Diet Update

Well, since not much is happening on the baby front, I thought I'd take time to write out my thoughts about where we are on the GAPS diet.  As of yesterday, we have been on this diet for 7 months!  (And as of today, Ted has been in Afghanistan for 3 months...unrelated, I know, but I thought it was worth noting!)

A lot of people ask me if we've seen a difference with the boys' allergies.  I honestly don't know how to answer that.  We tried having Arden go off his meds (Tobin has used up all his Flonase, and we haven't gotten a refill, so he has been off that for a long while now).  Sometimes he seemed to be all right, but other times he was definitely having problems.  So he has kind of been on and off again with the Singulair and Claritin.  Without the Flonase, Tobin has definitely been having difficulties breathing through his nose, but seeing as how he HATES using the nasal spray, I'm not sure if putting him back on Flonase will really help much.

The fact is, it has been a HORRIBLE year for allergies!  Even those of us who don't typically have issues have struggled from time to time.  The weather has been strange, and Dayton is a very bad area for allergies anyway.  And I'm honestly not sure how (or whether) GAPS is supposed to help with seasonal allergies, as opposed to general immune problems.

Below is an email I sent to my friend Bethany to try to verbalize some of the thoughts I've been having about our involvement with GAPS.  I thought it might be helpful for those who have kind of followed us on our journey.

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I’ve been doing more thinking, reading, and praying about our diet, trying to figure out what the best thing is for our family.  I’m not convinced that GAPS is helping with the seasonal allergies that the boys deal with (and others of us from time to time), nor am I totally convinced that we shouldn’t use any medical intervention to help them deal with the symptoms.  Ideally, yes, I would love for them to not have to be on daily meds.  But Ted was for a number of years and is showing improvement without any intervention…I have hopes that perhaps the boys will outgrow some of the severity of their allergies, just as I have pretty much outgrown my horrible allergic reactions to bee stings and ant bites.

That being said, I know God has had us on this food journey for a number of reasons, and I know that many of the changes we’ve made will be permanent.  At the same time, I am ready to include some other foods in our diet…but I’m more than willing to take it slowly, since the sheer amount of information is overwhelming, to say the least!  I find myself agreeing a lot with this post. 

I just read it this morning, and it kind of confirmed what I was thinking after doing some reading from the Kitchen Stewardship site..  I was thinking that I would soak where practical and reasonable—mostly bread-type things—and simply grind my own wheat for cookies or baked goods.  (Really, soaking/sprouting and THEN dehydrating/grinding for occasional treats seems a bit extreme to me, given we haven’t really had issues with digesting even the bad stuff—not that it’s an excuse to eat whatever, whenever, just that from a physical standpoint, we aren’t FORCED to go to extreme measures to make sure our bodies don’t react.)  There’s obviously still a lot I need to learn, and I would like to do more reading, hence my willingness to go VERY slowly!  In the meantime, there’s always the Ezekiel bread from Trader Joe’s, LOL!

While I felt a clear leading from God to start the GAPS diet at the beginning of the year, I don’t really feel any particular urging in my spirit as to what to do now.  I kind of feel that it’s one of those issues where I’m supposed to use my God-given brain, seeking His best for our family, and not burden myself with guilt over what other people say I am “supposed” to do...

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So, basically, I'm thankful for what we've learned and the healthy changes we've made.  I know we'll keep a number of those changes.  But slowly we're adding more options--we had (soaked) bazmati rice with our dinner last night, and it was SOOOO wonderful!  Really missed having rice the past 7 months!  And as I mentioned in the email, we're using Ezekiel bread for sandwiches, which is AWESOME!  I love having PBJ or grilled cheese sandwiches as options for taking lunch with us somewhere or a quick lunch here at home.

Next step is learning more about soaking and sprouting our own wheat, getting our own sourdough starter, and other things that will help me get back into making bread and pizza crusts again.

So...that's where we are for now! 

Cooking Day

On Friday I had my first cooking-with-a-friend day.  Bethany and her family are on the GAPS diet as well, and we started roughly at the same time.  So it's been REALLY nice having a buddy to go through all this with.  We decided it would be beneficial to us both to get together to work on some cooking projects.  She brought her kitchen (nearly!) and Eliana, her two-year-old, who did very well playing at our house for the nearly 7 hours that we were working!

