish symptoms after I pushed things with a heavy meal. But I'm happy to say now things are back on track.

I've read some posts here recently about the thought of suicide. I've been there, the bathroom floor curled in pain wanting just about anything to end the pain. This inflammation we deal with is so internal, so core to our being. That sustaining ourselves with food, something our global culture holds so centrally, can cause us so much pain. It's really a lot to deal with. I know all of us come out stronger on the other side because of what we have to endure. And I really wish the best for everyone suffering through this disease.

But there really is hope. Medication is getting better every few years. New treatments are being studied that we may see in our lifetimes. Time heals.

And in my experience, there are underlying triggers and causes that we can improve. Since I made the post above, I've kept expanding my diet (slowly, carefully), and now count about 50 foods that I feel I can safely eat. I can make it to select restaurants with friends, and they're genuinely happy for me to see me with a plate approaching normal. The social aspect itself is something truly difficult on elimination diets, and with this disease at large.

It's still been 2 steps forward, 1 step back. I'll get confident and push things like texture, more raw foods, something a little heavier/with more oil than I should, and if I do that for more than a meal or two, I'll feel the consequences. But with each week my gut feels slightly more stable.

A lot of my progress with diet has been with the help of AI (Claude mostly). I fed it studies, content from some sources I found for which I didn't have hours to watch all the videos and become a gut health expert. And it was able to make useful suggestions, guiding me in the elimination diet approach. I finally launched an app mainly for myself to help me manage my diet progress, track symptom and possible triggers. I've been using it for 90+ days now and it's been helping me.

I have a lot of love for this community that is supportive, insightful, and really there for one another. I know it's because we all go through this alone. The bubbling, burning, churning that happens inside of us is not easy to communicate with anyone that hasn't gone through it. But we aren't alone! We're all here still fighting, and we will keep healing.

reddit.com

u/Arbawk — 5 days ago

▲ 2 r/carnivorediet+1 crossposts

2.5 years of carnivore pulled my ulcerative colitis out of an 11-year hole. Here's how I carefully added some foods back.

The carnivore diet gave me 2+ years symptom free and I'm extremely grateful. People like Paul Saladino and this sub gave me the knowledge to be confident in sticking through it, despite the insane challenge of social pressure, being "that guy" eating the same thing every day at work, having to speak to the caterers directly at my friends' weddings, and denying the happy hour drinks.

But I was genuinely stuck: reintroducing foods kept causing symptoms to come back for me. I saw dieticians and naturopaths but their recommendations didn't work. I was already having tons of bone broth, and supplements didn't help me. And at $150+ per session, it was expensive experimentation.

What actually has been working: some in-depth conversations with Claude (AI). I fed it as much personal context as I could: medical & diet history, studies I found that seemed relevant, and I asked it to bias itself away from western medicine approaches that had failed me. I'm now eating 50+ foods that I can tolerate.

The process I followed:

One food at a time, small amount, waiting 3 days before judging.
Reintroduce by how hard it is on the gut.
Track everything. Food in, symptoms and stool out.
Picking foods that were well-tolerated across multiple elimination diets: SCD, IBD-AID, CDED. I mixed and matched.

I found this hard to follow in just an AI conversation, so I actually built an app that was just for me at first. It helps me track the above and make proactive recommendations for what steps to take next. I have a 90-day hot streak and don't plan to break it soon!

I know many are here for general health reasons, not necessarily inflammatory gut issues, but perhaps others are going through what I went through. The extreme restriction fully cleared my symptoms and I couldn't be more thankful, but my goal was not to only eat a handful (literally could count on two hands) of ingredients forever.

I still consider carnivore my safe base. On days where things feel shaky, I go back to baseline and let things settle. It's amazing to know that's an option when I need it.

But I have felt good slowly reintroducing things. I've included high probiotic sources, some resistant starches, and things that have likely improved my gut bacteria mix. I can tolerate small amounts of pretty much anything now, but I still have be quite careful, as pushing things too quickly did give me a major setback once.

My goal is to get off medication entirely, which hadn't been doing much for me anyway. It might have helped in the early days, but I think my body adapted. I know that the underlying causes of inflammation are related to stress, diet, and natural factors. And suppressing my immune system is a patch that I don't want to live with forever.

The app I built is called Tract. I hope I'm not crossing any sub lines in mentioning it, but it has been very useful for me. I've used and tweaked it for months before making it public (and it's free to use).

I hope this resonates with anyone who has felt stuck eating a super restrictive diet, but maybe hopes for a more standard life. Eating with friends at a restaurant that isn't a steakhouse is a nice option to have. Regardless, I'm super grateful that people here go against the grain and find natural ways to feed our bodies what they need and avoid all the garbage pushed on us.

u/Arbawk — 7 days ago

▲ 11 r/AutoImmuneProtocol

Made a free tool to check if a food is AIP-compliant because I kept googling the same stuff

When I started AIP for my ulcerative colitis, I found cooking/eating difficult. I was constantly second-guessing whether something was actually allowed. Half the blogs say one thing, a facebook group says another, and reintroductions made it worse since then it depends what phase you're in. I had a note on my phone that was just a mess of ok/no/maybe foods.

So I built a little tool to keep myself sane: you type in a food and it tells you whether it's elimination-ok on AIP, with the actual reasoning instead of a bare yes/no. Free/no signup, you just type in a food and see the results: https://www.tract.health/tools/can-i-eat?diet=aip

I also put together a batch of AIP recipes here: https://www.tract.health/recipes/aip, mostly because I was sick of "AIP" recipes that snuck in almonds or a nightshade spice.

Full disclosure: I'm building a gut-health app (Tract) and this grew out of that, but the checker and recipes are completely free and I'm honestly more interested in whether the info is right. If you've done AIP longer than me, throw some foods at it and tell me where it's wrong or too strict!

Any direct feedback is seriously appreciated 🙏

reddit.com

u/Arbawk — 11 days ago