I understand that just even thinking about changing your diet can be stressful.
Since my practice is in the middle of Manhattan, many of the clients I see in my office are super busy as they are required to multitask.
Therefore, following the GAPS Diet may not be easy, especially for a mother raising a child with Autism or other developmental challenges.
So, below I organized a starter and a simple way to follow the GAPS Diet-based food choices that I named The 5 Essential Healing Foods.
The qualities of those foods are the most important!
So put your effort into finding the best quality food source you can access nearby.
From your garden, farmers’ markets, supermarkets with a good selection of quality foods, etc.
Fundamentally, it does not help you choose plant-based foods over animal-based ones. Of course, depending on the health issue, you may need to choose more plant-based and less animal-based foods. However, to heal, you must start eating more REAL HUMAN FOODS and eliminate those Fake/Engineered foods. Ingredients of those Fake/Engineered foods.
How can you do that?
COOK! In your home.
Know Your Foods!
This is the way to be responsible for your health. If you have a baby, children, or other family members, being responsible for what you feed them is the way to express LOVE as a parent/caregiver. Love that supports for who indeed they are!!!
Below, I present two examples of the way you choose ingredients.
For example, Milk
The best and highest quality of milk is RAW from a pasture-raised cow with high fat. And the worst and lowest quality of milk is pasteurized and homogenized milk from a cow stacked in a confined space with lowered fat content.
The nature of food is that more manipulation processes lower the quality and nutrients in foods. Ultimately, they must add non-natural chemicals to cheat and manage its taste. Also, more manipulation means more hands-on. Can you imagine that increases the chance for bad bacteria to grow on those foods to be spoiled? So, in the process of manufacturing, it makes necessary to add even more non-natural substances such as preservatives, taste enhancers, texture manipulators, etc. It is easy for you to understand that those foods are not fresh at all! Foods which is not fresh are garbage. Can you be healthier by eating that garbage?
Organic vs. Non-organic
I do not think everything must be organic.
For example, which is better? Organic strawberries by Driscoll or non-organic strawberries from a local farm? I choose these non-organic strawberries.
Another better example? Organic celeries sold at an organic foods store or low-sprayed celeries from a local farmer on the way to becoming a certified organic farmer and sold at a farmers’ market? I choose the low-sprayed celeries.
Of course, there is a time when you may need to be depending on a local organic foods store or a supermarket. When you miss a day at the farmer’s market, you do not need to kill yourself by feeling guilty or forcing yourself to run to a farmer’s market.
However, your integrity in your health is essential. If you feel insufficient to buy something not so high quality, the next time, you try to purchase foods of a little better quality. You know what to do to improve your or your family’s health, don’t you?
This is VERY important!!! PAY ATTENTION to your baby, child, or yourself, whomever you want to help, improve and emerge his/your health status naturally.
Naturally means that it is to follow God’s way of well-being.
Below, you can see the Five Essential Healing Foods I suggest you start adding to your meal plan.
- Bone Broth or Meat Stock–based Soup (with Chicken, Pork, Beef, or fish with vegetables and herbs in Bone Broth.) – Your goal is to have at least 3 cups of this soup daily.
- Lacto-Fermented Foods (In the GAPS world, we call those Probiotic Foods.) -Your goal is to have ½ cup of probiotic food with every meal.
- Fermented Milk – Yogurt, Kefir, Whey, and Sour cream. If you have a milk allergy, please omit it.
- Fermented Vegetables – Sauerkraut and other fermented vegetables (Beets, carrots, Cucumbers, or other vegetables you can choose from GAPS Diet Recommended Foods.)
- Eggs (Pasture-raised) If you have an egg allergy, please omit it. Your goal is to have at least 3 Eggs a day.
- Good Fat – choose from butter, ghee, tallow, pork, goose/ duck fat, or any animal fat, coconut oil, and olive oil (Please remember to use olive oil for only raw foods such as salad. Do not cook it with heat!)
- Natural Salt (NOT Table salt!)
Please start to add those foods listed above to your meals. And as you add more of those foods, and more often you eat those foods, please pay attention to your changes – sense and feeling including digestion, bowel movement, sleeping pattern, skin conditions, brain clarity – Brain fog, focus, memory, creativity, and emotional and behavioral changes, mobility, mood, and relationship with your family or partner, etc.
Also, please pay attention to DIE-OFF reactions. Die-off reactions are a part of the natural healing process, which is an action of the immune system, just very similar to some so-called symptoms, which is a GOOD thing!
Besides those Five Essential Healing Foods, you can eat whatever you eat before excerpting those foods listed on Foods to Avoid.
Once you comfortably incorporate those foods as part of your usual meal, choose The Full GAPS Diet or GAPS Introductory Diet for the next step.
