WHAT I EAT IN A DAY WHILE BREASTFEEDING AN 8 MONTH OLD | Grain + Sugar Free Modified GAPS Diet

Hi guys, this is Megan with the blog wilsonhomestead.com and today I want to share with you what I eat in a day as a breastfeeding mom. I've had a lot of requests for this video. I get questions a lot about what I eat because we have quite a healthy diet. We have been on the GAPS diet a couple times. My husband is on it off and on pretty much all the time. I haven't been on it while I'm breastfeeding my son, but now that he is eight months old, I have been slowly transitioning back over to the full GAPS diet and then in a couple months, we will be doing the intro GAPS diet. If you want some more videos on what the GAPS diet is, I'm going to link an amazing playlist from Bumblebee Apothecary. She has my favorite GAPS diet videos. I have learned so much from her. She is like my go-to person when I need to know something about the GAPS diet and I will be doing more videos in the future as we're going into it this next time. As we're doing the intro, I will bring you guys along with us and show you what we're doing, but I've had a lot of questions about how I eat while I'm breastfeeding and stay healthy, eat a lot of foods that are healthy, but have high enough carbs to keep my mucus play up. Right now, I'm like almost on the full GAPS diet. There's a few things that you'll see in this video that I did that aren't technically GAPS. I do have maple syrup in my coffee, which isn't technically GAPS, but I also know that it doesn't irritate my stomach and I also have potatoes, which also is not GAPS, but we're not doing super strict right now because I am still breastfeeding and he's only eight months old, so I feel like potatoes are okay, but I am avoiding all grains and all sugars right now. I just have to eat a bit more quantity to keep my supply up since I'm not eating as many carbs, but I also have been feeling a lot better. I have a lot higher energy now that I'm eating just proteins and good vegetables and fermented foods. I actually recently started switching over and before that, I was actually still eating pretty healthy. The only grains that we ever have are einkorn grains and most of the time, I even ferment them, so we have a lot of sourdough grains and when we eat sugar, we have either organic cane sugar, honey, or maple syrup, so still very healthy compared to the average American diet, but still, I was starting to feel a little tired and so I just felt like it was time for a change and so since I switched back to doing kind of a slightly modified version of the full GAPS diet, I've been feeling really good. A lot more energy before when I get to the evening time, I would be drained and I was like, something has to change because I can't just run out of energy when it comes to the evening and barely be able to make dinner. I also wanted to mention that I have Graves' disease, which is hyperthyroid, and so I do keep going back to this no grain. I avoid gluten anyway, but if I can avoid grains, gluten, sugar, stuff like that, even grains like quinoa, I avoid. My thyroid is so much better, so this is just something that I keep coming back to and I just always do well with, but anyway, let's just get right into seeing what I ate yesterday. So what I do first thing when I get up, me and my husband get up together at 5.30 in the morning, usually, sometimes it's more like 6. Right away, I make us both a cup of coffee. So even though I'm breastfeeding, I still drink coffee. I've actually had coffee throughout both of my pregnancies for a lot of the time and I also drink coffee the whole time I'm breastfeeding and I have never had an issue with it. My babies sleep great. They don't seem to be affected by the caffeine and they're just like super, super healthy, so it doesn't really seem to affect them and I feel totally comfortable with doing it. So I make myself and my husband an AeroPress coffee. I absolutely have been loving my AeroPress. It's a little similar to the French press and I have one of those as well and I really enjoy it, but lately I've been on an AeroPress kick. So I brew my AeroPress coffee and then I pour a little bit of raw cream in it. We get cow's milk from a person in town, so a local person with raw, good cow's milk and whenever I get milk, once a week, I skim all the cream off the top and I steal it for my coffee because that is my favorite way to use the cream. It just makes the coffee so delicious. I also put in a splash of maple syrup. I used to use sugar or even honey, but since I switched to using maple syrup, I know this isn't super common, but it gives it such a lovely taste, such a nice maple-y, robust taste. It really goes along with the coffee really well. So that