Cravings and Deficiencies
Let’s kick off a new Blog Series: GAPS Guidance. Each week, for an undesignated amount of weeks, I will post about an area of GAPS that I find myself coaching clients on frequently. Short and sweet posts to hopefully help you have a bit more guidance on your journey to heal on the GAPS diet.
This week: Cravings and Deficiencies.
Craving something? It could mean you’re deficient in something else. Let’s look at a few typical cravings and see what the body might be trying to tell us.
| Craving: | Body Needs: | GAPS Foods to Help |
| Pop/Soda | Calcium | 24 hour fermented yogurt, Fatty fish, GAPS legal cheeses (Full GAPS) |
| Alcohol | Potassium | Full GAPS: Bananas, cantelope, avocado, coconut water, navy beans |
| Ice Cream | Vitamin B12 | Beef liver, fish, eggs |
| Cheese | Healthy Fat | Liver, eggs, avocado, olive oil |
| Salty things like chips | Chloride | Seaweed, celery, olives, mineral salt |
| Bread/Pasta | Fiber/Protein | Raw veggies & fruit/ chicken, pork, beef, etc |
When I take a new client I always have them fill out a questionnaire that asks about certain cravings. This can go a long way to let me know if they are struggling with certain deficiencies. Those who come to GAPS are always deficient in some way but our cravings can often give us direct insight into which direction we should go to fix the issue.
It can be really difficult moving to the GAPS diet off of a traditional American diet. If you are taking the leap from a very processed-type diet to GAPS I would recommend starting with the full GAPS diet unless the situation is very dire and requires beginning on the Intro diet. Full GAPS has a wide variety of foods that can help make the transition a bit easier.
If you’re struggling with giving up soda/pop I would recommend a flavorless sparkling water. We call them boojy water in our house. San Pellegrino is my recommended brand and has tested the lowest for metals and other nasty things you tend to want to avoid while on the GAPS diet.
Full GAPS has a lot of cheese options for those who can do dairy and if you are taking a child through this can be a really nice option to ease them into the diet. Be sure and check out the list of foods found in the GAPS book.
Liver is nature’s multivitamin. It covers a great many nutritional bases. I highly recommend incorporating liver into the diet if at all possible. Fresh is always best but if it isn’t possible to get a hold of raw liver to make pate or liver and onions then I would recommend supplementing. This is one of my favorite brands.
Sometimes cravings are for sugar and these are often driven by pathogenic bacteria in the gut. The gut and the brain are connected and these little beasties are the drivers of sugary cravings. This can even come in cravings for fruit. Now, is fruit bad? No. It is full of fiber and minerals that, if tolerated, can be a wonderful addition to your diet. But fruit contains fructose (sugar) that can feed pathogenic bacteria. So fruit should be moderated when on the GAPS diet. What do I mean by that? I mean each person will have an individual response to the amount of fruit they consume. With my son, Raleigh, we had to be very careful with how much fruit he ate daily. If he ate too much we would see his eczema increase. So the fructose was having an effect on his body, on his symptoms and encouraging the yeast to get a little out of control.
In the Introduction diet fruit does not make an appearance until the fifth stage. There is very good reason for this and it is important to follow the stages and listen to how your body is reacting once fruit is introduced in stages five and six.
GAPS is all about listening to the cues your body is giving you through symptoms and cravings. Cravings tend to diminish and eventually change, even change to the point where you are craving very GAPS-y things like organ meats, healthy saturated fats and meat off the bone. This is a good thing! Listen to your body and trust the process as you eat your way to healing on the GAPS diet.