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So yesterday was Day 1 of this round of intro. I did a kind of maybe sorta intro in January, but once I figured out that the pain in my hands was being caused by the Vitamin C I was taking I lost interest in doing intro again. So this is officially my second round of intro, the first being in March 2010.

Yesterday I cooked two chickens, and I bravely blended up the “soft bits” again like Dr. Natasha says to do in her book and on her site. I wasn’t very hungry yesterday. I had some cooked carrots with butter, and then I cooked two zucchini squash (sliced) in some of the broth. I had boiled chicken with the zucchini. It was pretty good.

I split up the stock and with about eight cups made soup with zucchini squash, onion, mushrooms, carrots, green beans, and peas. (I also added celery and cabbage, which now in reading over Dr. Natasha’s prescription for intro says to avoid fibrous vegetables like cabbage and celery. Oops.)

Only I wasn’t hungry for dinner. Which is kind of odd for me as I usually have a good appetite. On the other hand, when I don’t eat enough in the evening, I am usually awakened in the middle of the night with insomnia. I don’t necessarily feel hungry, but on the nights that I get up and do something, instead of lying in bed trying to sleep, within an hour or two of waking up finally I will feel ravenous. So I’ve come to assume if I wake up in the middle of the night, it’s a blood sugar issue and I can often get back to sleep rather quickly if I just get up and eat something.

But not this time. I mean to say, I didn’t wake up during the night.

It makes me wonder if I’m super sensitive to carbohydrates… although carrots are high in carbohydrates. Again, what I mean is doing intro is rather low carb. So is it because I’m not getting carbs that I slept well, even though I didn’t eat much yesterday? In spite of not eating much I did “go” this  morning, and was kind of surprised to see undigested carrots. That is not usual for me. Dr. Natasha does address this question at the FAQ at her site:

Question: After 2 years on GAPS I still have undigested vegetables in my stool and they take about 3 days to go through my digestive tract. I keep reading that any undigested food feeds pathogens and fungi. Is this true and if so, should I just cook the veggies in my broth and then strain them out? I assume after cooking the veggies for 35-40 minutes all the nutrients are in the broth anyhow?

NCM Answer: It is normal to see some undigested vegetables in your stool, particularly if they were eaten raw and not chewed very well. It is also quite normal for them to take three days to get through your digestive tract. They do not feed microbes any more than any other food would do. Raw vegetables are important to eat, as they provide active enzymes and other nutrients, which are destroyed by cooking. Providing that you have no diarrhoea, you do not have to cook all your vegetables. Indeed, when you boil vegetables, a lot of nutrients from them finish up in the water. That is why it is best to eat boiled vegetables as a soup with the broth you cooked them in, so no nutrients are wasted.

She answers it slightly differently at the FAQ at the GAPS Diet site:

Question: If GAPS patients see undigested food in their stool, should the undigested food be avoided?

NCM Answer: Not necessarily. There are many foods which go through most of us undigested, such as sweet corn, for example. If there are symptoms, such as abdominal pain, flatulence, etc. as well as undigested food in the stool, then it may be sensible to remove it for a while and see if that helps.

So I am not sure what is going on with this time doing intro (that I would see undigested foods). I’m not really feeling any symptoms of die off, although I feel very tired which is probably die off. I did go to bed as soon as I could last night, which was about 10pm and I slept pretty well and didn’t get out of bed until 7am. I am glad I’m sleeping good.

My husband was able to get a load of water, so I will definitely take a detox bath sometime today or this evening.

I have been getting this vegetable box – up to 60 pounds for ten dollars. After my interview with Teri Ryan from Grain Free Foodies this morning, I took a trip into town to see about getting a vegetable box. Unfortunately the truck had broken down and they were unable to make it today. That’s okay, I wasn’t really looking forward to processing 60 pounds of vegetables.

Here’s the awesome thing… 1) pre-GAPS I never would have had the nerve to even think about having a talk show and 2) I would have been wiped out from the stress of doing something like that. I remember thinking how it used to be for me when I would get stressed out. It would literally feel as if I was worn out and it would take me a few days to get back to normal.

Doing the talk show isn’t that difficult. As I kept telling myself, it’s like talking on the phone. It is a little bit stressful in that there is the expectation that I have to do this at a certain time. There is some time taken to prepare for the interview, and I know pre-GAPS my thoughts would have been consumed with every minute detail and every little “um” or mistake I could potentially make while doing the show. I find myself taking this more in stride.

And, I know for sure before GAPS, that doing a talk show would have had me waylaid for days. Today, I got up from my computer, ran in and got dressed and left to go get the vegetable box.

The vegetable box, which I fully expected to come home and spend the next 4-6 hours on my feet, processing. Peeling, chopping, blanching, bagging, putting in the dehydrator.

So even though I really don’t feel like I have all that much energy, I do remember how it used to be, how I would have been. In comparison, I have quite a bit more energy. And for that I am grateful to GAPS.

On my way home I also came up with an idea for a new soup, which I’ll share with you soon.

It’s 3:30 here… a bit late to take a nap… although I do feel pretty tired. Maybe I will just go lie down for a little while.

