I started this blog several weeks after actually beginning the GAPS diet and protocol, so most of my blog posts are going to be written in retrospect. I will also note that my life has been... generally extremely busy (moving will do that to you) and I am... quite frankly *not* the type to blog everysinglebloomin'day. Don't worry though, I keep a journal and ya'll shall get the day-by-day play-by play as best I am able to give. =)

 

Week 1 My “Unofficial Start”

In the GAPS book, Dr Campbell-McBride lists 7 different stages for the GAPS diet. (in the GAPS guide she lists 8..) The last stage or “ full GAPS diet” is essentially the SCD or specific carbohydrate diet. But if you are trying to actually heal your digestive system/ neurological system etc. Simply going on the full GAPS diet is not enough. In fact, if you went straight from eating and doing whatever you please, directly onto the full GAPS diet you may just cause your body as much or more upset than healing just out of shock. So, to avoid this, you start with Stage 1 ( The intro diet ) and work your way through the process of healing, moving on to each stage only as your body allows.

 

Stage one is VERY basic... almost painfully so. The only things you are allowed are boiled, organic meat and bone broths; and soups made from them and a list of low-fiber/ low starch, easily digestible cooked vegetables; fermented dairy in the form of homemade sour cream, youghart and such; and your fermented vegetable juice.  Ok, so look at that list.. then omit dairy since I'm allergic to it, and you've got what I was eating for Stage One.  ( You are also allowed to use fresh herbs in your soups, and have mint tea and ginger tea made from fresh mint and ginger... but I did not know this at the time. >.< )
  You are not allowed sugars or really even starches of any kind at all. No fruit, no grain, no potatoes, no processed anything, and no sugar. Period. Also, you are allowed no real amounts of fiber since they just irritate your gut when it is in need of healing.
You also are told to avoid... pretty much everything else for at least until your digestion starts to straighten out. The goal is healing with easily digestible/ high nutrient foods and not giving the bad bacteria/parasites inside you anything to grow on.

  Ok, that said, she says that it is often good to “ ease into” even the intro diet. Don't go whole hog into it without allowing your body to adjust or it will likely just flip out, you'll panic because your body is flipping out, and that will be that.  You’ll quit.
So for me, week one was the “ unofficial start”. Now, this was probably a lot easier for me than the average person for a number of reasons. Since I am allergic to gluten and am generally health conscious, I had already been gluten-free, caffeine-free and dairy-free for years, and had also essentially been off of  eggs, junk food and most sugar.

  If, however, you are used to the standard western diet, frankly, I pity you. Because this is/was NOT easy to do even for me as determined as I am. My suggestion for you would be work in slowly. I mean very slowly... If you are used to the semi-standard diet involving donuts/pastries (or even bread at all) and coffee or mountain dew/energy drinks every day, you are going to have issues, and it would be best to wean yourself off slowly to avoid major withdraws. This could take a few weeks, it could take a month or more. Even going that slowly, you will probably still go through some hefty withdraws, but it will be much MUCH easier to handle if you go slow.

   For my part... even going off of fresh fruit and grain caused some mild withdraw issues that I wasn't anticipating, my mother and I were both used to using fruit as a “blood sugar kick” pick-me-up throughout the day while we were working on other things... and if you are like me, and you don't have that, and you haven't adapted yet, you (surprise) go through a little bit of a sugar withdraw. After a day or so of being mildly grumpy and agitated and finally learning to eat more frequently (and make enough food so that I COULD eat more frequently) to avoid the blood sugar dips, I didn't have too much trouble.

 

  The “ week” started for me on a Tuesday. That morning, I had my usual pro-biotic capsule before breakfast, but then instead of reaching for the gluten-free cereal and rice milk, I had to re-adjust my thinking and have a cup of broth with some (about a teaspoon) of the pro-biotic juice from my fermented vegetables added in. I also had some coconut milk kefir that I had been eating before without any trouble so decided to continue with.

   Now, the reason I mention potentially having trouble with the kefir, is that a lot of GAPS people can't handle the higher strength culture in the kefir right away, so she does not have you add kefir until much later than stage one.. But, eh, I hadn't fully started yet, and I was doing ok with the kefir before, and I hadn't learned fully what else to eat soyeah.. that's what I had. X)

Lunch and dinner were both the chicken soup that I had grown up with ( see recipe here) with the pro-biotic fermented vegetable juice added. (for our recipe on fermenting vegetables see recipe here) My side dishes were a few “California style frozen vegetables” that I had boiled in broth and salted. ... And yeah. That was that.

Days two and three were essentially the same as day 1 ( I am very grateful that I am NOT the type to get bored of food easily! ) Except that I had some zucchini and summer squash sauteed with onions in duck fat along with my soup... Drank lots more broth all day long, and some homemade coconut-milk yogurt for a snack after dinner. …I *did* eat a few things that we were trying to get eaten up before the full start of GAPS but I honestly don't recall what they were now, and I hadn't started my journal at that point. I'm also pretty sure I couldn't stand it and had a banana or two in there somewhere.. But like I said, I was just starting out.

 

Not much seemed to change those first few days other than the mild withdraws of trying to learn to be without any fruit/fruit juice and grains. I hadn't fully started yet, but it was a fairly successful start as far as I was concerned.

 

Day 4 was... Different. I'm still not sure if what happened was a short form of the flu, food poisoning or some crazy allergy reaction to something non-GAPS that I had eaten, but, whatever it was, it resulted in a few things getting rather better acquainted than they would have liked. I got quite familiar with pretty much every cranny of our main-bathroom toilet and my esophagus and my stomach acid had a number of intense meetings which I think we all would have greatly preferred to avoid. Needless to say, it was miserable. End story.
I was sitting there in a cold sweat on the bathroom floor losing the contents of my stomach every 10 minutes or so and.. ( I'm sorry but) I DIDN'T GIVE A CARE what the GAPS lady said I wanted apple juice and seltzer water! (It's the same concept as drinking soda to settle your stomach, it is just less sugar. )

Drinking it did little more than give me something in my stomach to evict again, but since doing so felt better than retching with nothing.. I honestly didn't care much about GAPS at that level of misery. I concluded I'd start again once I recovered.