When we as a family did GAPS last year we started brave and hit the introduction stage one and went from there.
But it was HARD. We tried to stick to the book. Stage 1 exactly like the book didn’t last very long. I had children fussing all day every day. Children hungry all day even though they ate every two hours. One of the children was having meltdowns one after another and another child acted tired and listless. And by day 5 of stage 1, I found myself sneaking into the kitchen when no one was looking hunting for peanuts and raisins just to give myself a bit of an energy boost. So we moved into stage 2. There we didn’t have any better success. When we introduced eggs we had big troubles and found that Miss R. is obviously reacting to eggs. We finally found quail eggs and went from there hoping that all our troubles were ended. But every step along we hit one thing after another. When we introduced the crispy nuts and the almond pancakes I had big issues with my allergies. When we introduced fruit Miss A. hit hyper again.
I felt like somehow it was all a failure because it didn’t move forward book style. And though we found a lot of help from the diet the hard outweighed the help and we slowly slipped off after several months on the diet.
Now this fall when we realized we needed to start the diet again, I decided to do some homework first. I started reading everything I could about GAPS and other similar diets. I searched the official GAPS website for many of my questions. I found they have an extremely helpful FAQs page. I also looked for talks given by Dr. Natasha McBride and other GAPS practitioners. In one of the talks by Dr. Natasha I heard the phrase that opened my eyes. She said something to the effect that everyone is different and that what works for one person doesn’t work for another and that as long as you stay within the allowed foods on the diet you can personalize it for your own specific needs. So that was why it hadn’t worked so well for us. Why it was so hard to keep it up. I was trying to do what worked for others instead of fitting it to our needs.
So with that little tidbit of encouragement, I set out to create a personalized plan. We prayed a lot about it and spent hours looking at our individual needs and researching to find ways to meet them. What you will find on this site does not completely represent the stages of the GAPS diet as found in the book. Everything we are eating is GAPS legal and when I post a GAPS safe recipe I will label it with the stage as found in the book for ease of reference.
I encourage you that if you want to try the GAPS diet, read the book thoroughly. Look for all the information you can find and make a plan based on your needs. If you know you are allergic or intolerant to something don’t feel in a hurry to bring it in even if that is listed as an appropriate food for that stage of the diet. Watch out for common mistakes that people make. You can go HERE if you want to see a list of my mistakes and what we are doing to fix them this time around.
And if you feel, as I do sometimes, that you just can’t do everything you wish you could, start by trying one thing to help. Doing something is always better than doing nothing.
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