GAPS Day 17: GUURRRRRDDDDD

 

I have GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease). Resolving my GERD issues is why I got into GAPS in the first place... even though so many other things have improved since starting. I started taking HCL (Betaine Hydrochloride)/pepsin capsules, one with each meal. (So many acronyms! But that's why we're in Acronymlandia.) I have low stomach acid and this not only prevents me from absorbing nutrients, it's the reason I have GERD (see below). The symptoms have actually improved somewhat since starting the GAPS diet but it's still there - I don't think it's going to go away until I actually supplement with HCL. I started both this and cod liver oil (1 teaspoon once a day), starting slowly since both have given me bathroom issues in the past. So far so good, so I will start increasing the dosage every few days and see how it goes. Fingers crossed!

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I threw today's lunch together - had no protein prepared so it was egg and tomato soup with a side container of pate, cucumber chips, sauerkraut, and the other half of the smoked salmon I bought over the weekend (ugh I should have taken a picture - I finally had something that looked nice!). Threw a couple of the GAPS pancakes in there and called it a day. Turned out to be way to much food, but that gave me a nice little snack in the afternoon.

Dinner was tuna fish (Italian tuna in olive oil) with homemade mayo. I didn't have any onions, and you can't use onion powder on GAPS, so I tossed in some sauerkraut. Figured it would be kind of like dill pickles. Turned out delish! Had that on some of my savory GAPS pancakes with some raw apple and a quick soup (chicken broth with mushroom mirepoix) and it was a night. Of course, there was a slice of chocolate cake afterwards woop!



Today's Article

Is about GERD; what it is, what causes it, how to fix it, and it's probably not what you think. Heartburn/GERD isn't caused by too much stomach acid but too little, and Chris goes into the why's and wherefores in this series of articles. If you suffer from GERD you need to read this.

What Everybody Ought To Know (But Doesn’t) About Heartburn & GERD (Chris Kresser)

TMI Report #2

GAS!! OMG, the gas!! After having almost nothing in that area for several weeks all of the sudden I was getting the most awful, SHTANKY gas coming out of my butt! This started some time late last week (Saturday was the worst. My poor boyfriend, living in my fart cloud!) I don't know what was up but it seems to be letting up, both in volume and stinkiness (thank God!) I figure it's another round of die offs, or something to do with my gut bacteria. At least it seems to be letting up. Fingers crossed!

GAPS Day 14: Wahoo! It's been two weeks!!

I can't believe I made it! And I've had so many changes already, in what's basically just a few days. The first week was pretty bad; tired, no energy. The second week I got steadily better. Today I'm back to normal levels of energy... which kinds of disappoints me, to be honest. I had some flashes of joy and feeling totally energized but now I feel normal. Not bad, just not aMAAAAzing. I have to stop expecting things to be utterly miraculous... even though some miraculous things have actually happened, which I need to remember:

• My feet! My feet don't hurt, even on my 40 minute train commute home!!
• Speaking of feet, the gross callous-y buildup on my heels is gone!
• Not only can I walk up stairs more easily, I can walk down them, without hanging onto the railing for dear life. I actually walk down instead of stumping down like an arthritic elephant.
• My shoulder!!! After more than a year of pain post surgery, my shoulder spontaneously feels better!!
• No eczema but that's not a surprise, I get that with Paleo. And my seborrheic dermatitis and hidradenitis suppurativa are so mild that they're nearly gone. But again, this happens to me with Paleo too so I can't chalk that up to GAPS.
• Mild glue ear; I kept feeling and hearing something weird glugging in my right ear. Gone now!
• Better overall mood, including: not repelled by people; no incidents of "road rage" (becoming furious with someone when they do something rude); genuine laughter and feelings of joy; improved short term memory; mental clarity (even moreso than with Paleo); and a general, overall feeling of calm and happiness. Not perfect mood but much better than on SAD (Standard American Diet).
• And I actually do have more energy to do things. It's easy to adjust to a new normal, but three weeks ago I had no energy, I had to conserve my energy very carefully just to get anything done. And that's already really different from my SAD days!

So I'm enjoying a lazy Sunday. Didn't actually get around to eating until late afternoon ("clam chowder" made with pureed cauliflower, butter, sautéed onion, egg yolk, with a can of minced clams thrown in. Delicious!) Dinner was roasted turkey wings (holy smokes was it chewy! delicious but chewy), avocado just with a little salt (I like smearing avocado on the meat, like a spread), a beet "salad" that's just sliced beet and sauerkraut (sooo good, sweet and sour and yummy) and some buttered broccoli. I also had pumpkin pie for dessert; just pumpkin, egg, homemade coconut milk, spices, and a little honey. I used half the amount of honey that the recipe calls for to keep my sugar monster in check. After the last two weeks that meal tasted positively decadent!

