My Story
The Early Years
Hi there! I’m Abigail Marie the Chef with IBD. I have Ulcerative Colitis, as well as a background and degree in Culinary Arts. Let me show you what to eat to help manage IBD from the inside out. I will address what foods to eat, and how to prepare them to make enjoyable meals for you and your loved ones. In addition, we will address lifestyle factors like the sleep you get, and how you deal with stress. Begin your journey today to a better life with chronic illness.
From an early age I became fascinated with food and cooking. One of my earliest (and fondest) memories is of a three-year-old me in the kitchen with my Aunt taking ordinary things like flour, eggs, and sugar and being able to transform them into warm gooey cookies with a few steps, some patience, and a bit of love. That’s when my love of cooking was born.
Throughout elementary and middle school, while other kids my age would rush home to watch cartoons, I would rush home to watch cooking shows. Every birthday and holiday I commonly requested cooking books, kitchen equipment, and cake decorating tools. My heroes were people like Julia Child, Alton Brown, Ina Garten, and Rachel Ray.
It comes as no surprise that after high school I enrolled in Johnson & Wales University to pursue a career in Culinary Arts. I spent two years joyously exploring the world of professional cooking and being trained in classic technique. The next two years I spent taking business courses directed towards food service at JWU. Four short years later I was the proud recipient of a Bachelor’s in Food Service Management, and an Associate’s in Culinary Arts. From here, my dream was to become a professional Head Chef of a fine dining restaurant, where I would spend my days bringing people joy through superior ingredients and technique.
The Diagnosis
In August of 2014, half way through schooling, those plans changed, although I wouldn’t realize it quite then. A day like any other, I hopped in my car on my way to my line Chef job for dinner service, but I wouldn’t quite make it. I was traveling down a two-way road when a tow truck, going about 60 MPH (20 over the speed limit), came directly into my lane. It hit me head on and threw the car about thirty feet from the road. I awoke to a piercing ringing in my ears, blood dripping down my face and arms, and a completely unrecognizable car. I ended up miraculously only fracturing a small bone in my hand and spraining an ankle. However, over the next few weeks I started having intense abdominal pain accompanied by other alarming symptoms like blood in my stool, that would eventually lead to my life altering diagnosis. After months of several doctor’s appointments, many tests, and a colonoscopy the results came back: Moderate to Severe Left Sided Ulcerative Colitis.
This diagnosis would completely turn my life upside down. Over the last 8 years it has changed almost every aspect of it. The diagnosis didn’t seem all that bad in the beginning. I was simply told to take some pills and continue living my life. I remember thinking, “Simple, I can do that.” So, I did. However, over the next year and a half I’d have a flare here or there making me miss work and have to take steroids to control it. The steroids came with a host of symptoms all their own. I’d settled into the fact that this was my new reality. I thought, “I’ll just be sick sometimes, but it will get better with a different medicine, and then I can resume my life.”
By this time, I had graduated with my two degrees, and was working full time as a Line Chef at one of three locations of a locally owned, high volume, reputable restaurant, ready to start my career as a culinary professional.
The Culinary Career
Shortly after, I received a promotion to Head Line Chef (Sous Chef). This came with a boost in pay and hours. Now, working about sixty hours a week in a high-volume kitchen, I was adding copious amounts of stress to my body that it couldn’t handle, not to mention all the wrong foods, although I didn’t know it at the time. I ate like many typical Americans with the addition of working in a restaurant with access to all sorts of fine foods. There were many late-night fast food trips after work (because what else is open?), beer at the end of a Saturday night shift, going out after work with coworkers on a weeknight. It’s just how the lifestyle of the professional kitchen was. I was working such long hours, and spent a lot of time away from home, so packaged and frozen foods became my standard go-to. I spent all my time cooking at work, and it was the last thing I wanted to do once I got home. Packaged and frozen foods seemed convenient. I continued to eat this way for almost two years after being diagnosed.
Each flare continually got worse than the last, always requiring a higher dose of steroids for a longer period of time to get things under control. This required taking more time off work. Was there anything else I could do to help? At my time of diagnosis I asked if I should follow a special diet and was told I could eat whatever I wanted, as it didn’t affect my condition. I clearly remember deciding that even though my doctors insisted food had no connection, I was going to look into it for myself.
I found a plethora of information (an overwhelming amount), much of it focused on gluten. So, I cut out all gluten from my diet. It did help. This was my first step on my healing journey, but wasn’t enough on its own. Seeing little improvement, I decided to cut out frozen, prepackaged, and fast food too. I simultaneously started having more fruits, veggies, and whole grains. I was seeing improvement but still struggling. At this point in my professional journey, I was out of PTO for the year. This now meant that I had to show up for work even when I wasn’t doing well at all, that is, if I wanted to pay rent. This cycle got unbearable over the next six months. There were many times, especially on really busy nights, I was crying and in such pain that I had to step into the walk-in refrigerator just trying to pull myself together to finish my shift. I would get through that day only to get up and do it all over again the next day.
I soon realized that despite all my hard work and determination, my dream of being a culinary professional was slipping away. I had reached the point where my body just couldn’t take the physical demands and stress that accompanied that dream. I found myself at the end of 2017 needing a new job, and fast.
