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What is the GAPS Diet?

What is the GAPS Diet?

GAPS stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome.

Created by Dr Natasha Campbell-McBride, the GAPS diet eliminates the following foods: Avoid processed foods, refined oils and sugars, grains, gluten, some lentils, soy. But you’re still allowed to have things like nuts, peanuts, some sweeteners, some dairy like homemade yogurt (in fact it’s encouraged).

There is a lot of emphasis on bone broth, animal products, and fermented foods. 

[Make note: There is the Gut and PSYCHOLOGY Syndrome book + Gut and PHYSIOLOGY Syndrome book. I have both, but they are different.]

Dr Campbell-McBride makes the case that things like ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), ASD (autism spectrum disorder), bipolar disorder and general mental health stems from the gut microbiome.

Healing both autoimmune disease, irritable bowel syndrome, and inflammatory bowel disease along with these other brain-focused disorders can be drastically improved with her protocol.

Six Stages in the GAPS Theory

There are six stages for the GAPS diet, which follow a progressive pattern.

Stage 1

Stage 1 is the introductory phase where you do an introduction diet. This stage is the most stringent, and Dr. Natasha recommends people stay here for 3 – 5 days.

Note: This was one of my biggest mistakes. I stayed here for far too long. Don’t let that be you.

Here is a sampling of what you might eat during this stage:

• Homemade meat stock (beef, lamb, bison, chicken, turkey, pheasant or even fish stock)
• Stew or soup made with well cooked meats or fish and well cooked vegetables and meat stock
• Probiotic foods (homemade fermented vegetable juices and/or homemade fermented whey, yogurt or sour cream daily); those with constipation should use homemade sour cream and fermented vegetable juices while those with diarrhea are advised to use homemade whey or yogurt
• Fresh ginger tea, chamomile tea with raw honey, if desired (caution on honey with SIBO and/or a Candida overgrowth)
• High-quality, purified water

Stage 2

In this next stage, you should keep eating everything from Stage 1, but now you should also add in things like:

• Raw organic egg yolks
• Stews and casseroles made with meats and vegetables
• If possible, increase the daily amount of homemade yogurt and kefir. Also increase the amount of juice from sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables.
• Fermented fish, starting from one piece a day and gradually increasing
• Homemade ghee (start with just 1 teaspoon a day and gradually increase)

Again, all phases are about 3 – 5 days. Some might need more, and some will be fine with just a couple days. 

Use your journal and evaluate on a daily basis.

Stage 3

​You’ll keep adding more in stage 3, and here is what the diet looks like in this stage:

• Ensure you’re consuming all the previous foods.
• Ripe avocado mashed into soups, starting from 1-3 teaspoons and gradually increasing in small amounts
• Pancakes, but these are not your standard high-sugar foods pancakes. Instead, you’ll make these using the following ingredients: Organic nut butter, eggs and winter squash or zucchini
• Egg scrambled with plenty of ghee, goose fat or duck fat
• The whole sauerkraut and fermented vegetables (Their juices should have been consumed since stage 1.)

In this stage, it’s recommended to add in high-quality, GAPS-legal probiotic supplements. If you’re not tolerating the full probiotic, just sprinkle 1/4 – 1/2 the capsule over food or mixed in with liquid to get started.

Stage 4

By stage 4, you should be feeling better – like drastically better, and here is what the diet looks like in this stage:

• Still eating all previous foods
• Add meats cooked by roasting and grilling (not barbecued or fried). (GAPS teaches the slow and go method, so honestly, I mostly just kept to those methods)
• Cold-pressed olive oil 
• Freshly pressed juices (a few spoonfuls from raw carrots or other raw vegetables)
• Baked “bread” with ground almonds or any other nut and seeds ground into flour

Stage 5

This is the part of the diet where you might feel like you’re really able to add in new foods.

• Continue with all previous foods
• Cooked apple as an apple puree (up until now you haven’t really been doing any fruits!)
• Raw vegetables that start with softer pieces (lettuce, peeled cucumber and zucchini, etc.) 
• General fruit – apple, pineapple and mango (again, tread lightly with SIBO and/or a Candida overgrowth)

Stage 6

This is the final stage before moving into the full GAPS diet.

