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Does anybody follow GAPS diet? (or does anybody in your family?)


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We have started and stopped and started and stopped. The reason being we are a big family. Anyhow you can get a lot of information from a few sources.

Such as http://www.cheeseslave.com/ and http://nourishedkitchen.com/what-is-the-gaps-diet/ or http://gapsdiet.com/GAPS_Outline.html

 

There is a great support group on yahoo, and a few on facebook. Plus tons of youtube videos on GAPS. The actual book is spendy but worth it if you are going to go through it, to better understand the why behind the foods chosen.

The little that we have done, has been healing for my son and family.

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We plan to start it after our family trip in the spring. :D We're doing it for ADHD, food allergies, and digestive issues. We watched a DVD of her speaking at a university about it for 90 min, and I have been told about it previously by a very open-minded NICU nurse friend. A relative of hers is now doing it for her autistic child.

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We did it October 2010 and it was nothing short of miraculous for my family. We fell off the wagon, though, and can tell a difference. My dh has put his foot down- the family goes back on it Monday (the start of Orthodox Lent- sort of a backwards way to fast! :D). Since I have the more serious health issues I will re-do the 'intro' and the family will do 'full GAPS'.

 

I have posted about it a bit- I am trying to leave the house so I can't link at the moment- you can do a search (add diet as a keyword because we seem to talk about schooling 'gaps' a lot around here :lol:). You can always pm me as well.

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Another view on GAPS. When DD10 was little, she had lots of digestive troubles. Some was food allergies, some was reactions to her meds (she has a kidney condition), all of it was miserable.

 

Our kidney doctor recommended feeding her a modified-GAPS diet for a while. Modified because we avoided the foods on the "bad" list, but fed her foods that were outside of the "recommended" list and skipped the whole "introduction phase" because she was underweight and meat-stock was not something she would eat then (she does now!)

 

It was a huge benefit. Eventually, DD's tummy healed up to the point that we were able to reintroduce a mostly normal diet - just excluding the strange things to which she is allergic.

 

We don't have the ADHD problems some of the others mentioned so I can't speak to how it works for that, but for tummy-soothing, it is an excellent choice!

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We are doing the Specific Carbohydrate Diet, which is pretty much almost the same thing as GAPS. But we also require low oxalates so we can't use almond flours or milks.. So we use coconut flour and coconut milk for just about everything. We are 99% grain free and the only sugars we are getting right now are from fruit, honey, and occasional granulated coconut sugar (not legal on SCD, but we use it sometimes)..

 

Anyway, we are starting this diet after previously being gluten, casein, and soy free for 2+ years. So we already had a head start on our healing. We all have Celiac disease here. Since starting the diet, my pain and my thyroid issues have both disappeared. I have NEVER gone this long without some sort of pain or headache or something that puts me in bed for half a day, which previously was at least twice a week. I now have so much energy and not a single ache!!

 

The downside is you have to spend A LOT of time in the kitchen.. This is why I haven't been on these boards much lately.. My dh and I have been tag-teaming the kitchen.. He spends two hours in the morning doing breakfast and cleaning, then I spend about 3 hours in the kitchen for lunch.. I'm making everything from scratch, finishing up yogurt that I started the day before, making coconut milk or flour, doing dishes, making chicken broth, making crackers or croutons for dinner that night, or making mayonaise or salad dressing.. Then we both do dinner. So yes, very time-consuming and also very expensive to get started (between kitchen gadgets and trying recipes, etc.).. But if it's something your family needs, then definitely go for it!! You can slowly work up to it so it's not a burden.

 

Kitchen appliances that I have found helpful:

 

Ninja or Vitamix

Excalibur Dehydrator (for dehydrating everything including crackers AND for making yogurt)

Hamilton Beach Big Mouth Food Processor

2nd fridge in the garage

 

We bought all of the above over the past 4 months. Maybe a good thing to do with tax refunds this time of year!

Edited by Misty
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The downside is you have to spend A LOT of time in the kitchen.. This is why I haven't been on these boards much lately.. My dh and I have been tag-teaming the kitchen.. He spends two hours in the morning doing breakfast and cleaning, then I spend about 3 hours in the kitchen for lunch.. I'm making everything from scratch, finishing up yogurt that I started the day before, making coconut milk or flour, doing dishes, making chicken broth, making crackers or croutons for dinner that night, or making mayonaise or salad dressing.. Then we both do dinner. So yes, very time-consuming and also very expensive to get started (between kitchen gadgets and trying recipes, etc.).. But if it's something your family needs, then definitely go for it!! You can slowly work up to it so it's not a burden.

 

 

 

Yes!! We tried it and I just couldn't keep up with it. We actually didn't even make it 2 weeks. I was doing it for my ASD son and the entire time he ate bananas and legal hotdogs. He ate eggs for breakfast each day but started getting sick of them and refusing them. He still won't eat eggs and our SCD trial was around 6 months ago. I would have liked to have stuck with it if I could have gotten him to eat the foods that were more healing. I made tons of legal foods when we tried it and he generally wouldn't try it or would try one bite and start crying. I don't know if we'll try it again. We've been working with a certified nutrition counselor instead and that has actually helped my ds more.

 

If I were to do it again I would need more meal prep help. It is a lot of work. The night I threw in the towel we had spent the entire afternoon out and arrived home to nothing to eat. I didn't have the energy to make a SCD legal meal from scratch. Having legal frozen meals in the freezer would be a big help for nights like that. I can't find it now but I had been reading a blog where the mom froze single serving portions for her son that was doing SCD so he would always have something quick to eat.

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