The GAPS Diet Simplified (for the rest of us!)

Overwhelmed by the GAPS diet, but also interested? Need healing, but the GAPS diet is out of reach right now? The GAPS diet simplified offers encouragement and practical tips for working toward healing, even if you can’t fully commit to GAPS at the moment!

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Have you heard of the GAPS diet? The acronym stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome, and also for Gut and Physiology Syndrome. The same doctor wrote both books, having used the “diet” to help patients with both brain and physiological issues. GAPS is a gut healing protocol.

You see, the health of our digestive system profoundly affects all aspects of our health, both mental and physical. So much so that it is hard to even distinguish the mental from the physical! They are all bound up together in one carefully designed whole!

When the gut gets damaged, out of balance, or otherwise unhappy… we suffer. And it is easy to develop gut imbalances and permeability. Even if you don’t have tummy aches, if you have a health issue, you have some sort of gut damage. Maybe other things, too, but you definitely could benefit from gut repair.

So What is the GAPS Diet?

Now you know what GAPS stands for, but what is it?

Much more than a diet. GAPS involves food recommendations, and also lifestyle practices to help all aspects of health.

We live in a rough world. Fallen and marred by the general effects of sin, our bodies fail.

Surrounded by toxins, inside and out, we get sick and tired.

Eating a Standard American Diet (SAD!), or even a better-than-standard diet, we acquire nutrient deficiencies due to many factors that prevent our bodies and minds from functioning well.

Assaulted by emotional, microbial, and other stresses, we lose vitality.

The good news is that there are things we can do. One of those things is the GAPS healing protocol. Meant to be used as a temporary repair strategy, then followed with excellent diet and health practices to support regained health, the GAPS diet is more than a diet and has helped many people recover from all sorts of troubles.

It also isn’t easy. There is quite a bit of work involved– cooking, replacing toxic products with more beneficial ones, detoxing, etc. The effort, while it can pay off, is not trivial! Many people who look into the GAPS diet turn away in total overwhelm.

They aren’t being wimps! It’s hard at best, and sometimes it can be too much.

Our family did a pretty decent job of implementing the GAPS diet for about a year. Since then, we haven’t stuck to it, but we haven’t strayed far, either. Even doing it imperfectly, we saw improvements. Read more about our experience here.

What is so hard about the GAPS diet?

I often come across people saying they want to do the GAPS diet, or need to do it, or feel it would be worth a try, but they find it overwhelming. They aren’t wrong! There are times it is just too much. Here are some reasons:

there is a lot of cooking (this is true!)
they don’t know how to cook or want to cook (probably need to overcome that sooner or later)
it looks too expensive (partly true, but it is cheaper for some people, like those who are buying lots of conveniences or eating out often– look here for budget-friendly suggestions for GAPS or any whole food habit)
there are too many components– food, personal care products, detox, supplements, household items, etc. (this is definitely understandable!)
making so many changes to the diet at once is formidable (the closer you are to a standard American diet, the harder this is– and the more it is needed)
the kids will never go along with it (or the spouse, etc.)

These are informed objections, and really affect people. Sometimes, other circumstances make GAPS extra hard, if not impossible.

Some complicating factors include:

a new baby (or one coming soon)
an imminent move, especially a long distance one
being homeless in some way– either literally or being in the middle of building a house, remodeling a kitchen, living in an RV, etc.
work situations– long hours, both parents working full time, stressful jobs, traveling a lot, etc.
otherwise being very busy, tired, overwhelmed, etc.
being sick– too exhausted, dizzy, afflicted with pain, brain-foggy, etc. to figure a new thing out– the very time you need to do it most is also the very hardest time to tackle it
having a very sick child– hospitals, doctors, therapies, distress, sleepless nights, challenging behaviors, hyper-picky eating– again, the greater the need, the harder GAPS is to do

There are other reasons, but you get the idea. These are not wimpy cop-outs, they are genuine obstacles. Some will resolve with time or other efforts, and others won’t.

So what do you do if you can’t do the GAPS diet and need to?

The GAPS Diet Simplified

You can simplify. In online groups, you will hear that you need to strictly follow the rules. That isn’t exactly wrong. Kind of like getting what you pay for, you reap rewards from what you manage to do. Doing it “right” is more likely to help. Or to help you more. And probably faster. Check here for good info on doing GAPS well!

If you aren’t up for the correctly implemented GAPS diet, for any reasons, you still have a way forward. It might be less effective and slower. It will also be easier, less stressful, and more sustainable. Maybe it will even get you to where you could attempt the real thing. Or, you may just do great with whatever changes you make and not need full-blown GAPS!

Don’t miss what you can do by worrying about what you can’t do. Or what you can’t do yet.

