Discover easy tips for embracing a gluten-free lifestyle. Learn to navigate food choices, meal prep, and enjoy delicious, safe meals.
Your Essential Guide to Embracing Gluten-Free Living with Ease
Going gluten-free can be a challenging journey, but it often becomes more manageable over time. Many individuals find that as they adapt to this lifestyle change, they develop a better understanding of their dietary needs and how to navigate food choices. It’s important to recognize that this process is unique for everyone, and patience is essential as you learn what works best for you.
One key takeaway is to keep things simple at the beginning. Starting with basic gluten-free foods can ease the transition and prevent feelings of being overwhelmed. By focusing on simple meals and gradually exploring more complex options, individuals can build confidence in their ability to maintain a gluten-free diet. Additionally, for those dealing with conditions like fibromyalgia, making dietary adjustments may lead to significant improvements in overall well-being and symptom management.
Embrace Freedom: Your Guide to Thriving Without Gluten
Welcome back to grain-free insights this is going to be the first of a series of seven maybe more videos that I have planned on things you need to know about going gluten-free they’re going to cover excuse me as I look away at my notes they’re going to cover today’s is going to be about going gluten-free is not.
Always easy but it gets easier and then watch for these coming forward people won’t always understand you but you will build a support system the next one finding the right medical support is tough sometimes but it’s worth it number four losing gluten can feel emotional but it opens new doors I’m really excited about that one giving up.
Gluten is a little bit like suffering the loss of a loved one and number five planning ahead is a must but it’s empowering number six mistakes happen but you’ll learn and grow number seven it’s not just about food it’s about advocacy so starting with today’s it’s not always easy but it gets easier I’d like to talk a little bit.
About what it was like for me when I first realized I needed to be tested to see if I was gluten intolerant I was going through a number of issues maybe some are similar for you maybe they’re different everybody’s different but for me it was pretty intense stomach pain diarrhea sometimes.
Constipation horrible brain fog mood changes and really for me really really really severe neurological problems it got to where I could barely walk and the only shoes I could comfortably wear even with business suits were Crocs very frustrating very hard I had no idea what was happening to me I thought that I was probably.
Aging faster than I wanted to now at the time I was in my oh let’s see late 40s early 50s and I was in a very high press wonderful job but very high pressure very demanding and very ignorantly I assumed that if I let anyone know that I was Ill that they would think that I was not suitable to work anymore that.
Was a huge mistake this was a company a corporation that had a huge human resource department and it’s their job to make sure that you are being protected and that you are being um supported in whatever illnesses or disabilities you might have I didn’t do that I did not go to Human Resources instead I just tried to work through.
Suffer through and I kept getting worse and worse and worse I eventually went to a doctor a rheumatologist who ran some tests and told me that I did not have celiac disease now just so you know celiac disease is when your upper Villi are being destroyed and you don’t absorb nutrients properly and a lot of.
Other things are going on it’s an autoimmune condition it’s very serious and needs to be taken very seriously gluten intolerance or non-celiac gluten sensitivity for some is mild for others is extremely severe I was one of those where it’s extremely severe my gluten sensitivity is so strong that I can’t even walk into a bakery where they’re.
Using flow and flow stays Airborne if I inhale that air I get a reaction uh the reaction being diarrhea again it’s all the other stuff brain fog neurological problems maybe not to the extent that I had before GL going glutenfree but it all resurfaces when I get gluten if I do get C in cross contact with gluten through food by.
Accident usually takes me about a week to get to the other side of it so anyway this doctor told me that I did not have celiac disease and didn’t look like I had any other problems so I didn’t need to worry about that turned out he was wrong I kept getting worse and worse I didn’t know what to do I had talked to a few.
Other doctors in the process but they weren’t rumatologist they weren’t gastroenterologists and um I realized that I needed a higher level of thinking so at the time I lived in the Chicago land area and the University of Chicago is right there as is the University of Chicago Celiac center part of their medical department so I went into the.
University of Chicago they ran a bunch of tests and they did determine that while I did not have celiac disease I did have non-celiac gluten intolerance now at the time and this was not told me by the doctor it was told to me by a nurse there when I was diagnosed as non-celiac gluten intolerant they said oh that means you never have to worry.
