The Summer of GAPS, Water Filtration, and (Hopefully) Retaining My Sanity

Weigh in time. I know how he feels.
Courtesy of the Dutch National Archive on Flickr.

I'm back. Life, as it often happens, got in the way of blogging. The inconveniently late hour of summer sunset has my girls up a lot later these days, so I frequently find myself tucking my youngest in with that last nursing session, only to cross the hallway to brush my teeth and collapse into bed myself, in the hopes of scoring a decent 7 or 8 hours before Crossfit. I also am sitting on quite the backlog of lunchbox pictures to post, once I get my dates and lunchbox numbers straightened out, so stay tuned as those slowly get filled in.

There's been a lot going on during the daytimes, too. As I mentioned in the last post, I recently finished my second ever whole30. It was a successful run - I dropped my body fat 3.58%, which was gaining 4.59 lb. of lean mass while losing 7.59 lb. of fat mass. I'm now at 135.82 lb. of lean mass, while I continue to slowly chip away at my fat mass. I also lost 2.5 inches off my hips and 3/4 of an inch off my waist.

As always, I was so happy to have the commiseration of my fellow Crossfitters this time around. There were similar stories of fat loss and lean mass gained in the other folks doing the whole30 - it truly is a great all-purpose detox/reboot/grounding effort if you're looking to regain your dietary center in terms of viewing food as fuel first.

My husband recently spent last weekend installing a Watts reverse osmosis water filter. Water filtration has always been one of those things that I thought of as "I'll look more into that in a few years..." I was definitely putting it off. I even had a Weston A. Price Foundation oriented friend ask a few months back what I thought of water filtering, and at the time I said that it was too big of a leap for me to take.

Funnily enough, though, we've found ourselves looking at doing the GAPS diet for at least one family member this summer, and that consideration functioned as a major catalyst. If you haven't heard of the GAPS diet, its main premise is healing and sealing the lining of the gut, and promoting the growth of good bacteria while preventing the overgrowth of bad bacteria. It also happens to be a very paleo-friendly approach, based in a refined carb free whole foods diet, and lots of homemade bone broth - at least a little bit served at every meal! But...it is recommended that the broth is made with filtered water. Why is this? Tap water (like ours) often has fluoride and chlorine - the fluoride cited by the government as an addition for general population dental health, and the chlorine being there to begin with to kill pathogens (it's simply never removed after the fact). So, both of these function as bacteria killers, and if you're trying to promote the flourishing of good intestinal bacteria, that unfiltered tap water can get in the way of your efforts. So, those factors considered, we found our motivation about looking into filtered water galvanized. While you can hire a plumber to install this kind of water filter (ours fits under the kitchen sink), you can definitely tackle it as a DIY project, too. In addition to reading through the included installation instructions, my husband also spent a bit of time browsing online DIY forum advice for installation tips. He did a great job! I must say, though we weren't as motivated by taste reasons, the taste difference between our old tap water and the reverse osmosis filtered water is astonishing. I love our deliciously clean-tasting new filtered water!

Have you been motivated to make a major change in your kitchen routine lately? What projects are on your plate for the summer?




This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Shopping Amazon through Primal Kitchen affiliate links supports Primal Kitchen at no additional cost to you, so thank you!! We purchased our water filter of our own volition, with no incentives or discounts from Amazon or the manufacturer.