Sunflower Seeds and Spinach!

Good to know Boks! keep us updated on the results of you going back on the green and seeds.

Rio in Maryland said...
Bokscarracer, I agree that it's important to keep up with the diet (or whatever else works for you) even when you're doing fine.

Also, occasionally when you're feeling lackadaisical you could try juicing spinach and carrots to change things up a bit and still get some necessary nutrients. I juice 1 bag of spinach and a handful of carrots in the morning and it's great (I still do cooked, canned spinach. and sunflower butter later in the day).

do you use a special blender? i've heard the vitamix is good. i like to buy the odwalla carrot juice. i've tried other brands but none are as tasty as that.

Do those fiber like psylium husks and metamusil help you not be so urgent?

Be careful with that kind of fiber - I've read that psyllium can be very hard on your digestion. You may have to do some expiramentation.

I have looked everywhere for sunflower butter in the Dallas/Plano area. Any members who live in this area know where to buy it?

So I decided to eat my spinach this week not in a casserole but mixed in with something else like brown rice. Evidently spinach (frozen chopped) and brown rice are not good for me. I had to miss a day of work because of it. I had three bloody bms, the chills, headache, and basically just felt like crap. I am not sure how I am going to be able to eat spinach because it just tears me up. I might try juicing it again instead and see if that helps. I am still doing the sun butter and will continue to do so. Low residue diet here I come.

DanthaMan - It sounds like you probably also have IBS.  This is my problem, too.  Although the spinach helped my UC, it irritated my IBS so that I could never completely get into remission.  Check out the website that I have posted in my signature.  It explains how to eat insoluble fibers (like spinach) to make them more tolerable.  The key is to eat them with a hefty dose of soluble fibers like white bread or white pasta.  The reason you had so much trouble with the brown rice is because that is also an insoluble fiber (so you ate two at once - bad news for tummy). 

If you still have trouble with the spinach, try eating lots of Sunbutter and lots of carrots (which are a soluble fiber and more easily tolerated than spinach).  That way you're still getting your magnesium and beta carotene.  Totally worked for me... now I have my UC and IBS completely under control.

No, I haven't actually used their products - only followed the diet advice. Oddly enough, my IBS isn't that hard to control. Using soluble fiber as the base of each meal seems to do the trick for me. I hope the tummy fiber works for you. They really seem to know what they're doing on that site.

My update.... Today is day 14 and I'm not feeling so well. I was starting to do well during the first week, but now, not so much. I have one or two formed stools per day though, so that's an improvement. But besides that, I'm going several times a day, there's still blood and D. I increased my fish oil intake, but thats really the only other change. I might have to avoid dairy though - I just hate to give it up cuz it didn't cause me problems before as long as I took a lactaid. I'm giving it another week since some of you have said it took 3 weeks or so to see marked improvments and some of you got worse before you got better.

Hello to all my fellow Spinach eaters out there,

Just wanted to give an update. Since starting this diet in January, there have been many ups and downs, but now 3 months later, this diet is a LIFESAVER. For the first time, I haven't flared this time of the year. Last year around March/April, I was in the hospital for the worst flare of my life. Sometimes I just cannot believe that the foods that I always stayed away from and avoided like the plague, have become the most important staples of my diet!!! That's just crazy...I now eat spinach every  single day, whether in a salad with romaine lettuce, or steamed with olive oil and garlic as a side with something else...I don't have to eat it every single day, but I have gotten so used to it, that  I eat a little bit every day...it has become a routine so to speak..I also make sure to eat oatmeal at least 3-4 times a week. Now have 2, sometimes 3 formed stools a day. But I know it's the diet, because I ALWAYS flared this time of the year. I also must mention, that I had a few setbacks, mostly due to stress and something I ate. For example, I ate 3 beef tacos, and had diarrhea and bleeding an hour later.. seriously what was I thinking? But the next day, ate a huge spinach salad and was good as new. It has truly given me my life back.

Hi everyone. It's great to read about others who are benefiting from the diet too.

Just wondering if those of you who are benefiting from this could post their spinach and sunflower seed diets and recipes so that we can share some ideas, and even offer newbies a chance to experiment with this diet.

Type of spinach? Frozen, canned, fresh?
How much a day?
How do you cook it?
When do you take the sunflower seeds and/or sunbutter, and how much?

I'll start off with my own diet:

1 can spinach, sauteed with 1 tea-spoon butter or olive oil, salt and pepper; sometimes I'll even add in some turmeric powder - it's a very simple recipe and can taste bland, but I'm used to it now.

I try to eat 1/2 - 1 can of spinach a day. On the days when I want a change I'll mix the can of spinach into some penne pasta or risotto - but I'd rather keep it simple. When I first started the diet, I ate 1 can of spinach a day. Now I eat the spinach as an accompaniment, so I don't eat as much.

I eat 2-4 tbsp Trader Joe's Sunbutter after dinner. Sun-flower seeds taste great but I avoid them now as they seem harder to digest than sun-butter. Otherwise I was eating 4-6 handfuls of roasted sunflower seeds a day.

I also juice 1 bag of spinach with a handful of carrots every morning.

OMG I can't believe this... I started eating spinach and everything is getting MUCH better!
it has been 4 days and it has literally kicked my butt near remission =O

this diet sounds GREAT!

I have heard that people can never flare up with this... is that true?!?!

Rock ON!