The GAPS Diet That Wasn't

John & I started the GAPS diet two weeks ago and after a couple of days, we decided to switch from the intro diet to the full diet. The intro diet isn't recommended for nursing mothers if you notice that your milk supply is running low, but I wasn't prepared to watch & wait for that.

The diet now consists of cutting out grains, starches and refined sugars, and putting an emphasis on chicken broth, homemade yogurt and sour cream, and other probiotic foods (fermented, etc.)

Living on the full diet is obviously much simpler than the intro diet, but it's still quite a challenge.

First of all, we're vegetarians. I have decided to eat white chicken meat and John has decided that he will be having chicken broth in our soups, but other than this, we are trying to pursue the vegetarian version of the GAPS diet.

Next, what do you cook that isn't rice, pasta, bread or potato based? Choosing our meals requires a lot of structure and planning, which has taken quite an effort from both of us considering that we are a full-time work-from-home family.

The other difficulty we have faced is that we both have out-of-home obligations for 10 to 12 hours at a time - namely full-day weddings. It's very difficult to maintain the diet when we're on a timeline and are lucky to get a full meal as it is.

That said, week two has been on-and-off: the full GAPS diet evangalists will tell me that what I'm eating is not GAPS, it's gluten-free, sometimes. But as the month of September is booked fully from weekend to weekend, we're going to be Monday to Friday GAPpers and on weekends when possible.

What is surprising me so far is that despite the high fatty content of our diet, we're not noticing a weight gain: just the opposite. So far, John has gone down a pant size and I have noticed a slight loss. This is for sure a direct response to us cutting out sugars of all kinds from our daily lifestyle.

In terms of digestion issues, neither of us have had digestion problems in the past and so we are not noticing a marked difference right now. This may also be due to the fact that we are not 100% committed all of the time.

All those notes shared, here are a few excellent GAPS friendly & gluten-free recipes we have chosen for dinner:

• GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten Free Quiche With a Butternut Squash Crust (Mixed with a variety of organic veggies instead of jalapenos
• GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten Free Crepes (Stuffed with ricotta & asparagus
• GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten Free Pancakes (For breakfast!)
• GAPS & Gluten Free Butternut Squash Soup (Not Vegetarian, follow the usual recipe with chicken broth instead of vegetable broth)
• GAPS & Gluten Free Brocolli Soup (Not Vegetarian, follow the usual recipe with chicken broth instead of vegetable broth)
• GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten Free Fries (Make them the same as sweet potato fries but cook in Coconut Oil instead)
• GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten Free Carrot & Ginger Soup (Not Vegetarian, follow the usual recipe with chicken broth instead of vegetable broth)

Here are the meals we plan to try:

GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Baked Beans (Omit the meat)
Gaps, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Fauxtatoes
GAPS, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Pizza
The difficulty now is to find more GAPS / Vegetarian friendly meals so we can have a good variety of a diet. If you have any suggestions, please share!