There is no need to worry about perfection. Feel free to tune out the people yelling from your screen (or your own head) that you can’t heal at all unless you do it perfectly. Small things are better than no things. This is not a cult. (I loathe the term “GAPS-legal”!)

Do this the way you need to. Any change you make is a start. You may find you can do more than you thought. If not, then you are still moving ahead!

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Food

While the GAPS diet is about much more than just food, dietary choices are a huge part of the protocol. Unlike some healing “diets”, this one does two things.

First, similarly to most plans for leveraging food for health purposes, the GAPS diet recommends elimination of a bunch of foods. The reasons for each excluded group of food are explained with scientific support in the books. Many of them are meant to be reintroduced later on.

Second, in contrast to many dietary health plans, the GAPS diet is not mainly built around giving up foods that cause damage. The core of the GAPS diet is adding the healing foods that are meant to restore the damaged gut lining, rebalance the microbiome in favor of beneficial microbes, and eliminate the body’s need for inflammation.

Also supported by scientific evidence, the addition of foods that fix the damage means that you aren’t just stopping the harm and hoping your body repairs itself. You are stopping the harm, giving your body extra tools to fix the problems, and counting on the design of the body to use these tools to help you heal.

Foods to Cut Out

This is the part that is unpleasant. It can be really hard, both practically and emotionally. Especially for kids, and especially for people with gut imbalances. People who need healing the most may have the hardest time adjusting!

The “bad bugs” influence our cravings, so it is really hard to quit sugar, for example, and not only because of habit. It is more than a question of willpower!

Generally speaking, there are several groups of foods to stop consuming:

anything artificial– preservatives, colors, flavors (including “natural flavors” which aren’t at all natural in many cases), modified anything, and any ingredients that you can’t readily identify (or maybe even pronounce)
most sugars– the more refined, the worse they are for us, but GAPS even eliminates comparatively natural ones like maple syrup and coconut sugar for the time being– leaving raw honey and fruit as options for sweetening
starches and starchier veggies, including potatoes and sweet potatoes– for now
gums and thickeners
grains– again, some of these can come back after healing
fresh dairy– this is temporary, but for now, just butter, ghee, and fermented dairy
nuts, beans, and seeds– some of these return during the healing process, but are carefully prepared to limit damage and enhance digestibility and nutrition
nightshades– tomatoes, peppers, etc., though they are often reintroduced early

Foods to Add

meat stock– this is not the same as bone broth, although people define bone broth different ways– you want a short-cooked stock made of fresh meat that includes bones, meat, skin if applicable, and all the gristly and connective parts you can. This is more healing than long-cooked broths made of previously cooked bones. Bone broth is for after healing.
ferments– all sorts of fermented veggies like sauerkraut, beets, carrots, fermented juices such as beet kvass and sauerkraut juice, home-cultured dairy such as milk kefir and cream, etc.
organ meats– highly nourishing, nutrient dense organs such as liver, heart, etc.

The GAPS Diet Simplified– the food part

So, what to do if all of this is just way too much right now?

A common suggestion is to start with the full GAPS diet, which is far less restrictive than the early phases. Then go back and do the introductory phases later. It will be easier when you are more used to the foods and have done a good bit of detoxing and healing first.

But what if even that is too overwhelming?

I would suggest that you take baby steps! As far as what to eliminate, start with the worst offenders. This might vary by individual, so consider what you know to be true of you or your family.

If you have known allergies or sensitivities, then start there. Someone with celiac disease, for example, really must not ever eat gluten; if you have a nut allergy, you know to strictly avoid nuts.

Do this first!

Go after the things in your diet that aren’t really food at all. The additives, the unpronounceable ingredients, the things you don’t have in your kitchen cupboard and wouldn’t recognize if you saw them. Stick with real foods, or, as my former colleague put it, “food that remembers dirt.”

I would put cheap oils in this category. You know the ones– the ones we used to hear were good for us, that are called vegetable or seed oils depending on whether they are being encouraged or discouraged. The industrial oils that are heavily processed and inflammatory–

canola oil
corn oil
cottonseed oil
palm kernel oil
safflower oil
soybean oil
sunflower seed oil

If this is new information, it may come as a shock! Read more here.

You may need quite some time to get the non-foods out of your diet, but go at the pace you can handle. Those non-foods never really have a place in our lives, unlike some of the other foods to avoid on the GAPS diet. Chip away at them as you are able.

After that, decide where to focus your efforts. I would suggest reducing sugars and aiming for more natural ones first, since the sugars feed pathogens that make us sick. But you could work on reducing and eliminating other items on the list first.

What to add first

Image by Lisa Redfern from Pixabay

Happily, the core healing foods on the GAPS diet are fairly easy to learn to make and work into your diet. Much easier than the restrictions!

