DAY 1:
We took the plunge and all moved to stage 2. It is amazing how much better we have all felt today! I added egg yolks to our soup. Tip: if you don’t want egg drop soup, add the yolks while you have your immersion blender going and blend them all in. This makes a much creamier soup and no one is the wiser.
We ventured out of the house today! Went to a game night at a friend’s house. I came with dutch oven and small cooler in hand so that we had food and snacks. It wasn’t easy with all the delicious and semi-healthy snacks around but we persevered. It helped that the soup I made was delicious! I got the recipe from the Heal Your Gut cookbook. I highly recommend this book if you are doing GAPS. The explanations are great and recipes are good. Of course, if you know me very well, you know I don’t stick to a recipe very well so I have altered some, created my own and revamped some old faves to make the GAPS friendly. It has been a great challenge for my culinary skills – to get different flavors and textures out of very limited ingredients and mostly poaching. I will definitely be sharing recipes and who knows, maybe my own cookbook will come out of it. In order to help the kids not feel so deprived while at our game night, I made some kefir-honey-ginger popsicles. They LOVED them. It was a nice treat especially since it is summer. I have plastic molds right now but these stainless steel ones are on my wish list. We stayed up the latest we have since starting the diet – 11:30! The kids were in bed around 9 I think. It sounds strange but this is sort a success for us. In the past we have been so exhausted we barely made it to 9 pm.
DAY 2:
This morning we all felt a bit low. Some old die-off symptoms have returned. Nothing major – fatigue, slight headache, some soreness and a couple meltdowns from the kids. But mostly mentally. H didn’t sleep well which meant I didn’t either. Dax had some congestion again and that made it hard from him to sleep too. No one was especially excited about soup for breakfast so we spent about half an hour talking about what we could have in the next stages. If you could have heard us, I am sure it would have sounded pathetic “You know what I am excited to have? Some fried eggs and avocado!” “Yes! with sauteed onions & mushrooms!” LOL! It actually did seem to lift our spirits. Everyone is looking forward to stage 3 because that it when we get to add whole eggs (not just the yolk), sauteed onion, almond butter, a GAPS version of pancakes & fermented veggies. Does’t sound like much but we get to add dishes that aren’t just poached and that is a big win!!
I made a variation of last nights soup because it was SO good. This time with GAPS legal sausage links. Oh my goodness it was yummy!
S found some raw pecans I was saving for a later stage. You learn a lot about yourself and your kids during this process. I didn’t realize how much food was controlling him. I am glad we are doing this now so that hopefully we can break the hold and help him learn to say no even when its hard. It has led to some good conversations for which I am thankful. It has also helped me realize how far we have come. As my first child, he had no sugar until he was almost 2 (I didn’t give it to him even then), his birthday cakes were actually GAPS legal (ironically) and he has always been a good eater. Over time though junk just crept in to our pantry. It happens so easily. I don’t feel guilty about it I just didn’t realize it before now. I thought that most of the junk we ate was just for special treats and the kids wouldn’t miss them that much – wrong! It is so important to train our kids about good nutrition and gut health while they are young so they stay as healthy as possible & don’t fall into the processed foods trap. A couple of books I recommend for helping get started with this are listed below…buy them, read them, teach them to your kids. You won’t regret it!
“Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.” 1 Thess. 5:11
We are all ready for naps and probably will end up having an early bed time.
DAY 3:
Two steps forward, one step back…that is how today felt. We had been feeling pretty well and then today Dax and I started to feel bad again. Nothing big and ironically not really anything to do with digestion – headaches, sore throat, exhausted…I spoke to a GAPS practitioner very briefly and was encouraged to hear that this process is not always uphill healing. It is definitely a journey. It makes sense though, our guts didn’t get like this in a day (or even a few weeks) so it is unrealistic to think things will heal overnight. Beef broth seems to be more difficult on our stomach so I am doing less of that and focusing more on the chicken broth. The kids seem to be making steady improvements. They still have the occasional meltdown but their energy is returning. The main thing I have to remember is to feed them more frequently. Since our diet is so limited I think some of the meltdowns have been hangry ones. In an effort to get H drinking more broth I have started cutting her breastmilk with it- so far so good. We are going through goats milk yogurt like its going out of style! All the kids LOVE it and ask for it 20 times a day!! If we all feel good tomorrow we will probably move to stage 3. Avocados here we come!
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Keep going! You’re doing great!