GAPS journey: Day 1 Intro

Since this is the very first blog post I am doing here, I should give some information about us, why we are doing GAPS, and how we got prepared for it.  BUT we have two little crazy boys and doing GAPS takes a lot of time and energy, plus I quit coffee (the reasons are multifaceted), so I am just doing an awkward jump right into chronicling how our GAPS journey goes.

I definitely plan on doing many posts about why we are doing this, the path God took us on to get here, how to get informed about it, and how to approach/prepare for starting GAPS.

But for now, here's my summary of our first day.  I will be including notes about what we ate and how we feel, along with what recipes we used and how I would do things differently (that classic 'I should have...').

Now on to the fun!

What we ate: 
- Butternut squash for little ones at breakfast then followed by Hamburger Soup (without tomato paste) mid-morning.
- Chicken Bone Broth Soup with tomatoes, cauliflower, carrots, onions, and of course, chicken!  And let's not forget lots of celtic sea salt!  This is when hubby kind of panicked and exclaimed 'will I ever get to eat lasagna again!!?!?!?!'. 
- Shredded Round steak (cooked in crock pot all day with enough water to cover and sea salt), spaghetti squash with chicken broth to moisten, boiled broccoli with varied pureed vegetable/chicken broth soups to drink along with the meal.  And let's just say it again, the beautiful celtic sea salt to taste!
- To drink in between meals, I make us 'juice' (gets the 3 yr old excited).  I don't know how completely stage 1 intro legal this is, but I grate about 1 inch of ginger (I peel and freeze it because it is so easy to grate frozen!) into a 4 c measuring cup, fill with just off boiling water, squeeze about half a lemon into it, let it sit for probably 30 minutes, strain and poor it into a mason jar, sweeten with just enough raw honey to make everyone happy (probably 1/4 cup?) store in the fridge.  Then we dilute it into cups to drink whenever we want, and sometimes I will heat some up on the stove to have some warm tea to drink. 

How we felt/behaved:
Well, I don't really know how everyone else felt or behaved because I was kind of a crazy woman Saturday.  I was NOT happy about giving up coffee (it's physical, mental, spiritual...it is hard for me!) and I was so very tired and all I wanted to do was complain and sleep.  So sweet husband took care of the boys, let me relax by myself some and I took a 2 hour nap.  Another note about me: I decided to get some DLPA to see if that would help me quit my insane addiction to coffee (see interesting posts about it here and here!).  So I took that in the morning, but only a small dose, so I didn't notice any benefit.  More about that on day 2.

Overall, hubby and I both kind of had bad attitudes about it even though we've been committed to doing this!  We both never really felt super hungry, just tired if we hadn't eaten in a while.  At the end of the day, we both just really wanted cookies and (me) coffee and chocolate and ice cream. :-)

The little ones handled it pretty well!  I could tell a big difference without them having milk to drink.  That makes keeping them full and happy a bit difficult!  But everyone slept well for naps and through the night, so I don't think they were super hungry or anything.  I  have lots of thoughts on how to help this process with wee little cute crazy boys, but I will share more about that later.

Thanks for joining us on this journey!  I can't wait to share more about everything I mentioned above along with what happens as we go through this!