The number one thing to do, the absolute most important thing on the GAPS diet, the tippy-top healing element has to be GAPS meat stock. Learn to make it the right way for maximum healing benefits. It isn’t hard!

Bone broth isn’t the thing. (Don’t buy bone broth and expect healing, even the expensive ones!) There is nothing wrong with bone broth, unless you are sensitive to histamines, but it lacks crucial amino acids and so is not healing in the way that fresh, short-cooked meat stock is. Meat stock is easy and tastes better, anyway!

If you make no other steps toward the GAPS diet, start making meat stock. And consuming it… Here are good written instructions. Here is a video version. You can do this!

If your budget is tight, use cheaper cuts like wings and drumsticks. They have bones, skin, and lots of gristly bits. Use conventional meat if you need to; it still has healing properties.

Next steps

Once you have mastered meat stock and feel ready to try another thing, pick a ferment. Start where you want; veggies are easy and well tolerated by many people, but dairy is good too.

Veggies like sauerkraut, carrots, cucumber, etc. are very easy to ferment. You just need to add salt and water! Stick them in a jar and that’s about it! Here are more detailed instructions.

Dairy products are also pretty simple to work with. You need a starter, though. Buy milk kefir grains (or ask a friend for some!), put them in milk, and strain the grains out of the milk after 24 hours. Check here for more specific kefir instructions.

For cream, put a couple tablespoons of kefir in cream, let it sit for 24 hours or more, and then refrigerate. Did I mention that this is easy to do?! Here is more about GAPS cultured cream.

While I would suggest starting with fermenting because it is super easy and the beneficial bacteria help move the health needle, you could start with something else. Organ meat is intensely nourishing! That could be a good move if you can pull it off. Hearts tastes better than livers, in my opinion.

Since you (I hope) ditched any inflammatory oils you were using, you probably replaced them with something else. Those animal fats we were taught to fear? They are also core healing foods on the GAPS diet.

Egg yolks, butter, beef tallow, etc– all from high quality sources where the animals ate grass or bugs and went outside– are crucial elements of the GAPS diet, and easy to work into meals.

They also taste good, and you may find them much more appealing at first than ferments and organ meat.

What About the Non-Food Parts of the GAPS Diet Simplified?

As I mentioned, the GAPS protocol includes much more than food– supplements, lifestyle habits, detoxing, cleaning up things like personal care products, cookware, cleaning products, etc.

The scope of GAPS is partly what makes it so overwhelming!

Again, do the thing you can do. One at a time is great; once you get used to one, you can tackle another. I’m not going to go into a lot of detail here. I will give a few simpler, less expensive ideas to try in any order you feel you can handle:

go outside– especially in the morning, but anytime you can– and get sunshine with no sunscreen or sunglasses. Even just 10 minutes, but more if you can. Your hormones, sleep, immune system, mood, and more will benefit! Avoid sunburn.
walk barefoot on dirt or sand and/or swim in natural bodies of water
take Epsom salt baths for detoxing– put them in kids’ baths, too! Also consider baking soda, apple cider vinegar, and other detox baths. Soak just your feet if you aren’t into baths.
when you run out of a cleaning product, look for a less toxic version or make your own– here are some of my go-to’s that aren’t pricey.
same thing when you run out of toothpaste, deodorant, makeup, etc– replace it with something that isn’t working against your health.
cookware lasts quite awhile, so you could either replace more commonly used items first, find less toxic replacements for things that wear out on you, or dive in and overhaul the whole kitchen. Consider thrift stores for good deals, but educate yourself first. Glass, stainless steel, cast iron, etc.
add a houseplant here and there for better air quality
open the windows, use a good furnace filter, invest in an air purifier
learn stress management– deep breathing, stretching, etc.
exercise– walk, hike, try Pilates (I use youtube videos for free), try a rebounder for extra detox
sweat– this may come with exercising, but sweating is a way to reduce your toxic load
water– stay hydrated with water and electrolytes– get a good water filter when you can or drink spring water

Even if you just do easy, free things, or replace one food at a time with a better one, you can get results. Each change you make, once it becomes habit, counts! After awhile, you may be surprised at how many changes you are able to make. They add up.

The short version of the GAPS diet simplified:

eat real food– and get more real over time
start making meat stock– add ferments later
go outside
slowly switch to less toxic products

Maybe over time, you will get to implement the GAPS diet! Or maybe, just maybe, you won’t even need to!

Even if fully implementing the GAPS diet is not for you, I recommend reading the books. The dietary and lifestyle plan is the same in both books.

The “yellow book” is older, shorter, and more brain-focused. Lots of info, and a quicker read. Here is my review.

The “blue book” is more recent, addresses brain but focuses more on physical health, and offers a thorough primer on how the body works. There are also some variations for specific types of health problems. Here is my review of the blue book.

Here is my article on tackling the GAPS diet on a budget.