The Delicious Side of GAPS

     I have been doing GAPS for three years.  It has not been an easy road, but the benefits have been amazing.  So amazing, in fact, that I have to restrain myself from suggesting it to every person I meet who even has a slight health issue.

     I have been thinking about starting a blog for a long time now.  I have experienced so much and learned so much that it almost feels greedy not to share my experiences and knowledge with others.  I have also doubted my self, and what I really have to offer.  I have not done GAPS perfectly.  I have not even done it exclusively for the whole three years.  There have been many bumps on my GAPS journey.

     GAPS Diet stands for Gut And Psychology Syndrome Diet.  If you read the book and/or search online you will find big words and phrases describing this strange diet.  In the beginning I was leery of this diet.  The ideas presented in Dr. Campbell-McBride's books are strange and a bit confusing.  If I had not promised myself that I would try this diet out, for the sake of my youngest son, no matter how hard it was, I probably would not have made it this far.  But I am not Super Woman.  I do not have this diet down pat.  We do not even do all the things Dr. Campbell-McBride says to do in the book.  But I did read the book, and I was convinced that I needed to try the diet.

     I am starting this blog to help other mothers out there, like me, who have kids who are sick.  I am taking a leap of faith, I am putting myself out there and encouraging others to read the Gut and Psychology Syndrome book by Dr. Campbell-McBride, to make a life style change for good for their families and themselves.  And I am also here to say that you do not have to eat fermented vegetables every meal to heal your gut.  While doing the GAPS Diet is a big step, if does not have to happen all at once.  You can take baby steps, and you can learn to love different foods.  You can even learn to cook, like me!  I am not Super Woman, and I do not have all the answers, but I do have a crazy cool story!

My GAPS Story

     Our story begins with my youngest son's first birthday.  I made him a Betty Crocker boxed chocolate cake in the shape of a dinosaur with neon green frosting and with it we served chocolate ice cream.  My mother loaded him up with a heaping plate.  He was happy and content, but that night turned into one of the worst nights of my entire life.  He was in some sort of comma that would only be broken by agonizing screams every hour or so.  He would not open his eyes, he just screamed, and then fell back to sleep.  If I had been more awake I might have taken him to the hospital, but instead I held him and slept while he slept, and tried to calm him when he began to scream.  The next day I beat myself up for hours over my cake and ice cream flavor choices.  I decided that it had to be the chocolate, and we started avoiding chocolate.  Soon after (with no connection to the birthday cake incident) we made the switch to cloth diapers.  All the blog articles I read made it sound so easy.  I was excited to have my new cute gDiapers.  It was not long before I realized that cloth diapers were not easy, not for my one year old.  He never had a normal poop.  He had puddles of poop.  Not shortly after that I met a woman who had a wheat and dairy allergy.  I myself discovered I was having PMS like symptoms all the time, and had been for months.  I decided to try not eating wheat or dairy and see if I had an allergy.  Within a few days I felt myself again, and I was so happy.  I introduced wheat again to see if it might just be the dairy, with success.  I then decided to see if my son might have similar issues.  I took him off wheat and dairy with immediate results.  About a week later he accidentally got a hold of some cheerios at church and later had a bloody stool.  I knew then that this was a big deal.

     Next my husband and I moved to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with our (then) three children.  Our son was a peanut, really little for his age.  He was now two years old, and although he was active and happy, he was small and quite sickly (despite the food changes).  Because he was so sickly I never got around to having him immunized; it just never seemed like he was healthy enough.  A few months after we settled in to our new home I found a doctor who I had heard really good things about with regards to allergies.  We visited her and that is where we first learned about the GAPS Diet.  She strongly encouraged me to try it, saying that his allergies would only get worse, soon he would grow allergic to rice, soy and maybe eggs.  His problem was not a true allergy, but his gut was messed up.  This made me think back to his birth.  I had tested positive for Strep B before I gave birth, and went in once my contractions started to get two doses of antibiotics in before he was born.  I also thought about how he had not been immunized, and the doctor cautioned against it, saying his gut was not healthy enough.

     It took a few months for me to read the book.  I learned so much, and I was scared and over whelmed.  But I knew it was what we needed to try.  Then I picked a day to start the Intro Diet, and started using up the foods we would not be able to eat on the diet.  Looking back I did a lot of things I would suggest people NOT do when they start the diet.  But that is kind of how I roll, learning what NOT to do the hard way.  One example of this is the camping trip we took a week before we started the diet.  I knew we would not be able to eat all the wonderful camping comfort foods after the diet started, so we loaded up on orange pop and Cheetos!  I shake my head in utter amazement at myself now, exactly three years later.

     So, three years later, after starting the diet on July 28, 2011, I am now the mother of four.  I have survived long road trips, moving, renovating a very old house (and living out of a camper for the first 5 months of it) and church potlucks, all while doing GAPS.  And like I said before, we have not always done it perfectly, but we have done it.  The health benefits I have seen astound me.  Not only are my sons food allergies gone, but so are mine, and my husbands (we later found out that he had the same allergies as my son). Another benefit we have seen is general healthiness of the whole family.  Before we tried GAPS our kids were sick all winter.  They had continual runny noses and it was nasty thick green snot.  Now they get the sniffles every now and then.  Before we started the diet my medicine cabinet was full of all kinds of medicine.  After the diet it I watched as my medicines expired and I had to throw them away, never needing to replace them.  But the coolest benefit of all was when my kids stopped being picky eaters.  My oldest son would throw up when ever he thought a potato was in his mouth.  No french fries or tatter tots for him.  He would not touch a tomato.  Now he eats beets and lima beans.  He begs for tomatoes in his soups and salads.

The Delicious Side of GAPS
   
     GAPS is a lot of work, especially in the beginning.  I have learned a lot of tricks to doing GAPS on the go, and making meals that are quick but yummy.  I have also learned how to make up recipes from the ingredients I have on hand.  But the biggest thing I have learned while on GAPS is it is delicious.  The benefits I mentioned earlier do not have to come at a price to taste.  There are lots of wonderful things you can eat on GAPS, it just takes some time to learn how.

     I hope you have been encouraged by this.  I am eager to share recipes and tips with you in this blog.  I will be starting with the intro diet, because I think it is a big part of healing the gut.  I will actually be going back to the intro diet due to a miscarriage I had three months ago.  I was thirteen weeks along, and I had been having a horrible time keeping food down, and I stopped GAPS all together.  After the miscarriage I ate horribly, just trying to survive.  Now I am eager to get my body back to one hundred percent.

     Please join me for the rest of our GAPS journey.  I look forward to sharing with you and being a source of encouragement to you.  You can do it.  And you will be so happy that you did!