Hey folks, it's Ben Greenfield here and as you may know if you're a regular podcast listener we inevitably end up sometimes talking about topics such as your digestive health and your stomach and diets that help out your gut and diets that don't help out your gut and even the function of your poop at some points and today what we're gonna do is really delve into what kind of happens when you consume the wrong type of foods what it does to your digest

digestive health and some options that you may have for fixing that. Now earlier in a show if you listen a few weeks ago I mentioned something called the specific carbohydrate diet and that's really what we're gonna talk a lot about today. I have a gentleman on the call who is an expert on this who runs a website and I'll be sure to link to you in the show notes to his SCD lifestyle website but Stephen Wright is on the call and today Stephen and I are gonna talk about

basically what the specific carbohydrate diet is how it saved him as well as the guy who he runs SCD lifestyle with Jordan Reasner when it comes to fixing their respective guts and also how you might be able to convert your diet into more of a specific carbohydrate diet if you struggle with issues like diarrhea and poor gut health.

We will be giving away an ebook to any of the listeners of this podcast as well and you'll be able to find that over in the show notes over at bengreenfieldfitness.com so my guest today is Stephen Wright's of SCD lifestyle Stephen how you doing.

Great Ben thanks for having me now do you prefer I call you Stephen or Steve well if you're already mad at me then call me Stephen but otherwise what was wrong with Steve all right I'll try not to be your mom.

I appreciate that that be weird so tell me a little bit about kind of what you do and then how you got into this whole specific carbohydrate diet and if you could I know that that Jordan can't be with us on the call today but feel free to kind of fill us into on him because I know you kind of had each had your unique set of digestive problems that led you to this diet.

Yeah I'll try to give you the cliff notes version so this doesn't go all night but it started with Jordan actually he was diagnosed with celiac disease and he received the prescription that every celiac receives which is the gluten free diet and we became friends in college and he got this diagnosis probably right a year after college and things didn't get better they they kind of got a little better than they got way worse and.

He went to more doctors and they kept saying oh you're not doing the gluten free diet right so he kind of got really fanatic about you know making sure that there's absolutely no gluten anywhere I mean to do throughout everything in his kitchen but all new stuff he got new counters new everything I mean he was the most militant gluten free person I've ever known in my life and he was still having diarrhea like you know 10 to 15 times a day.

And it got really bad he you know he bounced around doctor after doctor and nothing was working and he finally saw a holistic guy who said there's this book out there called breaking the vicious cycle I want you to buy it and I want you to do this diet and don't come back and see me until you do it.

And you know when you hear Jordan tell the story you know I wasn't there for that but I would have been pretty devastated because he had waited a long time to see this guy and then to get that kind of news I'm sure it was a little disheartening so.

Yeah so he kind of like he bought the book and he did some research on it and it seemed like there was a lot of some good will out there and this was four and a half years ago I think now and when this is happening so the internet was still it wasn't wasn't new for say but there wasn't a ton of blogs yet and so he he was on some Yahoo groups and I finally got around to start and I think six or seven weeks later and in seven days like I said he was going to the bathroom 10 to 15 times a day for two to three years.

And in seven days he got that down to two or three times a day.

Yeah so major improvement I mean massively the kid was writing a will at 24 to his son and his wife because he didn't think he was going to make it past 26.

So when we say that this diet definitely saves lives it saved his life it I mean no joke.

So he he was doing it and you know we were still friends and we kind of like you talk about on this podcast you always have that buddy who probably also has a few stomach issues and it's okay if you talk about poop and you know diary and and how that I'll go so I was that guy for him and and I had called him a few times when I was in Chicago at this time and said you know man dude I am just you know feeling worse and worse and he's like man you know what you're telling me he's not I've been doing a lot of research.

This isn't right. You need to try to diet and I was like yeah okay man you know at that time I was working for a big four calling firm I was a traveling consultant.

I was like I can't cook all my food you know I'm in Chicago the happy hour culture man I'm not going to happen you know I don't see how this is going to work for me.

So I was trying to get healthier you know I was doing a lot of the fitness things that you talk about on your site and I was looking better and better on the outside but I was getting sicker sicker on the inside I think a lot of the stress and the travel was really adding up for me and I had been diagnosed with IBS kind of like the alternating kind constipation diarrhea by four or five different doctors and every time I had gone in there and this was over probably four or five years I had gone to see these different doctors.

They always said you need more fiber you know a couple of them tried to give me some prescription drugs but I didn't fill those scripts and I tried the fiber for a while it seems to kind of mask the problems but over that year when I was consulting it got really bad to where I was like doubled over in pain after every meal because the gas and the balloon was so bad.

Wow and so yeah I actually had an accident and I'm okay to admit this that I definitely put my pants in downtown Chicago in a full on suit on the way to work one day gosh yeah yeah it was not cool I had a huge meeting so I was got my suit on put myself not cool had to clean my pants and everything up in the bathroom and that day like later that day I was like I call Jordan I tell him about it and then he was once again he was like man you're not right you need to do something different.

And so I talked to him a little bit longer and you know over the next week or so he convinced me to get started on this diet and telling you man again I had all the objections there's no way I can cook all my own food there's no way I'm just I made pizzas out of a box I knew how to make chicken breasts and frozen veggies that was it and after starting this diet four days in I had no gas and my nickname was a gas man by my family.

So for a guy that has that gas since I've been a little kid I had no gas in four days it was remarkable just completely remarkable.

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