GAPS Intro Week 1

Read why we're doing GAPS here.

So how'd the first week on GAPS go?

For me, pretty good. LMS required a lot of encouraging and cajoling, but she stuck with it.

We'd already started drinking bone broth every day and we'd started taking our probiotic supplement as well. When Monday came, I cooked up some squash and hamburger for breakfast instead of our usual bowl of rice crispies, and it wasn't as bad as I was afraid it would be.

LMS wasn't thrilled with the idea of eating veg and meat for all three meals, with no "real" snacks (raisins, applesauce, etc). She likes being able to eat snacks that she can get herself that she thinks are yummy.

The first few days my mental fog increased because of the die off reaction, but then it started to get better. I'm still not where I'd like to be, but I'm getting there.

Wednesday and Thursday we were both super tired, though LMS was more so, and Friday our energy levels were back up. I'm glad it was an off week from school- it made it easier to let things slide when we didn't feel up to doing them. The timing was unintentional, but fortuitous.

A few days into it, we both started fantasizing about all the food we wanted to eat but couldn't. I've been spending lots of time online, searching out new recipes, reading others' experiences on GAPS, and so on, and it became very tempting to just go eat all the things I haven't been eating but want to (no gluten, of course, I'm not stupid)- cake, cookies, pizza, etc. Not a good idea to be looking at all the things you might be able to eat sometime in the future, and you don't know when, especially when you're on a very restricted diet.

I could tell LMS was also fantasizing about all the things she'd eat because she pulled out a Japanese kids cookbook and started pointing out all the things she wanted to make. Only she wanted to make them now. She's having a hard time with the whole waiting thing- she wants to be able to eat them now.

Some of the food we ate:
hamburger cooked in broth (as hamburger patties and meatballs)
chicken (cooked when I put a whole chicken in the crockpot for broth)
butternut squash (cooked in broth, then mashed)
cauliflower (cooked in broth, then mashed)
broccoli (boiled till soft, not lightly steamed like I usually like)
onions (cooked in broth)
chicken soup (shredded crockpot chicken, grated onion, carrot, zucchini, summer squash, broccoli, and cauliflower, well cooked in broth)
summer squash soup (summer squash cooked in broth, then blended smooth)
teaspoons of Bubbie's sauerkraut juice (haven't quite gotten the courage to make my own, but soon)
teaspoonful of Bubbie's sauerkraut
chicken pieces and zucchini slices baked in broth

We only ate one egg each during the first week- on day 7, and it was just the yolk, mixed into a bowl of soup. I'm still undecided on whether it was ok or not. More on that next week.

One con: lots and lots of dishes. I used to be able to go 2 or 3 days between dishwasher loads and even then it might be a little sparse. Now I'm doing full loads every single day. Even though we pretty much eat the same thing throughout the day (so I only have to cook once) or leftovers from the day before, using the stove to reheat food rather than the microwave really increases the number of dirty dishes.

A few more thoughts:

1. I don't like the "diet" part of the name. "Diet" has such bad connotations, and I don't want it being applied to our 6 year old, since it's not like she needs to lose weight or anything. I think GAPS regimen sounds so much better than GAPS diet.
2. On the other hand, I have lost weight doing GAPS. I've always suspected that my wieght issues were related to the condition of my intestines, and so far this seems to be the case. Hopefully it'll hold true: I'm now a third of the way to my weight loss goal!
3. We're not restricted in the amount of food we eat- we actually end up eating more, because it can hover on low-carb (which is why we've been eating a lot of squash, to keep our carbs up), we're just restricted in the kinds of food.
4. I forgot to mention that GAPS is not long term. The intro phase usually is 4-6 weeks, but can be longer if needed. Once you're done with intro you move to full GAPS, where you continue to eat nutrient dense food while you continue to heal. Some can come off it in 6 months, others take 2 years, it just depends on your body. After that, you transition to including more foods that aren't GAPS legal. We'll transition to gluten free whole foods/nourishing traditions foods.