UPDATE later in the day:

I decided to take a nap, but first I sat in a nice hot detox bath with Epsom salts. It rained today in normally sunny Arizona and it was chilly in our house. After my detox bath I felt even more tired, and decided to go ahead and take a nap. I slept until 6pm.

I have noticed one thing has changed for me in the past week… I was having pain in my right shoulder in the soft tissue area. I’d slacked off on broth in the last couple of months, and we are supposed to have it daily on GAPS. Shame, shame. But since I was going to do intro again, I made a pot of chicken soup on the 4th and I finally worked up my nerve and blended the “soft bits” from the chicken into the stock. I have had some of that each day since I made it, so basically have gotten back to having broth every day since April 4th.

That is probably why my shoulder has stopped hurting.

Okay, this is it for the night. I promise.

In March I weighed 174.8. I stepped on the scale on Friday (April 1st) and my weight was 175.6. Here is the bright side on my not losing weight last month… I am learning how to maintain my weight. Basically, if I stay within the choices of full GAPS, including things like peanut butter [affiliate link], nuts, fruit and honey [affiliate link], I will still stay at about the same weight. I mean, at least I didn’t gain ten pounds by eating those things.

I seem to be able to stay off those foods, which are completely legal on GAPS, for at least the first couple of weeks in the month, and then I started slipping up and eating them again.

I would not concern myself, but I guess I would like to continue to lose a bit more weight as I am 5’4″ and I think 175 is still too much for my frame. Although I have always looked 25 pounds lighter since I was blessed with naturally muscular derriere and thighs. By naturally muscular, I mean I don’t work out and these parts of my body maintain a nice muscular appearance.

The other thing is, it seems when I start to eat too much fruit and honey, it does seem to affect my mood and I seem less happy and more anxious. Nothing like before I started GAPS, but enough that I feel it.

And in fact, yesterday when I interviewed Dr. Natasha, she did allow that one could do a quick bout with intro if they saw symptoms returning and she mentioned depression as one of the symptoms.

I am just so thrilled with the interview today. I have always cringed at hearing my voice all of my life. How can it be that the sound of my voice doesn’t make me cringe? Am I imagining things, or has GAPS managed to change my perception of myself to the point that I’m no longer hypercritical of myself? Pre-GAPS it would have been very difficult to listen to the podcast because I would have felt so embarrassed and critical of any little mistake.

I downloaded the podcast and on my drive to my friend’s house to attend her triplets one year birthday party, I listened to the show. I was pleased with my first attempt at being a talk show host. It’s just weird. I mean, seriously, all my life I have been so hypercritical of my own voice. Hated my own voice. Could that be some weird mental thing to dislike one’s voice, a weird mental thing that GAPS could have addressed for me? Because don’t some people love to hear themselves talk? I used to have noise sensitivity before I started on GAPS.

Maybe the pleasure of hearing Dr. Natasha speak and share her wisdom just overwhelmed my own tendency to not want to hear my own voice taped.

I had determined that I would need to listen to the show because I needed to know if there was anything I was doing that I should work on changing in my subsequent shows. One thing I will refrain from doing is to make those little affirmative comments, which to me came across as sounding like grunts. That actually made me laugh after awhile. You know how when you have a conversation with someone, you nod your head, or if you are on the phone, you say, “Mmhmm…” well, on a talk show it sounds like grunting, at least it did to me. I will eliminate that from future talk shows.

One thing about GAPS, I do know it has changed the negative looping that my brain used to do. I would get started on something negative and I would try to logically talk myself out of it, but I couldn’t seem to do so. Today, I did catch myself feeling… well… maybe embarrassed? Or uncomfortable, with all the “Mmhmmm” sounds I was making, and my mind started to race just a little bit, wondering if I could have my son edit out those sounds… and feeling like I wished I could do the whole interview over and not do that, but I was able to stop myself right away. I used to in the past, try to persuade myself with logic… “It’s okay. There’s nothing I can do about that. No one else even notices.” Today, logic works. I’m so glad.

Dr. Natasha is such a wealth of information. I’m so glad we have her, and I’m so thrilled that she shared a bit more of her program for practitioners that she is going to be doing starting in the fall of this year.

Did you get to listen to the show? I like to listen to podcasts while I’m driving, it really makes the time fly. I bought this cute little hot pink MP3 player, I think it cost me ten or six bucks back at Christmas time. I would like to get an iPod Nano like my husband has eventually, but the little pink MP3 player works well for me in the meantime.

Thank you to everyone who reads my blog. I love you guys. 🙂

Gosh, where does the time fly? Let’s see what has been going on. Well, for one thing I have a secret project I’ve been working on and will be revealing sometime in April. I am pretty excited about it, and hoping everything goes as I expect it to. I’ll be stepping a little bit out of my comfort zone, but to me this is just a sign that I’ve done more healing.

