Me and Being Gluten Free

The first time i heard about going gluten free was back in February in the form of an article from my good friend "First for Women" magazine. Once again, i was at the grocery store, wondering what else i could do to help my healing and weight loss along and there it was, with a big, bold headline "drop 12 lbs every week!" So i figured i would check it out and once again was surprised at how much sense it made to me.

Gluten is a protein that is found in wheat and certain other grains, its what makes bread so soft and fluffy. The more gluten a bread has, the softer, stretchier, and often, more yummy it is. Under normal circumstances, the gluten (protein) that comes from whole grain wheat and other grains is a very good thing for you. But if your body isn't under "normal" circumstances, and you have developed a sensitivity to it, it becomes very bad.

There are some very specific, actual diseases in which a person is not able to metabolize gluten. One of them is called Celiac Disease. It comes with its own list of symptoms and there is a test for it that your doctor can give you if you suspect you have it. From what i understand, no one knows how it is contracted and there is no cure for it, but it is manageable. For my purpose, I'm not going to talk about that, i would like to talk about the concept of developing a wheat/gluten sensitivity or allergy.

The whole idea behind developing a gluten allergy is that your body becomes unable to break down that particular protein and absorb it into the intestinal wall and into the blood stream. Instead the proteins leak through the intestine and into the body. This phenomenon is sometimes called "Leaky Gut Syndrome"

Your body starts to treat these unabsorbed bits of protein like a virus and begins to fight them. This causes multiple complications, inflammation for one, but also mild flue like symptoms: nausea, headaches, sluggishness, sinus congestion and nasal drip, and aches. It can also cause other things like rashes, eczema, irritable bowls, hair loss, painful PMS and of course weight gain and water retention.

So how does one develop a gluten allergy/sensitivity? Mostly from having hormone/chemical issues. What it breaks down to is this: if you have weight issues, you have hormone issues (if by nothing else than having problems with insulin, a hormone) and if you have hormone issues, eventually you develop allergies because your body cant keep up your out of whack system. I have to put chemical issues in there too for the simple reason that (nobody knows exactly why) going gluten free has been known to help people with such issues as autism and schizophrenia.

The funny thing is that most people don't know that they have developed an allergy to food that they had always been ok with. I sure didn't, but it is, in fact, very common. In his book "The Ultimate Metabolism", Dr. Mark Hyman suggest that when you start his diet you actually eliminate milk, eggs and wheat (the three most common food sensitivities) for three weeks to asses your bodies reaction to them.

*Side Tracked Moment*
I found Dr. Hyman's cook book while looking for books on vegetables and gluten free recipes. Reading the introduction really resonated with me, he promotes using food as a medicine to cure the body and return to health. His program is designed to help detox the body, reestablish hormones, reset your natural metabolism and loose unwanted body fat. I recommend it to anyone who is looking for an easy, clean and delicious diet.
*Moment over*

I guess most people, like me, have just gotten use to our physical discomfort or had no idea it was possible to develop an allergy that had never existed before. So i figured, cant hurt, might help right?

Going gluten free was easy in some aspects and hard in others. It was hard in the fact that i never realized that gluten is in so MANY things! Beyond the obvious like bread and pasta, you have to think of everything that is made with wheat flour. Like cookies, beaded food like onion rings, fries, and fried chicken and gravy. Most things that come in a box or are dusted with some sort of flavor powder have gluten in them. One thing is for sure, if you go gluten free, you automatically eat healthier because all of a sudden packaged foods are out the window, most fast foods are out the window, a lot of processed meat (which uses gluten as a binder) is out the window and white bread is defiantly out the window.

The easy part was that even though bread was off the table, being gluten free dose not need to be "low carb", therefore it was easy for me to stay on it and feel satisfied. There are plenty of gluten free carbs to live on and the easiest ones to find and prepare are corn, oats (if you don't have Celiac), rice and potatoes.

Going gluten free is easy to do and cheap if you are a "lives with the earth" sort of a person. It is easy enough serve rice and potatoes as side dishes instead of rolls or have popcorn instead of crackers. In a normal grocery store you can buy cereals and snacks that are naturally gluten free like cornflakes or rice cakes (just read the labels to make sure that gluten has not been used in the proses). But if you crave more culinary variety, there are certainly ways to get it. Many health food stores (and grocery stores that carry specialty items) will usually have a good selection of gluten free pastas and all kinds of bread and baked goods mixes. Online there are several places to find gluten free recipes and you would be amazed at what can be accomplished with rice four.

The best gluten free recipes i found came from cook books by Jacquelinge Mallorca. She wrote "The Wheat-Free Cook" and "Gluten Free Italian". For pasta and bread recipes that you cant tell the difference from its wheat counterpart, her's cannot be beat! I have included a link to her web sight under my links.

Keep in mind though, just because it it is gluten free dose not mean that it is healthy. You face the same problems with packaged gluten free foods as you do in those with wheat. No matter how gluten free, if it has been processed, striped of fiber (in the form of white rice, just like white flour), or is filled with sugar or fat, it ain't gonna do you any good. Contrary to the crazy hype, being gluten free is not an appropriate diet aid. That is, if you are already in good health and don't have any "gluten conscious" diseases but you want to loose a few before you go on vacation, this isn't going to do much for you. Your body is going to treat rice just as it would wheat.

That being said, there are many people out there with issues that experience dramatic weight loss once they go gluten free. Most of it in the beginning when 10 to 12 lbs of water weight flushes off once their body is no longer inflamed by consuming wheat. After that, with healthy eating, their body starts to heal and they continue to loose fat.

Of course i had hopes that such would be the case for me, but was not entirely surprised to find that it wasn't. However i have some other incredible experiences that made giving up wheat bread totally worth it. The first was that my stomach stopped hurting. That was a surprise for me because i had not realized until then how sick i was.....all the time.....after anything i ate. I knew that i didn't feel good a lot but was not able to place my finger on until a few days after i started eating gluten free and i wasn't in pain after dinner.

The other thing was that i didn't have to keep eating. Before, it seamed that i was always hungry. I would eat and then a little while later i would be starving again. On top of that, sometimes i would have compulsions. It has seriously frightened me sometimes when i couldn't stop eating. Case in point, one night i got myself some ice cream, after a few bites i decide i didn't like it and it was hurting my stomach, but did i put it away? No, i ate it all. In my brain, i was telling myself to stop, that i didn't like it, that it didn't feel good, but for some reason i still cant fathom, i could not stop. I know that sometimes when my stomach feels sick (which was often) i eat something else to try to settle it. Some times that works and sometimes it doesn't, but this was different. It has only happened a few times, but it is frightening.

Once i was gluten fee, all of that changed. It was like there was an "eat" switch flashing in my brain all the time and it finally got shut off! For the fist time in a long time i could leave food on my plate if i was full or if i was starving, a banana would do the trick and i could stop there. It may not be weight loss, but the self control has been a much needed relief.

Another welcomed benefit was a clearer head and more energy. That is usually the first thing to go when i fall off the wagon (which happens occasionally) and why when i do, it makes it hard to get back on, but the effort is always worth it.

So, the bad news was that, for me at least, this was not the answer to weight loss. But the good news is that it is a very helpful tool in managing my symptoms until i can get to and cure the root of my health problems.