Five Months on GAPS Intro (and feeling great!)

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Last month was rough for me. I dealt a lot with bloating and mental health issues. Through the month of May, I continued to occasionally experience bloating and emotional detox, but overall, I had a great month!

For many reasons, I took the month slowly when it comes to introducing new foods. Part of this was because of stress and travel, and part was I had a “cheat” day or two. I am normally extremely opposed to cheat days. But for my husband’s birthday, he picked me up some brats we were so sure I could eat. Turns out…there was soybean oil in them. Thankfully it was at least organic soybean oil, but still definitely not good for GAPS. Then later than evening I drank a few glasses of wine. Fine for Full GAPS, but my body wasn’t ready for that yet. Then a week later I was having a very rough time emotionally and ended up drinking another glass of wine and eating a brat from the co-op whose label I did not read. Thankfully, I followed these days with days of extremely healing foods and a ton of detox support.

I also went up to a cabin for 4 days over Memorial Day weekend, and I went a little bit insane. Travel is crazy stressful for me, and this trip wasn’t even a trip I wanted to go on. I read 4 books over the weekend, spent some quality time with my husband, and ate some amazing fresh, local fish. But it still took a major toll on my mental health. It took longer than I would have liked to recover, but I got there eventually. Beyond the stress from this trip, I found my energy to be much higher and my brain fog to be gone. I felt great and got a lot of work done!

I decided to start working on my hormones this month. Not much, because too much is too stressful. However, I began something I have decided to call “oil cycling” – using essential oils to help regulate my cycles. Two weeks after I started, I ovulated! At the very end of the month, I also went in for a Maya Abdominal Massage, which was so amazing. I think that will be really good for my fertility, digestion, and anxiety.

As far as food goes, I moved through Stage 4 and intro Stage 5 this month. I tolerated roasted meats and olive oil just fine, and did not test juice (simply because my living situation makes it way to much work). I’ve added in spices and raw, homegrown broccoli sprout without trouble. At the end of the month, I discovered that I can handle FODMAPS and egg whites just fine. My stomach has been doing amazing the past week! It turns out my biggest struggle has been quantity and volume of food, so I just need to keep that in check. My pork reactions are also much more mild, so I will hopefully tolerate that soon after a bit more healing.

For the next month, I am going to work on raw vegetables. I tried lettuce yesterday, and will definitely be doing cucumbers and carrots. From there, I’ll probably only add things as they look good to me and I feel like it. I just want to make sure I can eat out of our garden if I crave it! I also hope to test butter, followed by coconut and possibly fruit. But overall, I plan on continuing to eat a lot of soups and other intensely healing foods from the early stages of GAPS. I am looking to transition to Full GAPS soon, but I know my body still has a lot of healing to do.

 

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