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Last week I posted about my kid’s experience on the GAPS intro diet and why we only lasted 7 days on it. Switching to this diet is hard for kids, but how hard is it for adults?
Before I share my own personal experience on the GAPS intro diet, I do need to confess that The Husband and I did not follow the Intro diet 100%. We just weren’t willing to give up our morning coffees or evening wine.
We did at least make sure our beverages were still Full GAPS approved, by swapping out the cream and sugar in our coffee for coconut oil and honey and switching to a dry red wine.
When we started out on the GAPS intro diet the plan was for the whole family to follow this diet for a month.
Big Sis was the only one who needed to be on the diet to help with her digestive issues, but the rest of us couldn’t sit around eating chips and cookies while she made this transition. Even Lil Sis agreed that she could give up processed food for a month to make things easier for Big Sis.
A week before starting the GAPS intro diet, I decided I needed to find some motivation to help me give up all the delicious processed crap that I loved.
I found this motivation in some documentaries about food. After watching “The Magic Pill”, “Fed Up”, “Hungry for Change” and “Fat, Sick and Nearly Dead”, I realized that we couldn’t go back to our old way of eating after our month on the GAPS diet.
Now that I had the motivation to eat healthier, I decided to get a head start on changing my eating habits and started making the transition to GAPS four days before the rest of the family did.
I figured this would help me to know what side effects to expect from the kids, and hoped that any side effects I would experience may be over by the time they started.
Transitioning to The GAPS Intro Diet
Pre-intro Diet Day 1
The first day of my diet transition was easy.
I cut out everything but GAPS approved vegetables, fruit, meat, broth, and honey. And of course, my coffee with coconut oil and honey and a couple of glasses of dry red wine.
I didn’t experience any withdrawal symptoms or side effects on the first day. The only hard part was getting used to drinking coffee without cream and sugar.
Pre-Intro Diet- Day 2
By the second day, the side effects of eliminating sugar and switching to the GAPS diet started kicking in.
I had read many GAPS diet reviews, so at least knew what to expect. Luckily, I never got nausea or sickness many people experience.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t so lucky when it came to brain fog, memory problems, and fatigue.
At this point, I was still trying to read as much as I could about the GAPS diet and come up with some meal ideas for when we all started, but these changes to my cognitive functioning were making it difficult to accomplish much.
Then there were those sugar cravings.
It only takes one full day of not eating sugar for the intense cravings to kick in. I tried to curb these cravings by eating as much fruit as I wanted and having the occasional spoonful of honey.
Still, I spent much of the day craving sweets.
Surprisingly my most intense sweets craving was for gum. Normally I would only have gum when I was driving, so it was odd to me that this was what I was craving the most.
Pre-intro diet- Day 3
On my third day, I decided I needed to take the next step towards the GAPS intro diet and stop eating fruit too.
While I could still use honey to help with my sugar cravings, I didn’t find it to be that helpful.
The gum cravings were getting worse.
I thought maybe if I tried just chewing on a stick of cinnamon that might help, but the flavor was way too intense for me to chew it for long. And it didn’t help at all with my intense craving for gum.
My fatigue, brain fog, and memory issues continued to get worse too.
Not only was my cognitive functioning affected, but now my mood was affected as well. I had no patience for anyone and just felt miserable all day.
Oh, and I had to pee about every half an hour.
Between that and the decline in cognitive functioning, getting some GAPS meals prepped didn’t go as well as I had planned.
Pre-intro diet Day 4
At this point, there was at least one positive. I had already lost 3 pounds.
But I was still experiencing all the GAPS side effects.
I was still a cranky and impatient, forgetful and confused, tired messed. The sugar cravings were just as intense, and I daydreamed about gum all day.
I was also having a hard time adjusting to eating without so many carbs. It didn’t seem to matter how much meat and vegetables I ate, I always felt hungry.
Even when I could physically feel that my stomach was full, it was an empty kind of full that left me still wanting to eat.
With the family starting on the diet the next day, I was really trying to get as much prepped as possible.
I regretted not getting more freezer meals made before I had started my transition diet. The number of dishes I was left with from trying to cook everything from scratch left my kitchen a complete disaster.
The GAPS Intro Diet
Intro day 1
After 4 days of doing my pre-intro diet, we officially started stage 1 of the GAPS intro diet.
Fortunately for me, some of the side effects had started to ease up.
My mood and patience level was back to normal.
The fatigue was also gone now, leaving me full of energy for most of the day.
For as long as I can remember I have spent the first few hours of my day a groggy mess, but now I was fully awake and alert within 15 minutes of waking up.
This energy didn’t last though.
At night time I was crashing hard. I have always been a night owl, staying up past midnight most nights. Now I could barely stay awake until 10:00 pm.
While most of the side effects had worn off, there was still no improvement in my memory or the brain fog.
At one point I found myself standing in front of the opened fridge, trying to remember what I was there for. It took me two minutes to figure out that I had gotten up to empty the dishwasher.
Oh, and the sugar and gum cravings were just as bad too.
