Gluten-free!

So I know some of you know that Ben has Celiac, which means he's allergic to wheat...but for the rest of you...read on.  Being allergic to wheat is a really tough thing--it makes meal time much more complicated! Celiac disease is actually an allergy to gluten, which is in wheat, barley...stuff like that.  The safe foods are rice and tapioca derived things.  Ben was doing really good with his gluten free diet, and lost about 20 pounds in less than 6 months!  Celiac also makes you really tired when you eat wheat, and when you stay away from it, your energy level becomes a lot higher! About the time Ben and I got engaged, he stopped eating gluten free. With the vacation to New York, and all the traveling we were doing, it was just too hard. And it's really tough cuz as soon as you cheat once...you're in big trouble. You'll just wanna keep cheating! ANYWAY...after a horrid experience with the cabbage soup diet, we decided to start eating gluten free together! So for about a week now we have slowly been changing our diet, and we already feel a LOT better! Our appetites have really shrunk.  For dinner tonight all we ate was a half of a chicken breast, and a baked potato! And I'm STUFFED! The thing that really helps is that when you eat rice bread and rice products, the rice expands in your tummy making you feel more full! 

  I'm really excited cuz today I found a gluten-free blog that had a link for this amazing gluten free restaurant in Denver you can order from online! They have perfected gluten free all purpose flour, so now instead of buying tapioca flour, brown rice flour, sorghum flour, xanthum gum, and all that other stuff, I can just use this flour as a substitute!  I also bought some pizza crust mix, pancake and waffle mix (we love waffle Saturdays), graham cracker pie crusts, and some chocolate cake mix! It's WAY more expensive than regular ingredients that are full of gluten, but MUCH cheaper than you could buy at a grocery store.  

 

I want to encourage you all to look into a gluten free diet! Today on the phone I found out that the amount of gluten in flour used to be about 7%, but in the past 20 or so years, that has tripled! So recipes are different now to account for the amounts of gluten and stuff in flours.  I feel SO much healthier after even a week, my clothes fit looser, and I feel like I'm in control of my life!  Ben said that after a while the taste of regular bread will become nasty to me...I hope so! I'm just glad that with that all purpose gluten free flour, I can make onion rings and fun stuff like that!  If nothing else, this diet is teaching me how to cook! So I'll keep ya posted on all the fun recipes I learn how to make!  

If anyone has any questions or wants to know more about this fabulous way of life (not fad diet) let me know! I'm no pro yet, but I've learned a lot since I met Ben about how to eat gluten free!