“All disease begins in the gut” — Hippocrates
The Introduction Diet has a reputation for being the hard part, and it is certainly the narrow part. But most of the difficulty people report comes from doing it without knowing what it is for — which turns six purposeful stages into six arbitrary restrictions.
So: what is it for?
Closing the gaps in the gut wall
The premise of the whole protocol is a gut lining that has become permeable, letting partly-digested food and microbial by-products reach a bloodstream that was never meant to see them. Every stage of the Introduction Diet is aimed at that lining.
The foods are chosen for two properties: they demand very little digestive work, and they supply the specific materials — gelatine, amino acids, animal fats — that gut lining is built from.
The six stages, briefly
- One. Meat stock, well-cooked meat and vegetables from the stock, a little ferment juice. Nothing else.
- Two. Raw egg yolk, ghee, and stews with plenty of fat.
- Three. Ripe avocado, GAPS pancakes, scrambled egg in generous fat.
- Four. Roasted and grilled meat, cold-pressed olive oil, fresh vegetable juice.
- Five. Cooked apple purée, raw vegetables, small amounts of fruit juice.
- Six. Raw apple, more fruit, and the beginnings of baking with nut flour.
Move to the next stage when the current one is comfortable — not when the calendar says so. There is no prize for finishing early.
How long it takes
Anywhere from three weeks to several months, and the range is not a sign that some people are doing it wrong. A child with mild symptoms may move through in a fortnight. An adult with twenty years of autoimmune history should expect to take considerably longer, and should not read that as failure.
The most common mistake
Rushing. The second most common is under-eating, because the food list looks short and people forget that the portions are meant to be generous and frequent. Stock several times a day, fat with everything, and no gaps between meals long enough to leave you depleted.
Do that, and the narrow part turns out to be considerably shorter than the reputation suggests.