Intro Day 2
It was now my sixth day of being sugar-free and the sugar cravings were still just as intense as they had been on day 2.
To make things worse, I hadn’t stocked up on veggies as well as I had thought and had to take a trip to the grocery store.
I thought I would be safe just sticking to the produce section, but of course, I had forgotten about all those cupcakes and cookies they like to place right by the entrance.
Then there was all the gum by the checkout.
It takes a lot of willpower to go to the grocery store when you’re withdrawing from sugar.
My brain fog and memory issues continued, but I at least had some improvement when it came to keeping myself from feeling hungry all the time.
Since snacking on cooked vegetables between meals hadn’t worked, I started snacking on the meat instead. The meat seemed to be filling that spot in my stomach that used to be filled up by the high carb foods, so I was able to eat and not have that empty fullness feeling I had before.
Intro Day 3
You would think by now the sugar cravings would be over, but no such luck.
It felt like it was getting worse.
All day my thoughts would drift off and I would find myself imagining viva puffs, cupcakes and those little brownies with the rainbow colored sprinkles on top. It took a lot of effort to get these images out of my head before I started imagining how they tasted.
With the sugar cravings being so intense, I tried to tackle it by making some honey and coconut oil fat bombs.
After 7 days of not having any sweet treats, the fat bombs tasted amazing. But after eating a few of them I started feeling nauseous and realized that I had overdone it with the honey.
Intro Day 4
While my sugar cravings were still intense, I had learned my lesson and went easy on the honey.
By now it wasn’t even just sweets I was craving. As I cooked a steak for dinner, I found myself daydreaming about Big Macs.
But craving junk food wasn’t my only problem at this point. Now all the food we could eat had lost its appeal.
Nothing looked good to me, not even a steak. I was only eating to stop hunger. There was no enjoyment or fulfillment from it.
Intro day 5
Finally, I saw some big improvement in my GAPS diet side effects. My brain fog had lifted and my ability to remember where I was going when I left a room had returned.
I was really amazed at how energetic I was.
Between this newfound energy level and the return of my cognitive functioning, I was finally able to get my house back to a liveable condition.
The only thing left to deal with was the intense sugar and junk food cravings and my hatred towards all the food we could eat.
Day6
With all the food in our house looking so blah, I decided to take another trip to the grocery store and see if I could find any new GAPS legal vegetables to try.
Walking past the baked goods was a bit easier this time, but passing up that gum still took a lot of willpower.
I ended up picking up some beets since I had never actually tried them.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that they actually have a sweet taste to them. They also kind of taste like dirt.
But after a week of not eating anything sweet but honey, I was willing to eat something that tasted like dirt.
Day 7
By our last day on the GAPS diet, and my tenth day without sugar, I had lost 10 pounds.
My sugar cravings were finally easing up, and I no longer found myself daydreaming about big macs or other junk. I was completely in the clear for all the other GAPS side effects too.
While all this was great, I was completely miserable.
I hated the food we could eat. I hated trying to figure out what I could make that the kids would eat. The food was just as unappealing to them as it was to me.
So, when I realized that the GAPS intro diet wasn’t a safe choice for my kids, I was as happy as them to switch to the full GAPS diet.
It was a lot easier to go to the grocery store and walk past all those baked goods when I could at least grab some bananas and raspberries for myself.
And of course, I can’t forget about the cheese.
I picked up 3 different kinds of GAPS cheese on that trip.
Within a day, I was able to start enjoying eating again.
Now that I could bake with almond flour and cook with cheese, I was able to start getting creative in the kitchen and coming up with some great meals and treats.
I spent that first day looking up GAPS recipes for bread, jam, jello, ranch dressing and BBQ sauce for chicken wings.
The GAPS intro diet was hard. Even if my kids had been able to last more than a week, I’m not sure how long I could have kept going on it.
Full GAPS, however, wasn’t so bad.
The Husband, Lil Sis and I managed to stick with it for the month as planned. Since then we have added a few non-GAPS things, like cream, cream cheese, store-bought yogurt and stevia into diets.
Most of what I make for meals, and baked good, are still GAPS legal since Big Sis has continued to follow the Full GAPS diet.
I know there are a lot of adults following the GAPS diet who have managed to stick with intro long term. You guys truly amaze me. I really don’t know how you do it.
I suppose if you start the GAPS intro diet with a medical problem or digestive issue you are looking to heal, it may make following the diet easier.
Especially if you start to see some progress with it.
Since I had no healing to do on the GAPS diet, the limited food choices made it too hard for me to follow. But sticking with the Full GAPS diet was at least doable.
Now that I have been grain, sugar and processed crap free for 6 months, I think trying to do intro would be a bit easier.
It’s making the drastic switch from the typical western diet to nothing but meat, vegetables and a bit of honey that made it so hard. If I had to do it again, I would start out by adjusting to the full GAPS diet before trying intro.
And that’s my GAPS diet review. Sorry if it wasn’t very encouraging, but I wanted to be honest about just how hard this diet is.
Have you done the GAPS intro diet? How did you manage to get through such a restrictive diet and how long were you able to follow it for?