Who would I have become had I not been a GAPS patient all my life? For I am convinced I have been a GAPS patient since birth. In a nutshell, here is why… my grandmother was very sick as a young woman in her twenties. She had tuberculosis and lived in a sanitarium for two years. Her family expected her to die and when she finally got out with only one lung functioning her doctor told her she had better move to Arizona because she could not tolerate the Ohio weather. My grandmother had saved $2000 in her short life and went to the bank to withdraw it but found that family members had taken her money, assuming she would never need it. Who knows what kind of medication she was on in the sanitarium. I don’t know what they treated tuberculosis with back in the 1930s and 1940s.

My grandmother had enough money for a ticket to Arizona and she came her with one little bundle of clothing. She lived at a home for spinsters, as she was thirty years old and considered to be a spinster. She was an expert typist and excellent at shorthand. She found a job working at the Luke Air Force Base and that is where she met Grandpa. They had a whirlwind three month courtship and were married two days before Grandpa was called to World War II. She conceived in those two days. She almost died delivering my mother. Grandma told me she bled so heavily that blood soaked through the mattress and onto the floor. The doctors would not allow her to breastfeed my mother, and formula was non-existent back then so my mother was fed a gruel of corn syrup and canned evaporated milk. Hardly nutritious, eh?

When my mother had me, she breastfed me on a schedule. Normally I would use the term “nursed” but my mother didn’t “nurse” me. She had me on schedule as if I were taking formula. This is what the doctor told her she should do, so she followed it to the letter. I was only allowed to nurse on one side for ten minutes, then she would switch me to the next side for ten minutes. After I had my own children, I realized that I must have never gotten any hindmilk as foremilk comes down for the first ten minutes or so before the hindmilk which has all the fats. Mom says I screamed and cried for hours and she would sit in her room, while I lay in my crib, and she would sob and cry, while I screamed in hunger. But she didn’t want to harm me. The doctor told her she must let me scream in order to strengthen my lungs. She didn’t want me to have weak lungs!

When I was six months old, Mom weaned me to the bottle. I projectile vomited the full fat cow’s milk and she found I could only tolerate skim milk.

Goodness! It’s a wonder my brain functions considering the lack of nourishment I had as an infant. Isn’t the human body truly a wonder?

As a child, I was underweight. I had stomachaches every single morning before going to school. I thought it was a nervous stomachache because of this girl in the second grade who used to bully me. Every day from second grade up to high school I had a stomachache before going to school.

Since I was so thin, my mom was ordered (by our woman pastor) to put me on a nightly milkshake made with Carnation malted milk, vanilla [affiliate link] ice cream and whole milk. Lots of calories, lots of sugar.

When I turned sixteen I was sent to live with this pastor and in a renewed attempt to fatten me up, she ordered me to eat four candy bars a day which I did faithfully because I thought she had a direct word from God.

Then my appendix almost burst inside me a few months later. Apparently the appendix holds the bacteria culture for any time the gut is disturbed, like when antibiotics are given, or when one has a bad case of diarrhea.

Anyway, to go beyond that brief bit would be to enter my adult story so I’ll end there.

Back to where I started. I am starting to think my timidness and shyness and high sensitivity has been a gut issue. I was painfully shy as a child.

Could my shyness have been a cause of gut dysbiosis?

Would I have been a totally different person had I been outgoing?

Are introverts or extroverts more likely to have gut dysbiosis?

I think I should have entered a field where I would have gathered statistics as they fascinate me. Okay, I don’t really know exactly what a statistician does, but I think they gather and compare statistics about areas being studied.

Aside from all this thinking out loud, I’ve been doing better. I can tell I am healing from the stress of losing our white gold.

I had a terrible bout with insomnia, which I believe was precipitated by this wonderful spice I made for myself. I will share the details on that one day soon. I am sleeping better, but it seems like it will be a fantasy to ever get nine hours of sleep each night as suggested in the book Lights Out. I did amazingly well in spite of getting only 2-4 hours sleep. I managed to function and go to work each day, amazing. A true testament that my health is better as in 2009 I would have been falling apart at the seams.

I am looking forward to intro.

I talked to my husband again about doing GAPS and I think he understood a bit more this time. It seems like each time we talk, he gains more understanding of what is expected.

I also talked to my oldest son about doing GAPS. He was crying last night because he misses eating Taco Bell. I felt so sad and like such a terrible mother. I tried to explain to him that if he stops eating bread and tortillas and crackers and Taco Bell, his hair might grow back since alopecia is an autoimmune disease. Most people with alopecia find their hair will grow back when they stop eating gluten, but I feel it goes further and has much to do with gut dysbiosis. I showed him the eczema on his belly and said that would probably go away. I pointed out his various little issues that he is aware of, and I told him those all might be healed. I told him if we do the diet for two years, then he might be able to have Taco Bell (I shudder) sometimes. His response? To punch his fist into the palm of his other hand and say, “YES!” Poor guy, I know he does not realize how long two years is. Slowly I’ll get him on board.

I will continue to talk to my husband and to my son. I really need to get my husband on board and on the same page. And I also talk to my younger son as I know he needs to do GAPS, too. It is inevitable that both my sons need GAPS. I have no doubt that I unintentionally passed on bad gut flora to them both.

How are you doing on your GAPS journey?