GAPS for Beginners Series: Fats on GAPS

Like broth and fermented vegetables, healthy fats are another important component of the GAPS diet. Fats are integral to many bodily functions and are absolutely essential for healing your gut and the rest of your body. If you’re considering GAPS, you will need to focus on eating as much healthy fat as you can. Depending on what your diet was like pre-GAPS, this may mean you need to dramatically increase your fat consumption.

Even if you don’t think you need GAPS, taking a look at your fat consumption is still worthwhile. Everyone needs to eat plenty of healthy fats for optimum health.

If you’re new to GAPS or traditional foods, you may be wondering what I mean by healthy fats. I’m referring to the types of traditional fats that people have eaten for thousands of years: animal fats, coconut oil, palm oil, avocados, olive oil, fish oil and nut oils. (If you’re unfamiliar with why traditional fats, especially saturated fats, are good for you, this article provides a good introduction.)

The best types of fats for the GAPS diet are animal fats, like lard, beef tallow, chicken fat, egg yolks and butter. Coconut oil and palm oil are also nourishing and healing. We should also eat olive oil, avocados, some nut oils and a small amount of fish oil and cod liver oil.

Exactly how much fat you should eat on GAPS is a bit elusive. As far as I can tell there is no specified perfect amount. (The closest I’ve seen is that you should eat “a lot”!) I suggest trying to eat as much as you can every day. Go out of your way to include a lot of fat in your meals and snacks. I don’t really think there’s much danger of eating too much; assuming that you’re still eating at least meats and vegetables, I think it would be hard to overdo it on the fats because they’re so filling.

I personally still struggle with getting enough fat every day. I’m working on finding some new ways to up my intake, but here are some suggestions that work for me now:

  • Top veggies or meats with butter or olive oil after serving
  • Spread butter on baked goods
  • Cook veggies in generous amounts of fat
  • Add butter or other fat to soup after serving
  • Add melted coconut oil to smoothies
  • Make guacamole
  • Make coconut milk ice cream
  • Make sour cream
  • Add coconut milk or cream to kefir or smoothies
  • Add egg yolks to ice cream or smoothies
  • Make chocolates
  • Make mayonnaise
  • Make coconut butter

Some people have trouble with a sudden transition to a high-fat diet. If you experience symptoms when eating more fat, try starting out with a small amount and slowly increasing your intake. Some people also benefit from supplementing with ox bile.

This post is part of Fight Back Friday.

Do you think you’re eating enough fat? What are you favorite ways to incorporate fat into your diet?

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4 Responses to GAPS for Beginners Series: Fats on GAPS

  1. Brittany says:
    I was wondering about almond milk every thing is talkig about cocount milk if we could have almond mild with Gaps Diet i still learn alot just start my son and husband on it and i trying to get on it to lol

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