And no, we’re not giving up yet!
I had been putting off going on GAPS for a while. I was very apprehensive about the idea of restricting myself from eating healthy foods that I liked. Because honestly, I used to not like food.
I also wasn’t real thrilled with the idea of eating nothing but boiled meats and squash and soup for a month. Turns out that’s not all you eat, but, still. The Intro part of the diet still does sound pretty scary.
But the more I learned about it, the more I realized it was what I needed to truly be healthy. I needed to just bite the bullet and go for it. I decided I would start as soon as I was able to get everything I would need for GAPS.
And thankfully, my man was all for it — he wanted to do it too. Logistically, I’m the one that does the cooking around here, so it made sense for him to just eat what I’m eating. But, he knows as well as I do that just about everyone has gut damage, and won’t have optimal health without having healed it. We also want to make sure we’ve both gone through GAPS before having children, so that our kids inherit good, healthy gut flora from the start.
So, with plentiful amounts of butternut squash and a gallon of chicken stock to start off with, we had our first GAPS meal on Monday, the 6th (day after the Super Bowl, of course. We wanted one last beer!).
We ate a nice bowl of squash soup for breakfast, and I boiled up a few jars of lunch for Pre-Hubs and sent him on his way.
Later, I got a sweet little text from PH saying that his food was still warm — my lunch system (mason jars, cloth towels, insulated lunch container, described in my post about everything you need for getting started with GAPS) had worked, and his food was still hot at lunchtime. And, he had to say that his intro butternut squash soup was “really good! I can do this!” Yeah. He’s amazing.
We were housesitting for the first four days (bad timing on our part) and although it was nice having a larger kitchen to work with than that of our little hippie home, it was pretty rough being surrounded by food that we couldn’t eat. Some pretty terrible cravings ensued.
The biggest offender? FRUIT.
Oh, my GOSH how we wanted that fruit. It seemed so ironic how here we were on this quest toward optimal health by healing our guts, and yet we had to deny ourselves some of the most commonly-regarded as “healthy” foods, these innocuous fresh, raw fruits.
But, GAPS Intro has you start on only the very easiest foods to digest to allow for healing of the gut — and raw fruit doesn’t make the cut. It’ll come in a couple more weeks in a later stage.
Lesson learned: do not “cheat” on Intro!
Poor PH had an unintentional slip-up a couple days ago. He was visiting some friends after work who casually and kindly offered him probably the worst possible thing his detoxifying gut could have ingested — a beer.
Understandably, he really didn’t want to have to explain to his friends why he couldn’t have one beer and that he was on some weird diet — and I wasn’t there to put the blame on — so he went ahead and took it. Sipping it slowly so as not to be offered yet another one, he said he could feel the effects of it almost immediately. He discreetly poured out the last third or so of it before he left, and wished he would have just pretended to be drinking it and dumped the whole thing out instead!
PH was a wreck when he came home. He was completely and totally out of commission for the rest of the day and night, and said he felt like he had a flu. I gave him some probiotic sauerkraut juice and he went to bed at like 7 because he felt so sick and tired.
It was crazy to me that just one week prior, we were both putting back a couple of those Bud Lights at a Super Bowl get-together, with no noticeable problems whatsoever. When clearly, all along this was something our bodies weren’t tolerating well. We were just so used to eating and drinking the wrong things for our guts, that we weren’t able to notice or feel how it was affecting us before. I think when you have an intolerance to a food like that, and you’re still consuming it regularly, your body just learns to cope with it, despite the damage being done.
Good thing is though, now we’re both convinced that we shouldn’t be tempted to cheat, or especially have any beer, for the remainder of our GAPS journey. I’m a beer girl myself, and that was one thing I was bummed about giving up. But after seeing what happened that night, I know that cheating with a nice, dark porter I usually like to enjoy, really won’t be enjoyable at all!
Biggest challenges so far
Intro really isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be, but it did take some getting used to. The cravings for food we couldn’t have which was sitting right in front of us at that house was rough. A couple times, I had to go into a grocery store which was half PURE TORTURE and half absolutely nauseating. There were all these pink and purple, heart-shaped Valentine’s day treats by the bakery section, and I couldn’t decide if I wanted to just rip them open and scarf down ten cookies, or vomit at the sight of it all.
