Anyone do GAPS?

My friend has been spruiking this for ages, and I just started really looking into it today. Does anyone here follow it? How's it going? It all sounds a bit difficult, but I love the outcomes....

You mean the gut and psychology diet by Dr McBride? Yes, we've done it for DD slightly amended. I allowed millet as long as I soaked it for a minimum of 12 hours first to remove any starches, so it was sort of a combination between this and the ecology diet. This diet, as is, can be low on the B vitamins. We saw really HUGE - I mean Mammoth - improvement in DD's behaviour and physicality on this diet, and it has changed how I think about food. We haven't maintained it strictly for a long period of time, we followed it to the T apart from millet for 3 months but we now just follow it loosely allowing treats as long as they have no yeast and are low in sugar and gluten.

I also followed many of it's recommendations while pregnant and had a very healthy 4.3kg boy who has thus far never had cradle cap, nappy rash or any rash for that matter, never had colic or reflux, not even a runny nose and who is the opposite of his sister and even his cousins in health - his a very, very healthy kid!

I thought you'd come in here, I remember you mentioning it before :)

I was looking at doing a fertility detox as part of our LTTTC journey, but the more I think about it, the more I think it's useless. I mean, it'd get the toxins out, but if we go back to eating normally, they'd only build up again. I'm just not sure if I'm capable of doing it on my own - DH will eat what I give him, but whenever I'm too sore or tired to cook, he invariably heads for the closest takeout :wall: I just suggested a weekly cookup to my girlfriends, so we can meet at each others houses and cook everything up for the week, hopefully making it a bit more fun and a bit easier too.

What's millet?

It's a seed.

I admit, it's not easy to do, and was a bit of a shock at first. You would be surprised how much stuff has yeast extract in it, like Samboy plain chips. They're plain chips, why do they need yeast extract in them! But I bet, even if you applied just some of the principles you'll see a huge difference. Things like eating natural homemade yogurt everyday, reducing your sugar and gluten intake because they feed yeast; removing yeast - you can get yeast free breads from woolies (admittedly they are $5 for a half loaf and the plain white is very dense, the soy linseed one is nicer) or you could make soda bread which uses natural yogurt instead of yeas, or corn wraps; taking a probiotic, taking a vitamin C that hasn't had the acid stripped from it because yeast prefer an alkaline stomach, and increasing your vegetable/fruit intake, and eating lots of homemade soup!! Honestly, it's the easiest thing in the world to chuck a whole chicken in a pressure cooker with 2 litres of water, boil for 30 minutes, take the chicken out while retaining the now stock, and pull off the meat to put aside to be used in a meal (or even put some back into the soup) - done. I do normally put the carcass back into the stock with some vegetables and lentils, with another 1/2 litre of water and reboil for 30 minutes to make it stronger and really get the marrow out of the bones but you don't have to, and can just put the veg in the first time. But apart from pulling the meat off, it literally takes 5 minutes and I can have it as is or add other veg to it to make it different - broccoli and leek - yummy! Admittedly, if I didn't have a pressure cooker I might not be as keen, and it's less fitting in summer.

Other little detox changes you could make would be eating more onion and garlic - they're natural chelation foods -- and having baths with 1/2 cup of epsom salts a couple of times per week. Toxins are about load, so the odd take away in the wake of these changes isn't going to make a huge difference, and you could always double your dose of probiotics to compensate - it's the hidden stuff that's the problem. Yeast extract is in so many things where it simply doesn't make sense to be...

Well this sounds interesting - a little overwhelming but something I'd look into. I am trying to slowly change my eating habits and I have to say it is really just changing what you are used to...I am going to google :-)

How's everyone going with this? I feel very compelled to start the gaps diet soon. I'm reading the book now and it's pretty compelling. I wish I'd done this in pregnancy too. I'm sure both my boys have the same gut issues that I've passed on/created for them.

I found this blog post which I thought was interesting and a good summary of the diet :)
The GAPS Diet: The Mother Of All Diets?

ETA: I just came across this great blog post on how to get started:
http://www.keeperofthehome.org/2011/...gaps-diet.html

We've started cooking some of the meals to prepare. I've so far had a mostly GAPS friendly day, though I did use some of our maple syrup on pancakes this morning... it's gotta get used up anyway right? I just bought organic, pastured soup/marrow bones and chicken feet etc at the market this morning so I need to get into making the broths. I have to buy all new cookware to handle this new style of cooking though!

And I like this overview interview with Campbell-McBride:
http://www.carlazeiteraba.com/gapshealingthemind.html