You can eat all the gluten that you want and you’re never going to have to worry about it you don’t have celiac disease well for me that absolutely is not true if I get glutened it mines celiac disease and I really do believe that somewhere in the future they’re going to classify or maybe they already have non-celiac gluten sensitivity or gluten.
Intolerance as an autoimmune condition of its own there’s a little more that I have to share about that it’s kind of interesting I have a friend she’s known as the gluten-free RN I probably need to have her on here and interview her one of these days um she is amazing and she is the last I talked to her she was working on some college textbooks for.
Medical students to learn about celiac disease and apparently there’s some study that was done in India where they followed a bunch of people that did not have classic celiac disease but they had crazy Celiac symptoms including the neuropathy the really bad neuropathy that I had and then they did testing and they found out that.
Their um DQ That’s that’s they can read your blood and if you are dq2 or dq8 it means that you might be predisposed to having celiac disease well these studies in India found that the people they were studying had dq6 and at least then they were thinking about maybe reclassifying it as a different form of celiac.
Disease I am a double dq6 so I just have a feeling that what I have needs to be treated absolutely as seriously as celiac disease and I do um and I know that if I don’t I get really really really really sick that was hard at first it it was kind of a mixed bag of emotions actually because I was so sick all I wanted was for.
Someone to tell me what the heck was wrong with me so I could get to the other side of it and once I finally got a diagnosis I was actually quite relieved because at least I knew what it was and at least I knew how to deal with it which meant giving up gluten for the rest of my life okay so good news the bad news the.
Good news is I found out the bad news is it wasn’t always going to be easy having to do that you know it’s funny I had given up McDonald’s years before being diagnosed and once I was diagnosed as never being able to eat gluten again I realized wow I’m never going to be able to go to McDonald’s again for the rest of my life.
I’m never going to be able to have real pizza or real pasta again for the rest of my life real pasta being one of my very favorite things I used to make it by hand all the time from scratch the oldfashioned way it was delicious I also used to bake bread weekly fresh baked bread two things that I just cherished in my life and I knew I’d have to give.
Them up so that was tough at first and like I said going down the road I’m going to have another chapter in this that talks about dealing with the grief of overcoming the loss of gluten it really does feel like you’re grieving for a loved one in some ways so stay tuned for that but anyway you learn you start to.
Learn you start to study hopefully you’re researching what to do and how to handle it because there’s a lot to learn a lot to learn about how not to cross-contaminate your kitchen a lot to learn about the type of utensils to use a lot to learn about what to do if you go to restaurants and how to talk to the servers to know that you’re going to be.
Completely safe even if ordering off of what is called quote a gluten-free menu it’s just a real Maze and then you start to learn when you go grocery shopping which brands you can trust which brands you can’t trust which brands you can sometimes trust and sometimes not for example a lot of Manufacturers will have a product that on the back for example.
Peas frozen peas on the back it we’ll say ingredients frozen peas and you buy those for months they might not be marked specifically gluten-free but you don’t have an issue with them and because there’s no warnings on the label you continue to buy them and then all of a sudden one day this happened to me one day you come home and you make the same.
Vegetable and you eat it and you’re getting reactions like crazy well luckily I still had the bag at the top of the trash can I pulled it out I looked at it and now there was a warning that it was processed in a plant that also processes wheat who knew that happens though companies manufacturers will.
Change um where they have their products manufactured from time to time and a lot of times it introduces wheat to the mix so no matter how often you’ve made you’ve used a product always check that link always now if it says gluten-free or certified gluten-free on the label that helps a little bit and I have a video.
About that I’ll link to it in the show notes but kind of tough trying to learn the ins and outs of everything kind of tough trying to tell people that just like with a bakery if they have worked with flour in their home within the last couple of days or so I probably can’t come to visit them because if I inhale that air I’m going to get a reaction.
Kind of tough telling people when in their horribly gluten contaminated kitchen they make you something gluten-free as a special present as a treat now in the beginning I used to just accept those and then give it to my H my husband can eat anything give it to my husband and he’d devour it and I wouldn’t say a word but then they’d keep.
Making me stuff spending their time spending their money spending their heart and soul showing me they care for me and eventually as hard as it is I got to the point to where I just had to say I’m sorry but I’ve learned that I could no longer eat something gluten-free if it’s not made in a completely gluten-free environment that was tough.
Sometimes people understood sometimes they didn’t then there are the people that think if you’re eating gluten-free it’s a fad it’s not a fad did I say that again it’s not a fad it’s not a fad and luckily over the years years people have come to understand that more than they.
Did back in the day when I first started eating gluten-free I remember going to a conference and standing in line for my conference pass and I had on a t-shirt that talked about something gluten-free and the person behind me I’m sorry the person in front of me said oh you eat gluten-free you know I have an aunt that does that and it’s really helped her a.
Lot we just talked a little bit and then the woman behind me said something along the lines of yeah that’s another flavor of the day and I nicely turned her and I said what do you mean and she said well I have a SI I think it was a sister-in-law who now this week is eating gluten-free because she’s decided that’s the only way to live her life and.
So now she’s eating gluten-free and now when she comes over to visit us we all have to conform to what she wants and she thinks we don’t understand if we don’t and she went on and on and on and I said well maybe for her it isn’t something that she needs to do by medical necessity but for me it is and even for her if she doesn’t have a.
Medical necessity to do it it’s her right and privilege to eat the way that she wants uh whether she should impose on everyone else that they bend over backwards to make that happen for her is another story but I kind of think that this woman was just really put out with the whole idea of gluten-free and she told me after we were done talking and.
Luckily the woman in front of me chimed in too about her aunt who needed to do it for medical reasons the woman said that she never understood that it was that much of a problem you know there are tons of videos here on YouTube wonderful videos I have some videos that you can watch but there are tons that if you have someone in your life that.
Thinks bad you might just want to send them a link to that video to help them understand what you’re going through medically so my advice to someone who’s starting with that it’s not always easy stage is to keep everything as simple as possible instead of buying processed foods stick to naturally gluten-free.
Foods like fruits vegetables Meats if you do eat grains then something like rice that’s marked glutenfree um a lot of people with celiac disease or gluten intolerance find that if they give up grain they actually feel a little better hence the reason for this channel you build a list of trusted foods and in the beginning you might.
Even want to keep a little Journal nothing if you’re not into Journal keeping and I get it because back then I hated writing anything down I remember when I did Weight Watchers I refused to journal the way that they said I just did the plan where you eat Whole Foods and you forget about it you don’t have to count anything so I I kind of took.
The same approach but I did start making little notes about what foods seem to work the best for me I remember starting just with meat and vegetables seeing how I did and then slowly adding other things maybe potatoes maybe fruit it just depends and you know back then I had a really hard time putting fruit into my diet the fructose in Fruit.
Just didn’t agree with me now I can eat it just fine it’s taken some time but I to the other side of it so know that you’re going to get to the other side of any problems that you have even if you’re being strictly glutenfree know that there’s always support systems out there you can write to me right here in this thread with any questions you have.
I’m happy to answer them and I love hearing from you I love hearing from you it means the world to me and know that eventually you’re going to be able to live a pretty normal life and you’re not going to think about being gluten-free 247 you’re just going to know this is the way it works people are going to know this is the way it.
Works for you and life is going to get good and you’re going to feel better that’s the most important thing after going gluten-free everything changed I was able to wear shoes again I remember putting on a pair of tennis shoes and propping my feet up on a wall and taking a picture of it putting it out on.
Facebook to celebrate with the world that I was finally able to wear real shoes my brain fog disappeared my skin cleared I just looked healthier overall I felt fabulous I didn’t go through each day with that extreme pain and mostly I didn’t go through each day with the neuropathy which was it was so bad you.
Could barely touch my skin it would hurt all over everywhere I guess um you’d call it fibromyalgia for me it cleared it up and than my personality it might be hard to think of me as being Wicked but I was really kind of witchy with people back before I I wasn’t and then when I when my body started to just go against me with.
Gluten I just turned into a completely different person I am so grateful my husband Howard if you’re watching this thank you for sticking with me during those times I deeply appreciate it I don’t know that I would have been so kind and so patient so anyway I hope this has given.
You a little bit of Hope a little bit of understanding and I I can’t wait to share more about what I’ve been through it’s going to be under a list that I call gluten-free Diaries I’ll probably be putting one out about every week or so so watch for them in the meantime have a great grain-free life and I’ll see you again soon take.
Care