Having such limited food choices on stages 1 and 2 of Intro is challenging, but not terrible (especially with the recipes from the intro handbook I’m using), although we did start to get kind of sick of eating nothing but wet, boiled food after the first few days of Stage 1. Having a casserole of beef and squash baked in the oven instead of boiled in stock was quite a treat on Stage 2! We’ve found that drinking a glass of cold ice water every now and then helps to balance out all the steaming hot meals. It may be winter elsewhere, but it’s 80 degrees here and hot soup or stock three times a day doesn’t always sound very appetizing.
It’s been a bit of an adjustment having to wake up early enough to cook or reheat food for both of us before PH leaves, plus packing a hot lunch for him. But I’ve actually come to enjoy that. I like sending him off with healthy, healing meals, and knowing he’s not gonna resort to some nasty fast “food” joint. I actually feel badly that I wasn’t doing this all along with just regular real food.
Similarly, it’s been weird knowing that if I don’t bring Intro food with me if I leave the house for any length of time, I can’t eat. If I get hungry and don’t have my lunch bag, I’m screwed. Thankfully, it’s not that hard to just throw some jars of soup and stuff in there and take it with.
Positive changes
Overall we both have been feeling great, but PH has noticed probably the biggest noticeable change — his joint pain went away!
PH is a contractor and does a lot of hard, hands-on labor on the job. For months, his shoulder, knee, and elbow had been hurting him, and he also cracked a rib a couple weeks ago. He had been taking a pretty strong dose of over-the-counter painkillers just to get through the day. But he knew that wouldn’t be good to take on Intro, so he stopped. He said he felt like his pain is almost completely gone! This is almost certainly due to all the bone broth he’s been eating. It has lots of collagen from the gelatin in and around the animal bones, which is really good for joint health and rebuilding tissues.
I began noticing that my skin felt more full and plump — again, likely from all the collagen I’ve been consuming in my bone broth. I also have felt like I have a bit more energy when I wake up in the morning, and I feel more able to concentrate on my work for longer periods of time.
It’s common to go through a bit of a phase on Intro where you feel pretty awful, due to the detox effects of the diet and the bad bacteria in your gut “dying off.” But we haven’t experienced any real symptoms of die-off yet, although we haven’t yet begun our therapeutic-grade Bio-Kult probiotics, which might do us in for a bit of a reaction as our pathogenic flora gets whooped by all the new good guy germs.
One down, three to go!
We’ve been following the What Can I Eat Now? 30 Days on GAPS Intro Handbook from Cara at Health, Home and Happiness. The book is laid out so that you stay on each of the 6 stages of Intro for five days, and if you have any reactions to a newly-introduced food, to go back to the previous one. We’re already on Stage 2 with no issues at all, so we’re right on track to be moving through Intro in the 30 days outlined in the book. You can check out the book for yourself and even download the first couple chapters for free here.
Have you gone through GAPS intro?
Or are you interested in giving it a try? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!
I am interested in giving it a try, I was diagnosed with IBS about six years ago and it bothers me sometimes. I think GAPS could really help with many of the food digestion issues I currently have. I may try it out, not positive when though.
I hope you do, Amber! Lots of people have had great success healing IBS with GAPS.
My husband and I have been trying to decide if we are ready to start the GAPS diet..we are both so busy with work right now, it feels like it would be a huge stressor to completely change the way we eat. But, we would both love to be healthy before we have children. Also, I am so new to the eating whole, traditional foods thing, I feel like I don’t know enough yet! Your posts have been very persuading though, and each time I read another one of your posts/articles about GAPS, I get a little more cinvinced 🙂 Thanks for sharing your experience!!
Congratulations on starting intro! The early part is definitely the hardest. I got so sick of eating soup soup soup every day! Getting to add in new foods is so exciting. I remember I was so happy to start eating scrambled eggs and avocado! And once you go through intro, full GAPS doesn’t seem restrictive because it’s so much more varied that what you were eating before. 🙂 Good luck!
Glad to hear intro is going well for you both! I can totally relate to all of the hot soups and food while it’s warm out. I did intro during the summer and it happened to be one of our hottest, with more days over 90 than we typically get!