• All foods as before
• Peeled raw apple
• Introduce raw fruit and more honey
• Can now use dried fruit as a sweetener in the baking

Then What?

After the 6 stages are successfully completed and digestive issues have resolved, you’ll move into the full GAPS diet which is a reintroduction phase and more long term.

My Personal Example: exact foods

Today I have made it to GAPS Diet Day 7, which means it can technically be time to begin the full GAPS diet.

The GAPS Intro was hard, and I only stayed on it for 4 days.

For me that was enough because my gut has already healed to a point where I don’t need to limit things as much as some might. 

Even in 2009, by day 4 or 5 I was on the full GAPS Diet and thriving. (Note: on Day 4 in 2009 I even was having 2 oz. of red wine each night. I am not doing alcohol this time.)

GAPS Diet Week 1

This first week was hard, but necessary. 

Days 3 and 4 I felt a little blah, like something wasn’t working, even though on Day 3, my PD seemed to be going away.

The PD has not gone away, but the bloat has.

I’m much more confident now with the direction my gut is headed, though still unsure about the PD.

I’m craving all the things less, even cup-after-cup of coffee (I didn’t say the JOYS they bring me, just the caffeine part!), but I still feel like a semi-crazy woman.

I always have a hard time wrapping my hands around,

Why do I have to do this when I eat 99% clean 100% of the time?!

The answer:

Clean is subjective. 

I don’t always have to like it, but somehow I love and appreciate it. <<<—– WEIRD. Totally weird.

Full GAPS Diet: What I’m currently eating after week 1

Click HERE to save the full GAPS Diet for later.

So here is what I am currently eating on the full GAPS diet. I don’t eat all  of these everyday, but these are all the things I’ve eaten.

• Homemade Chicken Bone Broth
• Duck Bone Broth, homemade
• Homemade Beef Bone Broth
• slow-cooked chicken
• ground turkey
• Bubbies Sauerkraut
• coconut oil
• 1/2 cup coffee with coconut milk
• lemon
• wild salmon
• full-fat coconut milk
• wild cod
• coconut butter (Manna)
• chicken liver (always Organic!) via a “Nutrient Dense Bowl ‘O Goodness” I make
• cucumber (de-seeded and de-skinned)
• spinach
• blueberries
• banana (super ripe)
• pluot

Finally, I am developing a birthday cupcake recipe for a client.

Round 1 of the experiment I left off all eggs.

The problem with that was that they crumbled a bit too much. Coconut Flour really does require eggs. Round 2 will use eggs, and I won’t try that version (not yet anyways for me on the eggs).

But, I did taste Round 1. The taste was awesome!

Ingredients: coconut flour, apple cider vinegar, vanilla extract, coconut sugar, chia seed, banana, coconut oil, baking soda and sea salt.

[Note: The GAPS Diet book does not address coconut sugar or chia seeds directly. Dr. Natasha addresses chia seeds HERE, and based on that, chia seed is perfectly fine for me (I don’t have now, nor have I ever had the Inflammatory Bowl Disease which presents with diarrhea symptoms).

On the same page, she also addressed coconut sugar mentioning that it is not allowed because, “It is a processed product, though it started as something natural.” She and I are going to have to “agree to disagree” on this one. I have just 2 sources of coconut sugar – both of which are supreme quality and minimally (if at all) processed. Coconut sugar works for me in small quantities – it always has.]

Supplements I Took

All supplements can be found HERE.

• Cod Liver Oil
• Digestive Enzymes
• HCl
• moringa
• Collagen
• Vitamin C

The real reason I moved to the Full GAPS Diet is twofold:

1. I wasn’t going to the bathroom like I should – like at all. That’s not normal. I definitely needed to add some things in to keep the ‘ole digestive system moving.
2. The Full GAPS Diet is still hard, and I feel like if my face is going to heal from GAPS, it would do so on the full diet, too.

3 Main Things I’m Adding in During Week 2

• zucchini
• additional fermented vegetables with juice (I pick them up this Thursday)
• egg yolk

I am food journaling daily, and I continue to learn more and more about myself, what I need, what I don’t need and how the body actually heals.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy:

1. GAPS vs AIP vs SCD
2. 30 Days GAPS Diet Left Me Scared but Hopeful
3. GAPS Diet Day 1

Xox,
SKH