is my one main cheat that I have every day. It's really not that bad and especially since I know it doesn't bother my stomach, I feel fine doing it, but technically I should be having raw honey and when we switch to the gash diet, I will just switch to using raw honey, but I really like my maple syrup in my coffee. Once it gets to be time that the kids start getting up, which is usually around 7 or 7 30, I get myself a nice big quart of water. I drink a lot of water during the day because I am breastfeeding and I also have been struggling with some kidney stones, so it's important for me to drink a lot of water. My goal is to drink a gallon of water a day, which I don't always get there because I don't really enjoy drinking water, but at least that's the goal. So my first big glass of water, I put my magnesium supplement in it. We use the Calm Magnesium Supplement. It's a powder that you put in water. We really like it, so I drink that in my first quart of water for the day. After that, for breakfast this morning, I actually just drank some kefir. So I got my kefir off the counter that had been fermenting for 24 hours since the day before. I strained it out. I strained all the kefir grains out and then I poured the kefir back into a jar. I made my kefir grains for the next day as usual, so I put the kefir grains in a jar in another quart jar and I poured fresh milk over it and I will cover it and leave it to sit for tomorrow. So I try to drink a quart or at least a pint of kefir every day and I have gotten to really, really enjoy the taste of it. So I actually enjoy eating it for breakfast and I have gotten to really, really enjoy the taste of it, so I actually enjoy eating it for breakfast. It's really super, super filling and super healthy. It's just so good to get your gut started off with all the amazing probiotics from kefir straight off in the day. I really like having bone broth with breakfast sometimes, but we are currently out of it. We are getting a quarter of a cow and a whole hog this next month, so we'll be set on bone broth for a while after that. So normally I would have something else like eggs or bone broth with the kefir, but I didn't feel like making eggs either, so I just had the kefir and that gave me plenty of energy. My daughter also had kefir for breakfast since she's had it for pretty much her whole life when she started to be able to drink it. She actually enjoys kefir even though it's sour, so I had made some blueberry kefir smoothie a while before, so I just let her finish that up. I actually personally prefer the kefir plain without it being turned into a smoothie, so I was just letting her drink the blueberry smoothie because I just wanted the plain kefir. After that I took my cod liver oil supplement. I try to take cod liver oil and fish oil every day because it's really great for getting your baby all the omega-3 fatty acids and all the vitamins that are in those supplements. So I will link where I get both the cod liver oil and the fish oil. So between breakfast and lunch, I just kind of tried to continue drinking as much water as I could and drinking some coffee. From my cup this morning, I tend to take forever to drink my coffee. It's usually freezing cold by the time I actually finish it. Once it was lunchtime, I had made a big huge crockpot of soup. We make soup with a bunch of vegetables and meat, and just cooking in the crockpot all night with the meat and the bones in the meat, it actually turns the broth into bone broth. So it's actually a really, really fabulous way to make gap soup. So this soup had carrots and onions and garlic and different spices like oregano and basil and salt and pepper and a little paprika, I think. And then we had put meat on top and put some water in it, and it cooked all night and turned into soup. And so we shredded the meat the next morning. My husband took some for work and me and the kids ate a bunch for lunch. But having a lot of good soups with bone broth with all the gelatin and collagen that's in that, it's just so fabulous for you. After that, I made my second cup of coffee with the AeroPress and the raw cream and made the syrup, which is so good. And then I think I may have made another one in the evening. I don't quite remember. I usually have around two or three cups of coffee a day. If I drink much more than that, it gets harder and harder to get enough water into me, and it starts dehydrating me. So around two or three cups of coffee, and then that lets me have enough space in my stomach still to drink plenty of water. Around this time, I started drinking my second quart of water. I think I only got up to three quarts of water today, but that is okay. Somewhere between three quarts and a gallon is okay with me. In the afternoon between lunch and dinner, I had some snacks. I just was getting a little bit hungry. I tend to get snacky when I was doing my computer work. I was doing some editing, and I tend to get snacky while I'm just sitting there. So I had some cheese. We get some mild cheddar cheese, and I just had cut it into sticks so it was easier for Sophie to eat, but I ended up eating some anyway. I also had a banana and some cherry tomatoes from our garden. They were the very last cherry tomatoes from our garden. We had split them up between all of us, and it was just nice to have another little taste of the garden before next spring when we finally get our next harvest. So that may seem like a pretty big snack, but keep in mind that I'm I eat a lot. So I just eat as much as my body is asking for. So whenever I feel hungry, I will grab some sort of food that is nutrient-dense and healthy and filling. I don't just fill up on carbs or cookies or sugary things because that's going to make it seem like I need more than I actually do because I'll start craving the grains and sugars. So as long as I'm grabbing a high-protein, healthy snack, my body's just gonna eat as much as it needs to. So I don't restrict myself at all with food, even when I'm not breastfeeding. A little bit later in the afternoon, I actually had a snack of dried plums, which I guess are probably technically prunes, but I'm not sure. I had gotten a whole bunch of plums from my grandparents' orchard, and I dehydrated about a gallon's worth. It turned out to be about a gallon of dried plums. So I had a really healthy snack option. For dinner, we actually had leftovers from the night before. So we had some pork steaks that I fried in good lard that I rendered myself. I had seasoned it with garlic, onion powder, oregano, thyme, and parsley. It tasted so good. I added a little bit more lard to it, and then I heated it up in the Instant Pot along with the beets that I had made. So pork steaks, beets that were cooked in the Instant Pot. I think there was carrots in there, but they turned purple, so I couldn't tell the difference between the beets and the carrots. And then we also had mashed potatoes. So the day before I had made all this stuff, I cooked the mashed potatoes, and then I mashed them up in the pot. And I actually don't add milk or butter to the mashed potatoes like I used to, because my husband can't have dairy. I can have dairy, so if I'm making food for myself, I will definitely add in a lot of dairy, because I love me some dairy. As long as it's healthy, raw, like good dairy. We don't drink milk from the store or get any store cream. It has to be raw milk or cream, and good grass-fed butter that's really orange and fabulous. I actually made these mashed potatoes with lard. I just put a bunch of scoops of lard, like probably half a cup or more of lard, and melted it in there. It gave it enough moisture so that the mashed potatoes were nice and creamy. I find that's a really good substitute for the regular butter and milk that you would add to mashed potatoes. And then I added some salt and pepper. So we had leftover some last night for the dinner tonight. We always eat up our leftovers. I actually make massive batches of food. I don't know what it is. It's hard for me to make a small amount of food. So I tend to make a lot, and then either the next day or the day after that, we will eat up the leftovers for dinner. If it's over the weekend, we'll actually have the leftovers for lunch when Luke's home with us, and then we'll make something new for the dinner. But we try to make sure we always eat up our leftovers so nothing goes to waste. During dinner, I drank most of my third quart. And then after dinner during the evening, I finished off that third quart. I think I might have had a little bit of my fourth quart. I can't quite remember. And then while we were watching a show after the kids were in bed, I ate some more dried plums and some dried bananas. And that is everything I ate. This is a realistic day. I showed you absolutely everything that I ate. I didn't leave anything out. This is exactly what I ate. And by the end of the day, I still had a lot of energy from all the protein and healthy fats that I had eaten all day and the fermented foods. So if you guys like this video, please give me a thumbs up and let me know that you'd like to see more. This actually was a pretty fun video to film. I haven't done a video like this before. So if you want to see any more of my days, I do eat a lot of different things. So if you want to see another day, what I eat in a day while I'm breastfeeding, just let me know and I will film another one. But thank you for watching this video and I will see you in my next one. Bye!