Intro, First Week Report

I'm at the end of my first week-ish into Intro. I'm really glad I found Plan to Eat's review in the first couple days, because otherwise I would have been pretty ticked at how lousy it's been. They also list a nice, detailed, "proper" implementation of stage 1, so I'll skip that and just explain how the week went down for me.

I started a week ago with broth from a non-organic hen; though I was loath to do this it was most feasible at the time. Carrots, onions, meat, bam. As soon as I got back to school I pulled an organic chicky out of the freezer and got it going with carrots and onions. Stripped the meat, kept the bones, simmered a few more hours with broccoli/carrots/onions/radishes and put half the meat back in. That lasted me, oh, probably about 8-9 meals or 3 days. Halfway through I started adding a spoonful of coconut oil to my bowl, which helped with intense hunger. Yesterday I broke down and added some curry—not sure I'll do it again because supposedly curry is illegal, but boy was it good. Then last night I pulled the bones back out; made more broth, then added other half of meat, more veggies, coconut oil.


A big personal switch for me was finally reintroducing the couple dozen foods I'd been avoiding for a few months based on my IgG allergy tests. One of the things that first put me on to GAPS was my suspicion that IgG tests make NO SENSE AT ALL, to the point that some doctors assume that the act of eating is equivalent with IgG antibodies forming. Dr. Natasha's explanation that food entering the blood stream undigested through a leaky gut will obviously cause an immune response was the clearest I've ever heard. Following her advice, no more "allergic" foods. Mmm…garlic…


I also grated a huge root of ginger at the start of the week and made a big pitcher of ginger tea, although I didn't add the recommended honey. I've been conditioned against honey for far too long! Today I broke down and got some raw at the health food store, but it will still be a struggle to bring myself to use it despite my desperation for a bit of sweetness.

The other thing I have not implemented yet is fermented/probiotic food of any kind. This is because I started some sauerkraut a week ago but, well, it takes a week. Just another couple days, assuming it's not a solid lump of mold! After stressing for several hours on a method, I finally just dumped salt on cabbage, worked it with my hands til it had juice, shoved it down in a jar with juice covering it and poured coconut oil over the top to solidify. (No lid, towel over it for darkness.) The success of this entirely remains to be seen—I shall report back soon!

Finally, I've done two detox baths with baking soda and some essential oils—lavender/geranium and rosemary/thyme/ginger. The second blend really seemed to do wonders.

Where have I cheated? Well, that will be a post to its own, but here I'll just cover coffee and tea. I've drunk maybe five cups of coffee (see below) and two different kinds of tea. As far as I can tell, coffee is Intro illegal; but I can also definitively say it was the only time all week I've had energy to do anything productive whatsoever, and brought me through some meetings I needed to have with other students. My first cup of tea—English breakfast if I remember right—put me into a grouchy motionless lump, but I can't say for sure how my second cup affected me.

How do I feel? Well, I had some weird skin discoloration on my tummy/undersides of my arms; not sure if this is part of detox, or what. Anyone else experienced this? But above all I feel tired. I got 12 hours, 10 hours, and 14 hours of sleep on different nights and still felt like I could sleep more. I'm so very thankful it's the first week of classes because I've done 0 work so far—and this is very rare for me. I had one lab where I spent the last half hour staring at the screen incapable of processing anything more.

Stress of new class material has been difficult to handle…my grades this semester may pay a price for this diet. But as I explained in my motivation post, I'm facing either debt for meds and supplements or the die-off from the GAPS diet. At least for the time being, my grades are less expensive.