Over the years I’ve talked about The GAPS™ Diet extensively, how we were doing it as a family and the ups and downs that went with that. It’s been a number of years since we did The GAPS™ Diet and I find that a lot of my patients are very curious as to what we’re doing now so I thought I’d share that with you and perhaps give you a strategy for the long term lifestyle approach we’ve adopted.
My decision for the family was to find a happy medium whereby we were still monitoring our gut health and eating based on The GAPS™ Diet but it was a much more relaxed version.
As a GAPS™ Practitioner, when I’m working with patients, the general rule of thumb is that after you’ve finished the Introduction Diet you move to The Full GAPS™ Diet and follow that for 18 months to 2 years before transitioning off The GAPS™ Diet.
Being a GAPS Practitioner has meant promoting and using lots of meat stocks and bone broths as part of the healing process. The one thing I’ve come to realise very quickly has been the confusion between what the two are and when is the best time to use them. Today I thought I’d cover off the difference between bone broth and meat stock to try to make it a little easier for you all.
The first thing I’ve noticed is it seems to depend on where you live in the world as to what you interpret as being a broth or a stock as in the USA they tend to use the word broth for what we call stock so no wonder everyone’s confused.
The below explanations are given based on The GAPS Diet and the way we use meat stocks and bone broths to support gut health, healing and sealing as well as ongoing health maintenance.
So I was looking for something the other day and stumbled upon this and thought it might be a good reminder for those of you out there who might sometimes wonder why you’re putting in all the effort to do The GAPS Diet with your family.
When we were doing the GAPS Diet I would do a nightly poll on how everyone was going with all the changes and restrictions that were involved. The questions asked went something like this:
So you’ve come to the realisation that you and your family REALLY need to do The GAPS Diet… there’s only one thing standing in the way… your partner!! They’re not too keen on the whole idea… it may be they think it’s a load of rubbish, maybe they’re more inclined to listen to their doctor rather than a Naturopath or GAPS Practitioner or maybe they’re in denial that there’s any issues at all. Whatever the case, the question is “how do I handle this?”
Well, here’s a few tips that might be of use, and of course make sure you do it in a comfortable, relaxed setting where you’re not going to be interrupted, and have some books or information there to show them if you think that may be useful.
One condition I seem to treat over and over again is eczema in both children and adults. For young children and babies this can be very distressing and uncomfortable and in teens (especially young women) it can not only be painful and uncomfortable it can also be very damaging to their self esteem.
It’s hard to believe that 5 years ago we started The GAPS™ Diet as a family….. At the time, when we started the protocol I really didn’t know how it would all turn out but 5 years down the track I can absolutely say, without a doubt, it was definitely worthwhile. So, given how beneficial it was and continues to be for our family I thought I’d take a little trip down memory lane to share some of the high’s and lows of the experience.
Fermented dairy is a big part of The GAPS™ Diet and quite often even those who hav had difficulty digesting dairy in the past will find they can tolerate the yogurt and whey made themselves following the The GAPS™ Diet Protocol. The main difference between GAPS yogurt and commercial yogurt is that it is fermented for 24 hours to breakdown the lactose in the milk making it easier to digest.
