TLDR: I’ve experienced just over a week of diarrhea or really loose stools, since going onto the repair phase of the Clever Guts diet (no dairy, gluten, coffee or processed food) – any help out there about why that might be or what I can do about it?
I’m in my mid-30s and I’ve had discomfort in my stomach/guts for the last year (pain at times, or just general discomfort, and regularly constipated with the odd bout of random diarrhea) and these issues started with a fairly acute episode where I had a lot of pain in my stomach/guts that made me want to almost be sick/stop eating (I wasn’t sick though).
I’ve been through doctors and had every test done to try and find out what’s going on (blood tests, stool tests, breath tests, ultrasounds, CT, endo & gastroscopy etc) and according to these tests I’m very healthy (yay!)!
I also started a fairly stressful job a few months before my stomach/gut issues started, so that led me to think that stress might have contributed to the issues kicking off…
Given anything serious being ruled out, that’s left me to think that it must be related to diet and I’ve stumbled on the Clever Guts Diet after seeing amazing transition in my mother-in-law. I thought I ate fairly well, but would have some sort of processed food most days (a cookie, some chips or chocolate etc), wasn’t eating a very wide variety of greens (just a simple salad and meat most nights) and was also taking a fibre supplement each morning to try and help with the constipation.
I decided to give the Phase 1: Repair a go, which was a bit of a shock to my system (especially giving up caffeine and dairy, but also gluten and cutting out the junk I would eat too). I had a shocking headache for the first 3 days, but just as that cleared, I started to get the loose stools which moved into diarrhea and hasn’t changed since (now day 10).
I’m at a bit of a loss as to what the next steps should be – whether I should abandon the diet and just try to deal with the diarrhea, or whether it might just take a couple of weeks for my guts to adjust to a new way of being?
I’m starting to feel very exhausted as the days go on, so I’m not sure whether I’m helping myself or hindering myself! Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated!