Discover essential tips for transitioning to a gluten-free lifestyle for celiac disease. Embrace a healthier, gluten-free home and diet.
Embracing a Gluten-Free Lifestyle: A Comprehensive Guide for Those with Celiac Disease
Transitioning from a gluten-filled diet to a gluten-free lifestyle can be a significant change, especially for those dealing with celiac disease or gluten sensitivity. It’s important to understand the fundamentals of what gluten is and how it affects the body. Gluten is a protein found in wheat, barley, and rye, and for individuals with celiac disease, consuming gluten can lead to serious health complications. Therefore, making the switch to gluten-free eating involves not only avoiding these grains but also learning how to read labels and identify hidden sources of gluten in processed foods.
Incorporating fresh produce into a gluten-free diet is essential for maintaining a balanced nutritional intake. Many people find it beneficial to explore local options for organic or fresh produce deliveries, which can help simplify meal planning and ensure access to healthy ingredients. By focusing on whole foods such as fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and gluten-free grains like quinoa and rice, individuals can create delicious and satisfying meals that align with their new dietary restrictions. This shift not only supports health but also fosters a more mindful approach to eating and living.
Embrace a New Culinary Journey: Navigating the Gluten-Free Lifestyle with Confidence and Flavor
Hey everyone, Erica with the K here. Today’s video is going to be on how we transitioned from not gluten-free to gluten-free. I thought that this video might be helpful to some people out there. We are personally vegans, but even if you’re not a vegan, I think that this would be helpful for you. There are some things that are specific for.
Vegans, but there are other things that are just kind of in general um helpful. We found out that my husband had celiac. actually went to the doctor for myself and I was like, “Hey, this gastro person has another opening right after me. Why don’t we just go together and like get this done?” And that’s what we did. And the gastro person was basically like,.
“What are you guys doing here? You’re so young.” And I was like, “Lady, we’ve been through a lot. Please, you have no idea. We’re going to test you both for ciliac.” So, we both got blood work done. And she was like, “And I think that you probably need a colonoscopy to my husband because he’s in his 40s and never had one.” And there were some.
Things that they thought, well, maybe you need an endoscopy and a colonoscopy. And so we had scheduled that and we didn’t think anything of it. We got our blood work done that day. So this was like a few maybe like a month or two before the holidays. I got a phone call saying that I did not have ciliac and we just didn’t really think much about like.
My husband. He never got the phone call. And then we got a call right after the holidays. It was during like the holiday break. They were probably waiting until after the holidays and they were like, “Hey, ciliac. You can’t have gluten anymore.” We weren’t completely shocked because people in his like biological family, they have a gluten allergy. They.
Have ciliac. So, well, one person, the other people just feel better when they eat that way, but only one of them actually has ciliac. So, uh we did kind of think that uh this was a possibility for him. They don’t give you any advice. They don’t really say anything to you. They’re just like, “Hey, stop eating gluten. Good luck.” And if we didn’t if.
We weren’t so familiar with Siliac to begin with, I think we really would have been lost. And that’s kind of why I wanted to make this video. That is why I wanted to make this video because I feel like some people might just actually be lost. My family has no idea what the difference between gluten-free and vegan is. They have no idea what I’m talking.
About. They literally do not know what gluten-free means. And so I thought, well, if I got diagnosed with celiac and I had to explain it to them or tell them what what we need to do, this would be the video for it. So anyway, the first thing we did, uh they said basically you could still eat gluten, but uh we’re going to have you come in and do like.
The endo and the colonoscopy. And so during that time, we specifically ate gluten like to the point where it was obnoxious because we had a lot of gluten in the house because we are vegan. A lot of our protein did come from wheat protein and wheat is gluten. We ate a lot of it and we both felt like We felt horrible after it. The first thing.
Was trying to eat as much of it as possible. Anything that was unopened that was gluten, so we had like pasta, soy sauce, which you wouldn’t think that soy sauce has it, but it does. You got to read the labels. You got to read the back. If it says contain wheat or if it doesn’t say gluten-free, those are obviously red flags. Um, so anything.
That was unopened, we did not open during this time. We literally packed it up. We donated it. We gave it to friends and family. We were like, “We don’t want this in our house anymore.” I think it’s so important if people in your family have it to just be a gluten-free household because crosscontamination is real and you can get really sick from.
It. My husband doesn’t get vomit sick. he gets like has to go to the bathroom sick and that’s been his normal for so long that now that we don’t have gluten, if something even touches his food that has gluten, he’ll have to go to the bathroom right away. And so, um, that was his normal before and now it’s not. So, that’s that’s been good that we know.
That we’ve been steering clear of gluten. So, the first thing was to go through everything in the house and get rid of it after the colonoscopy and the endo the endoscopy the endoscopy. After that, uh, they were like, “All right, no more gluten at all.” So, we started eating separate.
So, anything that was still opened that was gluten, I would eat, and anything that wasn’t, he would eat. So, he would eat like the gluten-free version of things, and I would eat the gluten version of things. Again, anything that was unopened, we just kind of donated. And I would only really eat like if we have like crackers. Like, I only eat.
Crackers when he’s not home because I feel rude about it because like they have gluten in it. And I don’t want to be like eating crackers that he can’t have. Like I won’t eat something in his face that he can’t have unless we have the gluten-free version of it too and we can both have it together. The only thing we still have in this house is one.
We we have a lot of we eat a lot of soy sauce. We eat a lot of Asian cuisine. We cook at home. That’s primarily what we eat. And we had a lot of soy sauce. So one big jar we got from like BJ’s. We gave that away to friends. And then the other one was like half done. So, anytime we make sushi at home or even order sushi, we always make sure we.
Specify it has to be gluten-free, but I’ll eat the non-gluten-free soy sauce that we still have at home. And we’re very careful with crosscontamination. We don’t put our chopsticks in each other’s food. We don’t kiss during meals. We’re very, very particular. We make sure we wash everything, rinse it separately. Um, we’re very, very, very anal about.
It. As soon as they called us and told us that he had the gluten allergy, I went in the refrigerator and I separated all the gluten things from the non-gluten things. And that’s how we knew like we have to eat these first. I’ve definitely talked about this in another video, but I have a food calendar that I have on our refrigerator.
And I write down our meals in it so that it’s not meal prepping, but it’s kind of like just so we know what we have in the house and what we can cook. It’s great for like being able to like be more prepared. You don’t have to stick by it, of course. You can be like, I don’t really feel like eating that today. I.
Feel like eating something else. But it’s nice just to have an idea of what you have. And I put a whole bunch of the gluten food on that. And as I had said, we were like so tired of gluten by the time he got everything done. We literally won’t go to like um out to eat with friends. If it’s doesn’t call out gluten-free, we don’t go to it. We don’t.
Want to crosscontaminate. We don’t want to mess with that. And we recently went to a gluten-free vegan restaurant near us and my husband got so sick and we were like never going back there again because that’s that. Um, so yeah, we try to be very mindful of that. Uh, we’ll ask like, can you accommodate ciliac? And if they can, then they can. If they.
Can, then they can’t. Some places are like really, they really know what they’re talking about and they’re really good at that. We don’t buy anything that either doesn’t call out gluten-free or if it says like made in a factory that processes wheat, even if it’s it won’t say gluten-free if even if it says that on the back. I think it only says.
Gluten-ree when it’s like gluten-free. Um, but if it says it on the back, even if there are no wheat ingredients, if it says like processed in a facility that may have blah blah blah, we just don’t get it. There’s just no reason for it. We cook, I would say 99.9% of our meals at home. And my husband is really great at making bread. So, pizza, bread,.
Everything. He’s really good. He’s a very good cook. So, he was able to just transition that really easily. Like, that wasn’t difficult for us. We still have like bread, but we have the gluten-free kind. Um the actual flour, we had a lot of flour because like I said, he’s really good at baking bread. And the gluten one, uh we found out.
Other things that you can do with it. So we can make ornaments with it. So we have it set aside, uh in our other refrigerator, and that’s like the gluten stuff. And you can make ornaments with the flour, the semolina flour, cuz we had that too for the pizza dough. You can dry out flowers, which I wanted to do. So we have all of that set aside for.
Crafts. If my husband partakes in the crafts, he’ll wear gloves. Um, but we’re not consuming the things. So, like we did find other alternatives for some of the gluten stuff that we had. Any kind of alcohol if it had gluten in it, I would drink it. Like we have these not your father’s root beer. It doesn’t it I’m quite positive it has gluten in it,.
But like I drink that. He doesn’t. Um, and stuff like that. So, we wouldn’t purchase it again in the future. My husband likes whiskey. He likes bourbon. and like we’ll look up um specific things. We went out recently to communion and the gift bag had like chocolates and stuff in it and we looked up to see like what he can eat and what.
He can’t eat. When we do go out to restaurants, uh so we’re both vegan. He’s more of an imperfect vegan. If there are gluten-free options but they’re not vegan, he’ll do that. Like he’ll he’s we’re more lenient with that because otherwise like we just really wouldn’t be able to eat out. So, at home, we’re like 100% gluten-free, 100%.
Vegan. But when we go out, like if there’s something that has like cheese or something in it, but it’s gluten-free. Like, we’ll do that. A lot of Asian cuisine is um glutenfree or they can accommodate for it. You want to make sure cuz soy sauce is not gluten-free, but they do have gluten-free soy sauce. Anytime we see.
Gluten-free soy sauce in the store, we buy like two bottles of it. It’s It’s more expensive, but it’s worth it. It’s also really good. and Mexican cuisine, which are our two favorite things to eat, literally. Um, and Mexican cuisine online shopping like Misfit Market. I’ll have a coupon code linked down below if you guys want to check them out. You get.
$35 off your first order. You can shop just by gluten-free, you can shop by plant-based, you can shop by just produce, you can shop by whatever you want. Um, so shopping online for groceries makes it very easy. And in some stores like Stop and Shop, they have like full gluten-free aisles. And so shopping in those makes it equally as.
Easy. We still check the back of everything though cuz like even if it’s in a gluten-free aisle, we still like want to make sure that we’re like 100% sure it’s gluten-free. So if it doesn’t call it out on the front, we do check the back. But anyway, I wanted to make this video in case this helps anybody. And uh thank you all so much for.
Watching. Don’t forget to like and subscribe if you want to see some of my husband’s vegan gluten-free food that he makes at home. I’m going to be like so excited to share that stuff. So let me know. I love you guys and I’ll talk to you later. Bye.