So, are you ready to be impressed?  Here's what I got done:

• 3 whole chickens cooked in our ginormous stock pot...bones went back into the pot for a more healthful batch of broth, which I finally finished canning today.
• 8 one-quart jars of yogurt made.
• 2 batches of mayo...which never emulsified.  Sigh.  But I think it will work well enough for salad dressings.  (I made a batch of Ranch tonight and used 1/2 yogurt and 1/2 of the mayo, and it looks and tastes fine!  Slightly runnier than I usually make, but hey.)
• 5 pounds of carrots peeled and chopped.
• 4 1/2 dozen cinnamon coconut muffins baked.
• 4 batches of meatloaf prepped--one for dinner, 3 for the freezer.
• My first attempt at macaroons sans sugar--they are quite good!
• A batch of peanut butter balls--the PB mixture is in the fridge...haven't yet gotten around to actually rolling the balls and wrapping in wax paper.  That will be a job for when I can have the kids help!

Bethany got quite a bit done as well.  I didn't keep track of all she did, but I know she at least did the following:

• 2 batches of mayo, one of which emulsified.  (We decided the egg whites were to blame.)
• 3 pounds of carrots peeled and chopped.
• Lots of banana muffins baked--don't know how many her batch ended up making.
• Macaroons--which I nearly burned by forgetting they were sitting in the oven when I went to preheat the oven for my muffins!!  Oops!
• A big pot o' spaghetti sauce.
• Cucumber salad.

Not a bad day's work, all in all!  We decided that we should plan these approximately every other week.  It was nice to plan for it and try to have the kids' school work finished (we didn't make it, but that's another story) so they could have a day off while I could feel good about accomplishing something useful and not feeling guilty about neglecting them!  Actually, I asked Stefanie if she would mind having the boys play with Justin at her house after lunch, and that worked out well for all of us.  It was a gorgeous day, so they were able to be outside with a buddy and out of my hair, LOL.

Charis was supposed to "babysit" the younger ones, but I had to call her out for duty a few times.  She initially liked the idea, but when it came down to it, I think she just wanted her own free time.  But she was helpful when she needed to be, and Kenna was pretty patient with Eliana.  Lucan and Eliana played well together aside from a few inevitable sharing battles.  I was so thankful it was a nice day so the kids could go in and out as they pleased.

We did learn that we'll need to build in some clean-up time next time!  We had to rush out of the house to get Charis to church for her T&T girls' sleepover.  I was very glad I had made meatloaf and squash bake ahead of time so dinner was waiting for us when we got home!  It took me awhile to clean the kitchen, and then Kenna and I whipped together the macaroons--I had all the supplies out, and I didn't want to leave the egg whites.  I figured if I didn't do it before bed, it wouldn't get done!  I was so glad we made them...Kenna and I had a good time together while the boys played their Wii games from the library (which we picked up on the way to church), and they are sooooo yummy!

I'm already looking forward to our next cooking day.  It was wonderful to get together and be mutually encouraged.  Even though we didn't have much time for "deep" conversation, spending time with another sister in Christ who is on a similar food journey is just so encouraging!  Another blessing!

AWANA Games and (Gasp!) Cheating on Our Diet

So today was the AWANA games at Cedarville University, and we are all pretty wiped out.  In fact, Ted is asleep on the couch...he hasn't been feeling well the past couple of days.  He thought maybe it was side effects from all the vaccinations he had to get on Thursday, but this morning he was convinced that he's just getting sick.  Boo.  He was quite a trooper, though, going to the games in a LOUD gymnasium with anywhere from 12-16 churches participating at a time!  We had to be there at 9 a.m. for the T&T game time, which actually didn't start until 10:00.  Then, that ran late, so Sparks-A-Rama didn't start until 1 p.m.!  I did bring snacks, but it was a loooong time before we got lunch!  And poor little Lucan was a trooper, too, and made it through pretty well.

