Pre-Gaps Jitters

I just about don’t know where to start. I announced that I was going to start the GAPS intro diet on October 1.

Well. sort of. I am hoping to find the sweet spot where the GAPS diet, ketogenic diet and the Weston A. Price/Farm-to-Table diet intersect.

I have been successfully integrating the Farm-to-Table and the ketogenic diet for about 6 weeks.

With this diet, my husband, Denny, has brought his Pre-diabetic blood glucose numbers back down to perfect ranges. And my Type 1 diabetic numbers have become perfectly balanced on a small amount of insulin injections. Happy, right?

Well… Will this ketogenic diet heal me to the extent that I can discontinue the insulin injections? Good question.

First, let me tell you about Denny’s improvements by telling you what his day was like yesterday. We went to a spiritual seminar 4 hours away in Vermont yesterday to give a workshop. We ate our breakfast of eggs and bacon at 5 am, left at 6 am, arrived at 10 am. We immediately did our workshop in front of an audience. At noon, the lunch break, we went out to the car to eat our lunch we had brought from home. A grass-fed burger cooked in bacon fat, homemade pickles and Kimchee, delicious! While we were eating, Denny reflected on his morning. In the near past he would have already had at least 2 snacks and a few bouts of shaky, low blood sugars or hypoglycemia. Didn’t he used to have to travel with lots of food, snacks of pieces of fruit and nuts every couple of hours? He was realizing he had never gotten hungry or shaky all morning and had left the house with no snacks, and NEVER needed them.

This was different. Different is GOOD. (a favorite quote from the end of Groundhog Day, one of our favorite movies).

To review, he had eaten breakfast 7 hours earlier and felt great. His blood sugar was 69 dl/mg at noon. In the hypoglycemic past, he would have felt shaky, but now eating ketogenic and being in ketosis, a lower blood sugar felt fine.

Our conclusions are that the ketogenic diet had saved him from a life of endless worry, medication, bad health and who knows what. Denny’s blood sugar problems were a thing of the past.

What does his diet look like?

Breakfast: 3 fried eggs, 3-4 slices pastured, naturally smoked bacon

Lunch: 4-6 oz grass fed local burger or other grass-fed meat, 1 cup high fat bone broth, sauteed in animal fat vegetables from our garden like kale, broccoli and squash

Supper: 2 oz butter, with colostrum and whey powders stirred in with a touch of stevia, and 6 roasted brazil nuts.

This diet is very satisfying for him and even though I had said Denny was going to join me on the GAPS Introdiet, he really wants to stay the course with what he has found that has healed his blood sugar roller-coaster of the past.

The above diet is the same as what I am presently eating. I love this eating plan. I feel a level of satisfaction that I have never felt before. This is the first time in my life that I can get from meal to meal without feeling uncomfortable cravings. Here I was a type 1 diabetic, taking insulin injections, trying to limit my food consumption, carefully only eating measured amounts at mealtimes, but I was suffering with uncontrollable cravings. I would have decent blood sugars for a few days and then a craving would take over and I would find myself eating a half a jar of peanut butter or almond butter or several ounces of cheese and then my blood sugar would be a mess for days and days. This pattern would repeat itself no matter what diet I was on—whole food vegetarian, the Zone, Raw Vegan or even Weston A. Price Farm-to Table type diet. The cheating would take different forms, like handfuls of dehydrated nuts or raw almond butter when I was raw, or overdoses of Yerba Mate sweetened with stevia.

The addition of Grass-fed red meat and raw grass-fed butter helped me tremendously with my cravings and improving my feelings of well being, but   when I added more and more animal fat and managed to become ketogenic, then the cravings totally stopped.

Ceased completely.

BUT the question remains, Am I Healing?

I feel great. I feel calm, no more cravings. Digestion is good. Pooping regularly. Sleeping is good. Blood sugars are very well balanced, usually within 70-88. Except I am still having to take 5 insulin injections per day.

Basically both of us are on the Full-GAPS Diet. And as Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride has said, many people heal their problems by just going on the full GAPS Diet. So, that’s what happened for Denny, but not for me.

That’s OK, that is the plan, go on the GAPS Intro in order to heal.

What will I have to give-up?

Eggs

Bacon

Yerba mate

Stevia?

Brazil nuts

Butter

Powdered Whey

Maca

What will I have to add?

More Bone broth/ meat stock

Detox baths

Is that all? OK, I am very emotionally attached to stevia, and yeba mate, BUTTER, eggs and BACON. I lovemy present diet. Will I really heal by giving these things up for a while? These are all good foods, but the theory is that my gut is nor ready for them and needs to heal before my body can heal. Hey, I’m just about to convince myself!

I visited my friend Ania yesterday. I mentioned her yesterday in my blog. She is a type 1 diabetic who is also hoping to heal using the GAPS intro diet. She encouraged me to also start. Both of us have “Tried Everything” to heal. The GAPS Intro is the only thing left. Or is it?

So here we go.

Tomorrow on October 1st, 2013 I begin.