BTW, the coconut milk was super-easy to make. Here's the recipe I used as a basis; I literally threw a cup of water in and 3 tablespoons of coconut butter (aka coconut manna, or coconut cream concentrate), I didn't even blend it up first, just threw everything in the food processor and gave it all a good whirl. If you're going to drink the milk you're going to need some cheesecloth or a nut milk bag to squeeze out all the solids, but since I was baking I didn't worry about it. Worked beautifully!

TMI Report

TMI WARNING! Don't go below this if you don't want to know what goes on with my butt!






So you're still here? I actually initially started my diary initially to keep track of bathroom issues. This is something I've struggled with for years, as has everyone who's on GAPS I'm sure.

Day 5 (3/3/17): This first entry was because it was pretty god awful; sticky and foul smelling. Something was brewing in there. Hopefully it's the bad bacteria all dying off!


Day 6 (3/4/17): Half formed and mucousy - WTF, was it the mucus the intestines protect itself from the bad food and bacteria with coming out???


Day 7 (3/5/17): Bizarre smelling BM!! I've never smelled anything like this, it wasn't even like poo, it was like chemicals! WTF is going on down there?????


Day 8 (3/6/17): Kind of constipated. Small poos - still smells weird but not as weird as yesterday. Small things to be grateful for.


Day 9 (3/7/17): Finally, a normal poo! Decent sized, although a bit spongy and gassy. Still smelled a bit like the weird poo of Sunday but seemed pretty much back to normal.


Day 10 (3/8/17): Hopefully this will be the last one for a while. Today it seemed like it was pretty much back to normal (thank goodness)! The only strange thing is that it hardly smelled. That's a good thing I guess?

GAPS Day 13: Energized!

Here's another thing I'm noticing about myself since doing GAPS: I actually want to do things!! I remember years ago, even if I had no one to hang out with I'd go out and walk around town, window shop, browse bookstores and then go to a nice coffee shop on my days off. Lately, all I want to do on my day off is hang out in t-shirts and yoga pants and play video games. Even though I had a lot of nostalgia about just kicking around town I only did it if I was going to hang out with G and his friends. It wasn't just the painful feet either, although that had definitely something to do with it. I just had didn't want to anymore. I think this was because my lack of energy.

My friend's know that I almost never do anything during the week. It's hard enough for me to get home, feed the cats, and pick up a little around the apartment. Even during the weekends I don't really have time because I need to spend one day shopping, cooking, and cleaning for the week, which I do this way: work for a half hour, rest for an hour, work for another half hour, rest for another hour (or thereabouts). I couldn't do sustained work for very long and would have to rest. I would get (most) everything done by the end of the day but it took all day long. I'm usually still cooking or folding clothes at 9:00 at night. And if I went out or did something on Saturday, then I felt like I had no time to rest all week, because I have to do my chores on Sunday and then work all week and I'd end up feeling totally unrested.

Things always took so long, because I always need to take breaks and rest. I could get things done, they just take forever. This means that I had to be very selective about what I wanted to focus on. Recently this has been my work on Jungian psychology, which I needed to take a break from while doing all this cooking and shopping and even thinking for GAPS, in addition to being exhausted from dealing with die off or whatever this greater than usual lack of energy has been. And it's not purely about physical exhaustion although there is that. It's also largely mental exhaustion, I just don't have the mental capacity to focus for too long on one thing.

I realized I had the female form of ADD years ago, and went to a psychiatrist who put me on Adderall. This was useful but not a perfect cure - I still had a hard time motivating myself to do things that I found boring. When I got back into Jungian psychology I didn't want to take it anymore because I find that it interferes with my feelings, and I don't know what I'm actually feeling when I take it (as a thinking type I have problems knowing what I'm feeling in the moment as it is, I didn't need a drug making it even harder.)

One of the things I'd resigned myself to, though, was the fact that I was never going to be able to accomplish a lot. I had a very limited supply of energy, and a large part of that had to go to taking care of basic needs, like going to work, or making food for myself. I also had to spend some of it taking physical and mental breaks, because even if I have enough energy in my body to do something, that doesn't mean that I have enough mental capacity to focus on it.