The Backup Career
In my search for a new job, I took into consideration that I had always loved wine and my minor from JWU was actually in beverage management. I found an entry level Sales Associate position at a local wine shop selling wine. The hours were better, and I wasn’t always on my feet. This was certainly an improvement from the long kitchen hours and a step in the right direction. I managed to lessen the physical impact and lower my stress level but it was still problematic when I was having a flare as I couldn’t work. I soon received a promotion to Assistant Manager of the Lake Norman location. I enjoyed helping customers find the perfect wine for their tastes and occasion, but was glad to take on some more of the behind the scenes responsibilities. This included ordering, inventory control, invoices, issuing checks, and managing employees. I would do well for a few months at a time, but then have a flare before you know it, leaving me stationary to my apartment missing work and losing money. This constant cycle of falling ill, missing work, and not being able to pay my bills became overwhelming, and quite honestly personally devastating. I was grieving my old life before chronic illness. I already felt like I had given up my lifelong dream of being a Chef, and now my disease was trying to take this away from me too.
The Start of My Health Journey
I decided I should really clean up my diet if I was going to see improvement. I had to fully commit and figure out what foods I tolerated well. My parents had done some research to help me, and came across a diet plan and cookbook called The Plant Paradox by Dr. Steven Gundry. This diet had claimed to have cured people of cancer and all other sorts of autoimmune diseases. I desperately gave it a go. It was extremely restrictive (no gluten, grains, or dairy for starters) but I saw improvement within a few months. I continued with this diet for almost two years, going a total of seven consecutive months without a flare. My personal best! So I could see some connection between food and symptoms, but still had a lot of learning to do as I was still eating all the wrong things.
The 1st Hospital Stay
My next flare started as it always did, I had grown used to the progression of symptoms and pain. Prescribed a strong dose of steroids I continued on, but with no improvement. In fact, it had gotten worse. So much worse. I didn’t even know it could be that bad kind of worse. I was losing a lot of blood from the ulcers, unable to fully digest anything, feverish with chills, in gut wrenching pain (literally), not able to eat, or even sleep as I was taking a trip to the bathroom about every thirty minutes.
I was hospitalized for a week after going to an appointment with a specialist to look into why the steroids were no longer working. He took one look at me, so pale, fragile, down twenty-five pounds in a matter of six weeks, emaciated, and in pain. He admitted me right away. Forced to lie still in a hospital bed for seven consecutive days, I realized I needed to rethink my priorities yet again.
This hospitalization was in November of 2019. I spent the next three months solely recovering. Much of the next three months consisted of many long nights, crying fits, days spent sleeping and trying to forgive my body for so spectacularly failing my dreams.
I eventually went back to work at the wine shop. I was working less hours and being more open about my struggle and physical pain with my employer. We worked out a schedule that allowed me more to get more rest and moved away from every single shift being 9 ½ hours. This did help, but I was still weak and perpetually exhausted. It took everything I had to just get halfway through the day. It was shear will and determination that got me through the second half of my day. Every single day, I’d come all that way just to get home, eat, and go straight to bed. I felt defeated. My body fell short… again. Now, my second career was being taken from me by the same culprit and for the same reason. I was left feeling, not only had I given up my dream, I was also giving up everything associated with my degree. All of this loss was because of a chronic illness that had taken over my life.
How I Found SCD
A short few weeks later I found myself once again not really being able to do my job fully which was threatening my health care coverage. My husband and I decided to move in with my parents for a few months so I could look for another job, and we would be able to meet our needs. This is when I found The Specific Carbohydrate Diet – SCD. My husbands Aunt who is a nurse suggested the book Breaking the Vicious Cycle By: Elaine Gottshall. She had come up with a diet through scientific research for those with IBD called the Specific Carbohydrate Diet.
I ordered the book the same day, and got reading as soon as it arrived. I started shortly thereafter, and still follow SCD today. When I started the diet, I tried to find some of my favorite recipes, but none of them stood up to what I remember or ever tasted quite right. That’s when it occurred to me to make my own SCD recipes.
This brings us to the worldwide pandemic spread of COVID-19. It hit right after we moved in with my parents. Now, with tons of people out of work, and me as well. (My immune compromised system couldn’t handle working the exposure of retail). My job search became much more difficult. I’ve applied for over eighty jobs and had a few interviews, but nothing worked out. Feeling I had lost any way or means by which to support myself, I did some deep soul searching and asked myself what was most important to me. I wanted to help others with IBD and share my SCD recipes.
That’s when I realized my new dream. I have been collecting recipes, knowledge, and first-hand experience over these past eight years and I want to share it! My goal is to help others with IBD live better lives through healing and flavorful foods. This is why I started Abigail Marie the Chef with IBD.
200+ SCD recipes, over 100 blog posts on IBD research and chronic illness topics, 2,000+ IG followers, a monthly newsletter, and 3 eBooks it has been quite the journey! I started out wanting to help others with IBD and found an amazing community that ended up helping me too.
I invite you to come with me on this crazy amazing journey to managing chronic illness together!