Charis and Tobin's team got 3rd place, which was a good thing, since the T&T team from our church has placed last the past couple of years!  So they were happy with 3rd!  And Charis was especially happy that she won the beanbag throw or whatever it's called...she filled in for lack of a 5th or 6th grade boy, and she beat all the other boys out there!  And Tobin and his partner Josh p-u-l-l-e-d their way to a tug-o-war victory after the parents nearly shouted themselves hoarse!  (I heard comments like "Use the force!" and "BOTH HANDS!" and "Keep your butt down!"  I've heard scary stories of competitive baseball or soccer dads, but never AWANA games dads...OK, I confess, I was yelling right along with them, LOL.)

Arden got to help out with the boys' balloon relay.  (There were only 4 T&T boys.)  I think he enjoyed that.  Then it was time for the Sparks-A-Rama.  If you have never seen the Sparky Crawl, you just don't know what you're missing!  I was kind of in and out with these games, since Lucan was reaching the end of his limit and decided he would rather be UNDER the bleachers than sitting ON them, but I think I did see all the events that Arden was a part of.  And our team earned 2nd place!

Ted and I had talked about going "off" our diet a little bit for a treat today, and we decided we would do it.  For one thing, we knew it would be a very, VERY long morning, and we did not want to have to haul a cooler around with us.  And concession food obviously was not going to work for us.  So, after all was said and done with the games, we went to Young's!  Now, don't judge us, LOL.  We DID have sugar-free ice cream!  However, potatoes (i.e. fries) and hamburger buns would not be allowed on the GAPS diet.  I did ditch my top bun and used the lettuce instead, and truthfully, Ted and I just don't even really LIKE white buns at all.  The kids didn't hesitate, though!  Charis chose coleslaw instead of fries, but honestly, I'm not sure that was any healthier of a choice, LOL.  The splenda-sweetened ice cream was actually pretty good.  We weren't even going to have that at first but decided that we would go ahead when we realized it was actually sugar free.

I have to confess...it was so nice to feel "normal!"  I'll have to save some of my thoughts about this for another post, but there has just been a lot of stress in our family because of all we are undergoing, and we were in desperate need of some family fun!  I really, REALLY enjoyed getting to sit and enjoy a meal with my family that I did not have to prepare from scratch OR clean up after.  The sunnier weather was a bonus, too, even though it's terribly windy out and rather chilly.

So...first time "off" our diet...we'll see if anyone has any adverse reactions in the next few days!  It has officially been 7 weeks that we've been doing this, and everyone has been sooooo good.  I went out with some mom friends on Monday evening, and I had a salad and resisted the cookies from the bakery that everyone else was getting.  (I didn't bring my own salad dressing, though...probably should have done that, but oh, well!)  And Ted has resisted MULTIPLE temptations at work.  He said he didn't realize how much junk people brought in before he made the decision to not have any!

We're still not exactly sure how long we'll be doing this diet...Ted may have more health issues when he returns from Afghanistan since he has to take antibiotics the whole time he is there--yikes.  He said it isn't even an option; he has to do it.  So we want to be sure to get him on a good probiotic, and I'll be mailing him homemade sauerkraut so he can keep getting good bacteria into his system!  He's one of the main reasons we started the diet...the other two being Tobin and Arden.

So, for us here at home, I think we'll at least keep doing this through summer and into fall and then see how the boys are doing.  They are both still taking their allergy medicine; I'm not sure how much longer we need to be on the diet before we should try to wean them off that in order to evaluate how they are doing.  That's something I need to research more.  But neither one has had to use the inhaler in the past 5-6 weeks, and one or the other of them was needing it almost every day prior to that during the months of December and January.  (Which is odd, because typically their allergy/asthma flare-ups are spring and fall.)

So I guess it remains to be seen how long God wants us following this regimen.  In the meantime, we are definitely making good lifestyle changes, and I know we'll never go "back" totally to the way we used to eat/live.

