SHE WON’T STOP EATING!!! Seriously. Katie just had a chicken thigh, a large zucchini, and an entire skin on apple before deciding she was full enough to go to sleep. That’s not even a huge meal for her. My munchkin lost 2 lbs in the 5 days we were on intro last week. I am pleased and relieved that she gained it all back in a few days, mostly in lean body weight instead of the bit of chub and puffiness she had gained from the excessive carbs and fruit. She is eating massive amounts of meat – at times almost a pound of beef or at least 1/2 of a chicken – and veggies. Broth is a little hard to get in her and some days it doesn’t happen.
Because we never finished intro, I think we’re both reacting to foods that we previously had not noticed (as predicted by Dr. Natasha). That bums me out, but I think we’re pretty close to the intro diet in our foods that I’m ready to try again soon. Milk is making me puffy and makes me want to down gallons of it every time I have a sip. That now tells me it’s a problem food. I just tried raw unsoaked nuts twice and I get red, itchy, racing heart, hyperactive, and feel like there’s a buzzing in my ears. Hmm. That’s new. Katie’s pretty good about her food choices, though she’s getting fruit sometimes twice a day (frozen blueberries, raw apples, jarred “GAPS illegal” peaches or pears) and that will be hard to take back out. I just started craving chicken broth the other day and feel very satisfied after a mug. That’s new too. I even added a spoonful of chicken fat from a roasted chicken to melt into my last mug, since I was hungry and went too long without food. I recently read a passing blurb about low blood sugar and fat intolerance as needing enzymatic help digesting protein and/or fat. Now that I’m even more sensitive to how my body processes food, I think I may be into something. I’ll look into that more before trying into again…hopefully, in the next two months at the latest.
Except for extra whining and some bearable (I hope) die off symptoms, Katie has been unbelievably jumping leaps and bounds ahead. Was she in the beginning stages of falling behind? She was in the normal range of her friends, but that should have cued me in that she was always ahead. She’ll be three in a couple of months and in the last 10 days:
- is in the beginning stages of hula hooping, as in she can actually keep it up while wiggling her hips for a few seconds until she stops and lets it fall. I think she still has to make the connection that she’s really doing it instead of spinning it around her like she’s been doing for the last couple of months with her grandpa-made mini hoop
- started drawing faces and then entire people within 2 days – the eyes, one, mouth, ears, glasses, tummy/body, arms, and legs – without any coaxing
- cannot seem to contain her creativity and is coloring much of the day – now drawing suns with rays and half moons – or creating elaborate scenarios with her dolls and stuffed animals to act out
- is pointing to some letters and telling me their sounds along with naming many letters we haven’t learned together yet; she would normally rather build things or do something physical
- WROTE a ‘P’ and an ‘A’ today unaided; the P may have been an accident but she drew the A with her finger on the microfiber dining chair while I was vacuuming them and drew my attention to it
- can take off her diaper (doing nighttime diapers while on GAPS) and her pants, plus put her pants, socks, and shoes on the right feet
These are the main ones I can think of right now, and may not seem extraordinary to everyone…but in 10 days??? AMAZING!
I’ll finish off with listing a couple of infractions that I feel a lot better about after reading so many other blogs of those following GAPS. I’m glad to see nobody’s perfect, especially in the beginning stretch, and that they all still heal. We had a couple of white potatoes, originally to help fix my blood sugar and settle my stomach. I had Wendy’s, the potatoes, a piece of chocolate, and we both had a couple of cookies I stashed in the freezer that first day. The cookies were raw oats, carob, and maple syrup. I totally forgot to mention all of the illegals in my last post. I was desperate to feel better and wanted to calorie binge. FELT MISERABLE – swollen fingers, aching joints, out of control yeast overgrowth, yuck -. Stupid psychological response to food. Katie had Trader Joe’s jarred peaches and pears in grape juice for the last 3 or so days. Now that I’ve written it down, I guess we haven’t been too awful. Hmm. Nice. I guess I’ll stop beating myself up about it now.