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Wow, I can’t believe it’s here.

Today is Day 60 for me on the GAPS Intro Diet (and a bit on Full GAPS).

60 days is how long my last elimination diet lasted. At this point, I was on a standard real food diet, minus beans and nightshades. And that didn’t make it to the end of the summer. But still better than my stint with AIP, which I broke a little over 30 days in by eating everything I could get my hands on at the State Fair. Oops.

But I’ve made it 60 days on GAPS. I’ve never gone so long without grains, gluten, or sugar. I’ve never felt so in control of my health and my food choices. I’ve never had the strength to really look at my reactions and take out a food I love that may be causing it (with the exception of nightshades, which was too severe to ignore). I feel satisfied and excited about the potential of this diet, and I have no plans of going off of it.

Then there are other days. If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve seen these. The days where I seriously consider giving up. The days where I feel awful, emotionally and physically. The days where I want to (or actually do) cry because I just can’t get my acne to stay away or my cycles to regulate. The days where I feel like no one is even trying to understand or support my decisions. The days where I can’t figure out why I’m so tired. When I wish I could just have the answers, find the magic button, and be healthy.

But I stick with it, for so many reasons. When it gets really hard, I stick with it for nothing more than my Instagram community and for the blog community I am working on creating. It feels good to be told I’m an inspiration, and I don’t want to have to admit to this community I failed yet again. Instead I want to power through, find the answers, and share them with you. And this includes sharing my dark moments. Sometimes they are therapeutic to write, sometimes they are depressing. But I need to let people know I’m not coasting through this; GAPS is hard. But it is doable.

On the better days, I stick with GAPS because I know it is working. My cycles are screwy and I can’t figure out what is up with my acne (Is this still a reaction from the accidental dairy I had last week? Or is it something completely different?). I have some days of being really tired. Some days of emotional instability. But my acne is clearer than it was before I started GAPS. I have more high energy days than I did before GAPS – I can’t work 100% full time, but I can work enough to keep up with my blog, the house, my German lesson, and even help out at my husband’s work. That is HUGE for me. My emotions seem to me leveling out, even if they are still volatile. I feel like my relationship with food is significantly healthier.

I had a bad weekend this past weekend. My stress and anxiety was through the roof. I was breaking out and preparing to go on a trip. I was tired from overworking myself at the beginning of the week. I was also constipated like I hadn’t ever been before. I then spent the whole weekend in a state of anxiety. In some ways, this trip up north was incredibly peaceful and lovely. I slept better than I had in months. But the food aspect and dealing with certain family was stressful, and I ended up crashing hard upon our return. It took two days for me to even be able to cook, study, or do any of my work. I wanted to emotionally eat like nobody’s business. I wanted to quit.

But I look back on how far I have come. I look at the ways I am doing better. I look at the lives I have touched and the inspiration I have to continue sharing GAPS with people. I look at the confidence I have about how to eat well for my diet. I remind myself that GAPS takes time. If I truly want to see sustained improvements in my skin, fertility, and emotional well being, I need to be in this for the long hall. I will likely have to make tweaks to my lifestyle as I learn what my body needs, but I have time for there.

So here I am, staking my claim. I am two months in the GAPS Diet, and I’m here to stay.

Call to action:

I want to continue to provide resources to you all about the GAPS Intro Diet. This includes not only the recipes and updates I have been sharing, but also practical tips, tutorials, and much more. If you have any questions about the diet or its implementation, please ask in the comments. It doesn’t even need to be food specific. No topic is off limits, and I will cover it if I can. If you have completed GAPS Intro, what questions did you have while doing it that you wish were answered?

What resources do you wish existed? What holes (or gaps, pardon the pun) are there in the current resources available that you would like to have filled? What would make your experience easier, or would have, if it existed?

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