symptoms better AND worse at first?

[Guest guest]

hi all,i've just started the diet about 5 days ago, to try to get my IBS better under control. i have IBS-D (with bad bloating/cramping from time to time), and have had symptoms for 4-5 years.  i experienced significant relief in december 2008 when i transitioned to a paleo-style diet (no dairy, grains, legumes, sugar, potatoes), but have more recently gone back to having loose/mushy stools and a lot of bloating.  my diet has tended to be higher fat and lower carb, although this year i added potatoes back into my diet (i thought lower carb might be what causing some menstrual irregularity) and didn't seem to experience any ill effects.

i did 2.5 days on the intro diet (ground beef, beef bone broth, chicken soup, roast duck, pureed carrots, weaker tea/coffee) and then added in homemade applesauce.  today i'll be adding in zucchini (not pureed, but cooked VERY well).

my symptoms are confusing me, and i'm not sure what falls within the realm of " normal " for initial symptoms/experiences/possible die-off effects.  my stools have been much better formed, but my bloating seems to be as bad or worse than it was before i started, and after adding in the applesauce, i am having a fair amount of gas (some of it painful).  is this a sign that i'm not tolerating something? 

i ask primarily because after eating paleo for so long, and reading quite a lot about metabolism and digestion over the past several years (including the insulin response and things like the GI scale), i wonder if my body might not be dealing well with so much - well - " predigested " sugar hitting my system.  as i understand it, peeling, cooking, and pureeing carrots or apples makes the sugar more readily bioavailable, and i also know that anecdotally, sugar tends to make me bloated.  i've also had some crankiness this first week, and i've wondered if it was related to blood sugar issues.  (i have done " meat & eggs " fasting before, and generally experience zero bloating on that diet, but even the carrots here seemed to do me in.)

any insights you have on this would be greatly appreciated.  paleo really changed my world, as well as my day-to-day experience, so i'm committed to trying SCD (paleo-style) for a month, but it's hard to know what are good signs, given all the idiosyncratic variation in how we each respond.

thanks,susannah.