Best of luck as you continue through intro. It’s totally worth it, and it makes full GAPS feel luxurious with all your many food choices!
I think I’ve said this before but I am very interested in GAPS for myself. So reading this is super and fascinating. Thank you for doing this.
I’m so glad it’s going well for you! I’m planning on going through GAPS at some point, not quite up to it yet. Your point about doing it before having kids definately lights a fire under my butt! I’m looking forward to hearing about the rest of your journey 🙂
Yay for making it this far!
We’ve played with GAPS but never fully done it. I think I just need to ditch the uncooperative family and do it on my own. Then they’ll get to see my transformation into a superhero and beg to do it! Either that or they’d laugh at me in tights & cape and I’d have to zap them with my laser vision.
Hi Emily,
Congratulations for starting on GAPS Diet Intro! Isn’t it so interesting when our body lets us know we cannot tolerate something that we never knew was causing trouble before? My body has gone through changes like this over the past several years as I’ve cleaned up my diet in phases, learning along the way. 🙂
I love your website! I especially love your post about why you’ll never get your cholesterol levels checked again — I shared that on my Facebook pages.
I started myself and hubby on it 10/1/11, and we’ve done great! We followed Cara’s 30-Day Intro as a guideline, and loved it.
My recommendation to anyone who is ‘sitting on the fence’ about starting the GAPS Diet because it would be such a radical change in your diet is this: begin adding in some things, such as meat/bone broth. It is so easy to do in the crock pot. Add in some sauerkraut and fermented dairy. Pick up a copy of the Nourishing Traditions cookbook and begin adopting some changes in the way you eat, but don’t try to do it all at once. That is what I suggest to my clients as a health coach.
On the top of my list would be to re-source all of your meats, dairy, eggs to pastured (local, if possible to support your local farmer). Next be sure to switch to a high quality salt, either Celtic Sea salt of Himalayan Crystal salt. Next be sure to evaluate the oils/fats you are using. I use only cold-pressed organic coconut oil, ghee, pastured butter, and pastured meat lards/tallows, plus extra-virgin olive oil for salads. These are simple changes that can really make a difference!
I have a radio show about real food and gut-healing diet protocols such as the GAPS Diet, SCD, Body Ecology Diet and am always looking for great success stories to share via my guests. My show tonight is on GMOs, featuring a fellow graduate health coach friend of mine. Feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss the possibility of sharing your story on the show. It is titled: Let’s Get Real with Beth Wiles on Blog Talk Radio. You can find the podcasts on my website.
I wish you the best on your week 2 of Intro! It does get easier as you go, for sure!
~ Beth
Beth, thanks so much for stopping by here! I would LOVE love love to come share my story on your podcast show. How fun! I’ll send you an email asap.
And what great advice for those who are interested in this — taking it one step at a time is definitely the way to go. But as I’ve discovered, even this hardest part of GAPS really doesn’t have to be so hard. Maybe I’m just one of the lucky ones, but I’ve had a great experience so far! Cara’s book has helped me out a lot. And I’m almost done! 2 more stages to go. Woo hoo! 🙂
Congrats on your first week. Isn’t it crazy how much more in touch with our bodies we can be?
Both the joint pain and the reaction to beer that your husband experienced point to gluten as an underlying problem for him. You might consider loading him up on gluten and testing for celiac. If he has autoimmune reactions to gluten, even the slightest cross-contamination will be an issue in the long term, and that’s something you’ll want to know, because going truly gluten-free is more than just not eating wheat, barley, and rye!
-Joy
I’m just starting to learn about the GAPS and SCD Diets. It looks like one of the first things I need to do is find out about bone broth. Will homemade chicken broth work?
Jim Purdy
I’m on Day 6 of intro stage one. I’m going to Stage 2 tomorrow! Trying to decide about adding carrot juice to help with detoxification, or to just do the egg yolk. I have a 15lb of carrots staring at me in the fridge….and they seem to be what might help with my issues, but I know how good yolks are for me….I hope to have the rest of my family join me in the next couple of days….we are trying to finish up the healthy but GAPS illegal foods rather than just throwing them out. Hubby is still kinda on the fence, mainly the 2 year commitment and fear of the diet failing him.