Well, I can't be sure but I've been feeling like I want to do things! This is something for a miracle for me. While I was absolutely exhausted last week, since Saturday I've had twinges of wanting to get up and get out and do stuff. I'm still taking it a bit slowly - Saturday was an example of me biting off more than I could chew - but the feeling hasn't been going away. It's still too early to say "yea" or "nay" about whether or not this is actually happening - it's still only been about 2 weeks - but I'm really hoping that as I heal more I'll have more and more of that feeling again.

GAPS Day 12: Three cheers for GAPS!

WTF woke up an hour before my alarm! Yesterday I slept right through my alarm, today I wake up an hour early??? Maybe something had to get fixed yesterday or something. Or maybe it was under eating? Calorie restriction is supposed to ratchet up repair mechanisms in the body, so... maybe that's it? Also OMG! OMGOMGOMGOMG my shoulder felt better this morning! I had surgery on my right rotator cuff over a year ago and it's never stopped hurting. Well, this morning it felt better! Like, noticeable better!! Not perfect but much stronger - it feels more "sore" than "damaged". Holy shit! I don't know if it's the massive amount of gelatin I've been taking in with all those bone broths or the fact that my gut is better able to absorb nutrients (including co-factors like vitamins and minerals) that are necessary for healing or the calorie restriction or all of the above but it's a goddam miracle!!!

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I made liverwurst/braunschweiger last night. I can't stand liver, even though it's one of the most nutrient dense foods on the planet. I love liverwurst though and would often eat that but all the stuff in the supermarket is filled with off plan ingredients so it's time to try my hand at making it. I used this recipe as a base. I didn't have any allspice or marjoram so I used nutmeg, which I've seen in other recipes. It tasted disgusting when I tried it hot, straight from the food processor, but after it had chilled a bit it was pretty tasty. Still a bit too gritty for my liking but that's probably not going to change unless I get some sort of specialized kitchen equipment. This is basically what I did. Measurements are vague because I tend to do everything by feel... also my herbs and spices are dead so I put way more than I normally would. I ended up adjusting it a bit to taste after it's initial run through the food processor.

About a pound of chicken livers
About a half a pound of beef
1/3 cup of bacon fat
1/4 cup sautéed onions
1/3 cup mushroom mirepoix (sautéed and pureed onions, carrots, and mushrooms)
Sage
Nutmeg
About 2 teaspoons of salt

I had the mushroom mirepoix sitting in the fridge because I'd defrosted it for a planned meatloaf that I never ended up making. It's delicious and super useful stuff, though, so it's easy to incorporate into other stuff... like liver pate! I thought it would be a nice addition since many vegan pate's use mushrooms as a base, and they add some nice umami to the dish. The way I did it was to sautee the liver in the bacon fat. Most recipes call for bacon, but the bacon from my CSA is off limits because it has sugar but I figured the fat wouldn't, but it would add some delicious flavor. And it's from the meat CSA so it should be healthy. After it was sautéed I added the other ingredients and heated them through, then threw everything in my food processor and processed the crap out of it. When I tried it cold it was actually pretty tasty. It certainly smelled like the liverwurst I was used to yay! Here it is, with a bit of sauerkraut on the side; I love eating the two together as the sour, crunchy sauerkraut balanced the rich liverwurst very nicely. Once I'm including raw veggies in my diet I'll be able to eat the liverwurst on some celery, cucumber chips, or carrot sticks. This was my snack today.

But first was "breakfast" or lunch, or high tea or something. I always eat my first meal at 10:30 or 11:00 because that's when I start feeling hungry. Creamy mushroom soup with beef with calabasa pumpkin on the side. I tried it as a change from butternut - it's really common in my local supermarket because I live in a West Indian neighborhood. I didn't really like it at first, probably because it was new and different from the butternut that I've been eating since starting GAPS, but it grew on me. I still prefer the butternut's texture (the calabasa is really soft, verging on slimy, and slimy is a food texture that I cannot stand). The soup is something I tossed together: pureed broccoli with mushrooms, spinach, and ground beef. I also threw an egg yolk in there, along with a little lemon juice, to give it a "cheesy" flavor (I discovered while doing dairy free that a bit of acid mimics the tartness of cheeses like cheddar.) It was fine.

I don't know if I'm going to keep posting pictures of all of my meals because many of them look kind of gross. Doesn't it look a bit gross? Plus, it's often exactly the same (soup and squash). Maybe I'll wait to until I start eating something different lol.

GAPS Day 10: Losing weight?????

Still chugging along. Felt better this morning, kind of like I did this weekend if not as dramatic. I think the inulin did me in - the bad bacteria had their last little hurrah. This is interesting because it shows how even a tiny amount of sugar or starch can really have a negative impact, at least at the point I'm at now. This is motivating me even more to do this GAPS thing 100%, and stay with this for as long as I have to.

