I have lots to update about my GAPS journey, so I'm going to share the recipe first!

Baked Butternut Squash Fries

Please be careful peeling and cutting butternut squash – here is a post I wrote, complete with video on how to Safely Cut and Peel Butternut Squash.

• 1 butternut squash, peeled and sliced into long sticks
• Coconut Oil [affiliate link]

1. Peel butternut squash.
2. Cut into long strips.
3. Lay out on a cookie sheet.
4. Preheat oven to 425°F.
5. Using your fingers, slather coconut oil onto the squa.s
6. Place in the oven and bake 40 minutes or until fork tender.
7. You may turn on the broiler and place the pan under the broiler for additional browning of the fries.

Well, today is day 178. I have been weighing myself once a month and I decided to weigh myself on the first day of the month. On May 1st, I weighed 203.6 pounds. Today I weigh 200.6 pounds. So I have lost 3 pounds. I honest had hoped to see 199, but that is okay. Once again, Starlene dear, this is NOT about weight loss. Think of all the improvements you have seen since beginning GAPS.

I did not weigh myself before starting GAPS, but I did have my son look at the scale a couple of weeks in and he says I was at 232 pounds. So I have lost nearly 32 pounds.

My husband stepped on the scale and he has lost ten pounds! He also remembered, when a commercial came on the television that he has not had acid reflux in the middle of the night in months! This is wonderful news. I remember how he would wake up choking. He said it would come up into his nose sometimes.

Sunday will be my six month anniversary of starting on GAPS.

For the last couple of days I had been hankering for a “special treat”. I really was tempted to make some kind of cupcakes with almond flour [affiliate link], but I also want to wait until after the first as I figure the extra calories would affect my weight loss. My plan is to stay off fruit again this month, now that I'm finally broke free of eating them, and I'm also going to limit nuts and almond flour products.

Last night, I decided I should probably use the butternut squash that's been on the counter for the last week to ten days. One of the ladies on the Yahoo GAPS group I'm on talked about butternut squash fries and they sounded so yummy, I just had to give them a try. Here's the before picture.

They were FABULOUS. OH my goodness. I just squished coconut oil onto the fries with my fingers, then spread them out. I baked them at 425°F for 20 minutes on one side and turned them to the other side for another 20 minutes. I wanted to save some for ES, but I ended up scarfing them down all by myself.

I have written before about my bouts of insomnia. They were not too frequent, but I realized this morning since beginning GAPS I have been sleeping VERY well. And in the last couple of weeks I have even woke up hungry a couple of times and been able to go right back to bed and fall to sleep easily! This is huge! This has not been possible for me to do since before becoming pregnant! Every since having a pregnant body, if I awoke hungry in the middle of the night, I had to feed myself, or I would just lay there awake.

I am finding though, that eating foods that are higher in carbohydrates causes me to have insomnia.

Last night I experienced it again, after scarfing down the butternut squash fries. On Day 29 I also ate more than a fair share of butternut squash and was awake throughout the night.

That tells me I should avoid foods high in carbs at dinner because it affects my sleep.

I also have a tooth that has become sensitive to cold and heat. Bummer. It is in the area of the molar which my dentist has wanted to crown for the past 3 or 4 years, but I keep chickening out. I may have waited too long. I hate the dilemma of having dental work done.

Today I had chicken soup for breakfast, a few raw cashews on the way to work. An avocado a couple hours after arriving at work. At lunch there was a crisis. The health inspector arrived to inspect our kitchen! It's always a stressful time for my boss and I didn't want to be in the kitchen heating up my soup with my own little saucepan, so I made do with half a cucumber and a tomato with olive oil and raw apple cider vinegar. On the way home from work I had another tablespoon or two of raw cashews.

Hubby made roast for dinner, and I steamed cauliflower to make Faux-tatoes, used some of the beef broth (with cauliflower, shredded zucchini and a whole cooked onion blended) to make gravy.

I also cooked the organic spinach I managed to score from the farmer's market last Tuesday. There was barely a pound.

I am tired and must go to bed now. We switched milking to mornings, so now I must be up at 3:30.

One thing I have always tried to do when I have to get up that early. We are fortunate to live in an area that is still relatively dark at night, so we have the opportunity to see thousands of stars, and many nights the Milky Way is very visible. The moon was very bright this morning. I always try to look at being out that early as how lucky I am to see the beautiful moon and stars. And the weather is perfect right now. Perfect. Not too cold, not warm at all.

One more thing. I found Ellen's site I am Gluten-Free – she began her gluten free lifestyle having been diagnosed with Alopecia. ES was diagnosed with Alopecia Areata (basically baldness on the head) at the age of 2.5. He began the cycle of losing his hair and it would come back, a little less hair each year. We were told all those years ago (1989) that there was nothing to be done. Poor boy, to this day he thinks I cut his hair and snatched him bald-headed. He giggles when I cut his father's hair or his brother's hair because he thinks I might take their hair, too. Some days he gets really upset at me for taking his hair. I think it has been gone too long, but I learned at Ellen's site that Alopecia is an auto-immune disease. Which is something GAPS is known for addressing and possibly healing. I doubt that his hair will ever grow back, but I feel sure we are on the right track with GAPS.

How is your GAPS journey?

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