Do you have a post on why you decided to try GAPS? I recently got the book because it is very interesting to me and I had read Dr. Natasha other book, put your heart in your mouth. I am considering this for fall. (going to be in China this summer and wont be able to control what I am eating)
Thanks,
~Karla
Sure do! 🙂
http://butterbeliever.com/2012/01/16/im-going-on-the-gaps-diet/
I just read your post and I am very interested on the GAPS diet! I have Hashimoto, an autoimmun desease, is this something for me? I am already grainfree, dairyfree, soyfree, nut/seedfree, nightshadefree and sugarfree. I eat mainly Paleo, the autoimmun protocol (the last 2 months) but eating some fruits and sweet potatoes may cause that I am not getting any better…I don’t know…I am so confused what I can eat and what not so I really consider Gaps Intro but I am not sure about how to combine it with my autoimmun protocol? Maybe anyone has some experience with it and can help me? Thanks a lot, Patti
I’m on my third day of Intro. I’m loving the soups! My recent “aha” moment was that whole chicken legs (skin on) vastly improves vegetable soups. Also, that the universe for garlic!
Every now and then I get a craving for something sweet and floury like cake. And CHOCOLATE! I went to the store yesterday to get my chicken and I accidentally turned down the chocolate aisle. I actually whimpered and had to jog through the aisle. 🙁
I’m taking inner-eco for my probiotic until I can purchase Bio-Kult.
I’m also worried because I have a family dinner tonight and I haven’t explained to anyone that I’m on this diet. DH thinks I’m nuts with the food stuff anyway, how am I going to explain dietary restrictions to his sister?? I guess I’ll just be extra careful (no dessert) and have my probiotics and soup at the ready.
Thanks for your blog! It’s one of the many resources that inspired me to try GAPS and heal myself. 🙂
Oh I so know your pain, Miranda! I did make it through Intro, and a month on full GAPS before I decided it just was not right for me. I began craving things, too, and I believe there are reasons for cravings beyond the “die-off” theory. I’m very happy I listened to my body and stopped restricting my diet. I had hypothyroidism and GAPS was making it worse. So, I ended up eating a diet almost the exact opposite of GAPS to raise my body temperatures and pump up my metabolism and thyroid, and I felt better within days, significantly better within weeks.
I’m trying to respond to people who comment on posts from my GAPS days with full disclosure of this, because I worry that too many people will get sucked into the idea that EVERYONE needs GAPS, like I did, which just isn’t true. And I don’t want to contribute to that.
My take on GAPS as of now is that Intro can be used as a great temporary cleanse, but I wouldn’t recommend the diet long-term for most people. Restrictive diets can be very damaging to metabolic and thyroid function, and I think they should be used as an absolute last resort. It may not be a very popular opinion in the alternative/WAPF nutrition world, but I feel that it needs to be said. Anyway, thank you for your comment. Best of luck to you!
Hey! Great blog. not sure anyone will be reading this now, but I might as well try. I’m doing the GAPS Intro diet. I’m on Stage one, because I certainly have some major digestive challenges (as yet unlabeled, but seems likely LGS or IBS or Crohns, definitely have candidiasis…waiting for stool test results now) which I’ve had for years. Sensitivities have continued to increase, and I’ve been sugar and starch sensitive for a long time.
I’m having weird reactions. I started doing the full stage one diet two days ago. Much of today, my mouth and tongue have been increasingly hot, as if I burned them with scalding water. but I haven’t. I asked one friend studying herbalism about this, and she suggested normally, heat is in the digestion, going downwards from the throat, and in this case, it sounds to her like its coming UP to my mouth/tongue. I’m not sure what that would mean in terms of this process. The mouth situation is quite painful. And I feel very, very tired… I’m able to focus, but everything feels like it takes a lot of energy. I’m also taking a few supplements: grapefruit seed extract, cod liver oil, vit d3 (small amount), conventional antifungal in the morning, probiotic powder in morning on empty stomach, and at night, saccaromycin DF. Also, nourishing infusions (long-steeped teas) or nettle or oatstraw each day. So any insight or ideas about whats going on is appreciated!!