It’s time to break a different cycle

Firstly, I’d like to thank everyone that commented on my post last week, for those not in the know you can read it here.

Over the last month I’ve been reading up on Gut and Psychology Syndrome (GAPS). The theory being that lots of digestive issues, food intolerance, allergies, auto immune disease and much more is down to leaky gut syndrome. Essentially your food ends up leaking into your bloodstream and poisoning your body. This is all driven by abnormal gut flora – where the good bacteria are losing the fight against the bad. I tick too many boxes for this not to be the case, and in order to kiss goodbye to my food sensitivities long term I need to get my gut flora back on track.

The first stage (combined with supplementation, which I’ll write about in a few days) is an Intro Diet broken into six steps. Realistically I should be able to complete it in three weeks, the purpose of this is to heal and seal the gut lining. The next stage is known as the Full GAPS Diet, which entails eating completely naturally for 1-2 years. No processed food, starchy veg, grains, refined sugar or commercially purchased dairy is allowed. “What on earth will you eat?” is what I’m hearing time and again. As with anything in life, how difficult you find something will entirely depend on your starting point. I am starting out from the perspective of food intolerance, which is pretty minor compared to most that start the GAPS Diet. When it comes to what I currently eat, it’s not too dissimilar to Full GAPS anyway.

You see in 2002 I went dairy free. In 2007 after being diagnosed with PCOS, I went refined sugar free – which incidentally lead to reversing my symptoms and naturally conceiving three children. Then in 2012, hubby and I went ‘Paelo’ – and cut out grains (albeit not super strictly). I already cook mostly from scratch, and we have hardly any processed food in our house. For anyone that has read my recipe section you might have noticed a distinct lack of refined sugar, dairy and often grains? I like to hope this will all give me a head start for ‘doing GAPS’, but that of course remains to be seen.

I’ve written at length about breaking what I call ‘the cycle of dysfunction‘, in fact I’m in the process of writing a book about it. I have strived hard as an adult to not be the same as my mother. She ticks many boxes for GAPS herself with an under active thyroid, food intolerance, urtacaria, the list goes on. I would have inherited my issues from her, and passed them on to my own kids. It’s time that I break this cycle, and give my three the very best chance of being healthy that I possibly can.

I shall be starting phase one of the intro diet this weekend. Wish me luck 🙂

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