New Breakfast Routine

The most difficult meal to adapt to when we started our new diet was breakfast--we were so used to having cereal and fruit every day.  Now I have to cook most mornings!  We have a fairly set routine now, and though it includes a lot more prep and clean-up, we're all happy with the food we've been eating.  Kenna is a great breakfast helper, and I've been making the kids do a lot more with the clean-up, so the days we've done school, we really haven't been too far behind.  Here's our breakfast schedule, more or less:

Sundays & Wednesdays--pancakes (either coconut or banana-peanut butter) with fruit
Mondays & Thursdays--scrambled eggs with sausage (turkey sausage, no sugar for the boys; Jimmy Dean's all-natural sausage with 1 gram sugar for the girls), raw veggies, some kind of muffin
Tuesdays & Fridays--fried eggs, sausage patties, raw veggies (I like to saute veggies with my sausage), some kind of muffin
Saturdays & any day of the week we are in a hurry--homemade yogurt with GAPS granola (made from raw and soaked pumpkin and sunflower seeds, coconut, honey, and cinnamon), fruit

When we first started the diet, I cooked for Ted and later cooked for the rest of us.  Ahem.  Ted now eats leftovers from whatever I cooked the day before!  We're trying not to use the microwave--it kills all the food's nutrients--but he unfortunately must use it at work for his lunch anyway.  I try to put things in the oven to warm for him, but a lot of times he just zaps his breakfast.

I make our muffins in bulk using variations from a basic coconut flour muffin recipe.  (I can post this later if anyone is interested.)  I HAVE learned that we much prefer to double the amount of vanilla called for, and depending on what type of muffin, I also add almond extract.  The original recipe was too egg-y for me.  (I like eggs, but I want a muffin to taste like a muffin!)  The recipe from the book makes 6 muffins. 

I'll pause here so you can laugh as long and loudly as I did.

I immediately quadruple any recipe from that book!  The first week of our diet I made 72 muffins--24 blueberry and the rest basic coconut flour.  Now I probably do a couple of baking sessions a week, as we like to vary what we make.  We like the carrot and pumpkin recipes as well, and tomorrow I'll try apple-cinnamon.  We've made homemade jam in bulk (there's even some in the freezer now!), which goes very nicely on the plain muffins for a treat.

Hopefully this gives a bit of a glimpse into our new life...is it any wonder I spend so much time in the kitchen, LOL!  Good thing we do a lot of school in there so I can multi-task!

What We're NOT Eating

So we've been on the GAPS diet for a whole month now.  I have been keeping a meal log so we can note any reactions and whatnot, and today's log finished 31 days!

I realized that I wrote a long post on the WHY of starting this diet, but I haven't really given much details about what all it involves.  I did post some links for those who were interested in more details, but I'll just give a quick rundown here of what our eating habits look like now.

1. NO sugar, aside from what naturally occurs in fruits.  For sweeteners, we use honey and stevia (I get it in the liquid form and use the dropper--very easy).  And cinnamon and vanilla go a long way toward making one's taste buds think there IS sugar involved in something, LOL.

2.  NO grains.  None.  Period.  This means: no pasta, no corn or corn products, no popcorn, no flour (with the exception of coconut and nut flours), no "normal" bread, no cereals, no oatmeal, no cornmeal...did I leave anything out?!

3.  NO starches.  No potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn starch, rice, etc.  (Is rice a grain?  Maybe that should be under #2.  Hmmm.)

4.  NO chocolate.  Sigh.  I'm still not very happy about this one, but I'm frankly amazed that I've gone 31+ days without it.

5.  NO soy or soy products.  (Do you realize how many items in the grocery store contain soy lecithin?!)  (I have to confess I do cheat and use a canola non-stick cooking spray, which has soy lecithin in it, but this is miniscule, and my diet "mentor" told me she uses it, too!)

6.  NO bad fats--only animal fat, butter, coconut oil, and cold-pressed olive oil allowed.  We use butter and coconut oil for cooking/sauteeing and olive oil for things like homemade salad dressings and mayonnaise.

7.  LIMITED (and specific) dairy--only whole (almost-raw) milk (drunk by itself infrequently), homemade yogurt that has been fermented long enough to be lactose-free, cheese in small amounts (but no mozzarella).  NO cream cheese or sour cream.  (But the homemade yogurt and dripped yogurt cheese works just fine as replacements.)

