Becoming Crunchy

Image by I Believe I Can Fry via Flickr

I have officially been on the GAPS Intro Diet for one week!

First of all, I must pat myself on the back (again – I’ve been doing it a lot ) for sticking to anything diet-like for a whole week. I don’t know if that’s ever happened before!

I totally understand now why Mama Eve was posting so much on her experiences with GAPS – this diet is insane! (In a good way, of course).

So here’s my story so far:

Monday – the very first day of Intro for me, I stuck to the whole thing beautifully – lots of broth, boiled meat, veggies. I was a rock star.

Until that night.

I didn’t prepare enough food ahead of time, what I had was going to take awhile to cook, and I was really hungry. I had a headache (no coffee!). I didn’t want any more broth.

And there was chocolate cake in the house.

So, I did it. I ate the chocolate cake. It was really good!

And within 10 minutes it was gone. After throwing up, twice, I got it through my head that this thing is really working, and it’s working FAST. I had been filling my body with healing, easy to digest foods all day long - there was no way it was going to tolerate me putting any processed, sugary crap in there again!

Message was received - very clearly – and there have been no more cheats for me on this thing! I’m afraid to eat anything processed at this point!

After that, things got a bit better – I certainly made a point of keeping food ready enough ahead of time, but it hasn’t been a very easy week. The first 3-4 days I was just exhausted; going to bed early (like, 7 or 8), napping with the baby. I still haven’t been able to stay up much later than 10, which is good, because it’s what I wanted to do and probably wouldn’t have done if not forced…

Beyond that, I’ve just had something of a vague, sick-ey, slightly nauseous feeling that comes and goes, along with not much appetite. All of these are symptoms of what’s called ‘die-off’ – as I’m trying to reestablish the good bacteria within my gut, the bad bacteria is being killed off in large and fast amounts – something that actually releases toxins into the body and can make you feel like poo.

One way to temper this is to introduce probiotics (like yogurt and fermented food) slowly, which I’ve done – but I was shocked to see how much bone broth itself has an effect on the body – all those people that keep talking about how amazing it is? They are not wrong!

Just over the past few days I’ve been feeling quite a bit better and more energetic, which has been nice.

I have made a few alterations to the strict intro that maybe I shouldn’t have, but honestly it is really, really hard and I figure I’m doing the best I can and seeing results, so I’m gonna go with it.

Basically, I haven’t been drinking broth with every meal (though I do have it every day), I’ve introduced egg whites ahead of time, and I haven’t added raw egg yolks to soup. I also am having a really hard time getting that sauerkraut down, so because I’ve never had any problem with dairy, I decided to introduce yogurt yesterday – and honey.

I just really am not a fan of sour! I will keep trying, but in the meantime a bowl of yogurt snack with a bit of raw organic honey added to it is like heaven after a week of eating broths and boiled meats & veggies. Oh – and I made butter the other day (so cool!) and I’ve been frying my eggs in it, which has also seemed to go down well.

Because I seem to be tolerating these things well, I am going to try to speed up the intro for myself a little bit. My original goal was 5 days on each stage, but at this point and with all that’s coming up, I don’t think I can do it (unless my body really starts rejecting things). So I’m planning to scale it back to 2-3 days on each stage and see how it goes.

Right now I’m hovering between stage 2 and 3; in the next few days I plan to introduce avocado and pancakes made with nut butter, squash and eggs. Stage 4 brings in fresh herbs, olive oil, freshly pressed juices (which I’m not sure how I’m going to do that, seeing as I don’t have a juicer) and bread made with nut flour, eggs, squash, fat and salt.

I’m hoping to do those this week and move into Stages 5 and 6 over the weekend and beginning of next week – but we’ll see how it goes for sure.

While it has been difficult with things like giving up coffee and putting up with so much food monotony over the past week, I am definitely not regretting this decision!

Almost everything I’m consuming is homemade and unprocessed. I have chamomile tea to tide me over in the soothing hot drinks area. I’m losing weight. I know my body is healing and becoming more healthy.

I will definitely plan on moving into the full GAPS diet once I’m through with the intro, and whenever I’m finished with that, if I decide to go back to consuming grains I will plan to soak and sprout them and continue to make everything at home.

With the results I’m seeing already, it’s just opened my eyes to how much it is worth it.

Well I have gone on a bit here so I’ll do a quick ‘what I plan to cook and eat this week’ menu – and if you have any questions about my experiences I would be happy to answer them.

It’s not arranged by day/meal because I’m still in the phase of just eating what I feel like, when I feel like (within the limits of the diet, of course).

This week’s meals will include:

Beef Broth, Chicken Broth, roasted chicken, soups made from chicken and vegetables, ground beef & squash casserole, vegetable & beef soups, scrambled eggs, pancakes made from nut butter, squash & eggs, yogurt & honey, avocado, bread made from nut flour, etc.

I should also really be supplementing with fermented cod liver oil, and I plan to – I just haven’t been able to order it yet.

My next task is to perfect making yogurt – I tried it last night and it was a total flop. I think I need to get a digital thermometer to check the temperatures as I’m pretty sure that’s where I went wrong…

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