Had "creamy mushroom soup" for lunch (some onion and a bunch of pre-sautéed mushrooms blended with the stick blender, with some ground pork and an egg yolk mixed in). My co-worker said it smelled delicious. It tasted delicious! I also added a small container of mashed butternut squash topped with browned butter ghee and a tiny bit of himalayan salt; sooooo goooood! My co-worker was kind of jealous lol! After the first two days on GAPS stage one, eating the same chicken/carrot soup I literally could not bring myself to look at it anymore and realized I'd need to come up with some tasty combos if I wanted to survive. Scoured the internet and made a list of 17 soup options - I'll post them tomorrow.

I'm running out of the beef stock so I was going to get an organic chicken from the food coop but I forgot to get off the train so I decided to see if I could find on at my local regular supermarket. They did not have it so I just got a rotisserie chicken. Thinking about that chicken and taking it home made me sooooo hungry! I pretty much tore into it as soon as I got in. Ate it with avocado (I forgot to buy more! AGAIN!!) and a simple salad of sliced beets and sauerkraut. The salad was really tasty, kind of sweet and sour with crunch from the sauerkraut. The chicken was AMAZING! It's been so long since I've had anything that wasn't boiled. I ate all the legs, thighs, and wings. Smeared with some of the avocado it was heavenly! I'm sure I overate but whateverrrr.

I'd decided over the weekend to try to see if I could actually maybe possibly lose some weight on GAPS. I wasn't trying to - after the last time when I did cyclic low carb and I lose zero pounds I'd given up. PCOS ruled my life, or at least my waistline. But when I weight myself Sunday morning I saw that I was 20 pounds less than when I'd last weight myself last year, after the last one month low carb attempt. And it does look like I've lose some weight since starting GAPS. I can't know because I didn't weigh/measure myself at the beginning. I kept weight myself (despite knowing I shouldn't) every morning since then; I should have taken my own advice, it went down a tiny bit maybe, then went up again this morning. It's stupid, I'm not going to weight myself again until the end of the month!

The reason I thought it would work is 1) maybe it's the bad bacteria that made me fat in the first place! Also, 2) low "seductiveness" is the only really "diet" that's been actually shown to permanently lower the "adipostat" (the adipostat is the weight one's body decides is the best weight; like a thermostat, the body fights to keep it's weight at the adipostat, whether one is trying to lose or even gain weight.) I tried doing this before, making boring, tasteless soups, but I didn't last. But now that I have to stick with this, for reasons other than vanity but serious health conditions, maybe I can manage to lose some weight? Maybe??

GAPS Day 9: Joining the human race?

Woke up with what seemed to be some slight pain in my ankles (due to the inulin from yesterday?) Mood ok, nothing spectacular but still calm and upbeat.

One thing that's amazed me about this little experiment is the psychological effect it's had. I'd experienced a lifting of the brain fog while doing Paleo, but this is something exponentially different, almost personality changing. For one thing, I've been feeling truly happy. I didn't realize how not happy I was until I started feeling this feeling of calm positivity and good humor over the weekend. There was also a lessening of a general feeling of anxiety that I'd never really been aware of - I always considered myself a bit high strung but I'm coming to think that it's actually anxiety.

I also had moments of really, truly enjoying being with others. This is another thing I was never really aware of; I always knew that I felt stressed by being with most people (with the exception of close family members, G, F, and another close friend, K). Even with people I really liked, I found myself quickly exhausted from spending time with them. Of course parties are an absolute nightmare! But I've been having flashes of actually wanting to move toward people. I never realized that I have a pronounced avoidant streak; I think I may be on the autism/Aspergers spectrum. If that's truly the case, then this diet would of course help.

It's been an amazing, eye-opening experience and it's only been a week!

GAPS Day 6: Windy city

Woke up feeling happy and really good, like I wanted to go out and do things. Unusually so. Up to today I've been really draggy. Tuesday was the worst - I had to stay home because my muscles literally felt like they had no energy in them. I've been babying myself, taking it really easy. Today was the first day I woke up feeling good, and not just good REALLY good! Way better than ever! Unfortunately, it's also freezing cold and crazy windy! I kind of made G go out with me. He asked me where I wanted to go and I said to Prospect Park. This turned out to be way unrealistic. We went to Cortelyou Road instead, which was about a 10 minute walk, although in that wind it felt like an hour. I was ok but G is more sensitive to the cold. When we got back he jumped under the blanket, poor guy. We cuddled under the blanket though, which is the best way I can think of to spend a cold, grotty Saturday.