So, what ARE we eating?  Good, quality meats--grass-fed and humanely treated beef and pork and free-range chickens, for example, all hormone-free, of course.  Homemade chicken broth--drunk plain in mugs as well as in various soups.  Homemade yogurt.  Soaked and roasted seeds.  Eggs and more eggs--scrambled, fried, boiled, etc.  LOTS and lots and lots of approved fruits and veggies.  We have had more vegetables in the past month than we probably ate in the previous 6 months combined!  I've been thrilled to see my kids eating things I probably would not have thought to give them before, when it was easier to give them a cracker or piece of bread because I knew they'd eat it.

For example...we have discovered that little Lucan loves plain spaghetti squash and carrot sticks dipped in hummus.  (His dinner tonight consisted almost entirely of a large serving of green beans and some avocadoes.)  Tobin has realized he loves garlic broccoli.  Arden eats all colors of peppers like there's no tomorrow.  Charis adores our roasted squash bake, and Kenna cheerfully puts away all manner of vegetables.

We've had to be creative to fill up our growing kids, but we haven't been bored yet!

A Word About Carbs

My friend Debi asked a question about carbs in her comment on my last post.  I have to confess, I had never heard of "Ketosis!"  So I did a quick online search to see what she was talking about.  Obviously since I hadn't heard of it, I haven't been concerned about it being an issue for us, LOL.  But I want to be sure I have correct information, and of course I want to be sure the significant changes we're making are not part of any "fad" diet research.  So I welcomed the question as an opportunity to learn more.

In working my way through the book Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, I actually read some information today about carbohydrates.  This may answer Debi's question, and if not, Debi, feel free to comment. :-)

First of all, I learned--or maybe relearned, because I do vaguely remember some of this from high school science classes!--that carbs are made of monosaccharides, the most common of which are glucose, fructose, and galactose.  They easily penetrate the gut lining and do not need digestion.  Glucose and fructose are found in abundance in fruit and vegetables.  Galactose (which is one I don't remember hearing about before) is found in soured milk products like yogurt.  "Monosugars" from fruit and some veggies are the easiest carbs for us to digest and should be the main form of carbohydrate in the diet of any person with a digestive disorder--which includes allergies, asthma, and other autoimmune issues, along with a host of other GAPS issues.

The next size carbs are the double sugars--the sucrose (table sugar), lactose (milk sugar), and maltose (from digestion of starch).  We cannot absorb these sugars without a lot of internal work!  When a person has GAPS issues, these carbs cannot be absorbed and stay in the gut, becoming major food for pathogenic bacteria, viruses, Candida, and other toxic substances.  Even in healthy people, a lot of starch goes undigested.

Before doing this research, I thought carbs were breads, pastas, rice, cereal, etc.  Now I'm learning that THOSE kinds of carbs are exactly what causes so many health problems today--at least, in the form most of us eat them!  Most carbohydrates are ultra-processed foods in a completely different form from what God intended us to have.  I could probably write a lot about this, since I just finished reading this chapter, but I'll close with an interesting quote from Dr. Campbell-McBride:  "The more processed carbohydrates with or without gluten you give your GAPS child or adult, the more 'toxic' he or she will become and the more autistic, schizophrenic, hyperactive, or other symptoms you will see."

As our bodies heal, we will slowly return to eating grains properly prepared--that is, buying our wheat as a grain and cooking it at home as opposed to baking with pre-processed wheat flour.  We thought we were being so healthy to make our own breads and use whole wheat flour in cookies instead of white flour, but we weren't really much better off than the majority of Americans who purchase their breads and desserts! 

How long will this process take?  I wish I knew!  The kids keep asking, and secretly, I do, too, LOL.  The book says that people with severe GAPS symptoms need to expect to be on the diet 2 years in order to build back their supply of good bacteria while depleting the bad.  Since we aren't dealing with major issues like MS, autism, depression, ADHD, etc., I am hoping that we'll see significant improvements with our health within a year.  Of course, Ted's deployment kind of throws a wrench into his own healing process, but God knows what He's doing!  And Ted is even farther into the book than I am.  He's learning what he should and should not eat in order to promote healing in his own body, and he'll make the best choices he possibly can.  And I'll plan to mail him lots of homemade sauerkraut, LOL.  It's a probiotic. :-)