Welcome Newbies!
Welcome to the Gluten Free LIFESTYLE ~ I invite you to use this page - and my Facebook page - as a resource on your journey!
#1 This is NOT a diet! I always tell people... I actually ended up gaining some weight (up to 15 lbs at one point) from the whole experience!
#2 This is NOT a fad - it's honestly a lifelong commitment to repair years of intestinal damage and not cause problems in the future (early onset of cancer, osteoporosis in your 30s, joint pain, etc).
#3 There's no magic pill, fancy snake oil, treatment... just sticking to a gluten free way of eating for life - 100% (it IS possible, I promise)! No cheating!
Stats say that, of the general public - 1 in 133 people actually has an issue with gluten - but half of them don't even have symptoms and there are no solidly conclusive tests, so it's hard to diagnose (even though it's really easy to treat!) But major companies started to take note of the rise in gluten-free requests/inquiries and things like gluten-free Chex cereal (all but the wheat and multi-grain... but not their snack bar/trail mix yet) and some Betty Crocker gluten-free baking mixes (yummy chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and chocolate and yellow cake!), and entire gluten-free lines like ALDI's live gFree collection - have become available over the last decade, which makes me do the "happy dance" on a regular basis! There is pretty much a substitute for everything... Pop-Tarts, Oreos, Saltines... just expect to pay at least TWICE the normal price for the gluten-free variety!
Explaining science at a 2nd grade level... it's the best I can do!
With gluten intolerance, I'd basically been killing the little finger-like villi of my intestines whenever I had eaten gluten-containing foods in the past. Visual for you: spread your fingers out and wiggle them (healthy villi) and then eating gluten is like chopping off your fingers at the first knuckle (unhealthy villi). See the photo at the bottom of this page! So with my little "chopped off fingers" I have basically been starving my body of nutrients because it's not absorbing a lot of important vitamins (Bs, D, K), calcium, or fats that my body needs... which probably explains why, for my entire life, I have been off the charts (on the low end) thin and typically "underweight". I would come home every day from grade school and make a HUGE hot fudge brownie sundae with The Works, having been "prescribed" by my doctor to gain 5 pounds a year. It also explains my sudden weight loss and the fact that my body may have started shutting down, so I'm kinda lucky that I caught it when I did. This is NO diet, I always tell people... I actually ended up gaining some weight (up to 15 lbs at one point) from the whole experience, but it's honestly a lifelong commitment to repair the years of damage and not cause problems in the future (early onset of cancer, osteoporosis in my 30s, joint pain, etc).
There's no magic pill, fancy snake oil, surgery... just sticking to a gluten free diet for life! I even went to a "lunch 'n learn" that my sister's work had on Celiac/gluten about 4 weeks into my "test" of the GF diet... the gastroenterologist giving the presentation confirmed everything I was doing was exactly all I could do. He even confirmed that it would be a waste of my time and money - and run the risk of insurance companies slapping me with a "pre-existing condition" - to come in and have the blood tests and endoscopy to actually diagnose Celiac or an intolerance because I've already started the diet - and along with it, the overall healing process - so I would probably get a false negative on the test because my "levels" would show me as being almost normal and all they really do is diagnose you, put you on the diet for life, and their job is done. So that was encouraging news! Yay for saving time and money and not giving the insurance company another reason to jack up my rates!
A great place to start... Celiac.com "Safe" and "Unsafe" Ingredients lists!
PS - I also had to restrict most lactose along with gluten (lactase enzymes are on the "fingernail" of the little villi "fingers" so they are the last thing to grow back once the intestines repair themselves), but after about 8 years, I was able to reintroduce a number of dairy products back into my diet! As a farm girl raised in Wisconsin, I think the dairy was harder than the gluten, personally! I am so thankful to have cheese and ice cream back in my life - though I can no longer drink straight-up milk!
Cheers to a healthy tomorrow!
~Kati
#1 This is NOT a diet! I always tell people... I actually ended up gaining some weight (up to 15 lbs at one point) from the whole experience!
#2 This is NOT a fad - it's honestly a lifelong commitment to repair years of intestinal damage and not cause problems in the future (early onset of cancer, osteoporosis in your 30s, joint pain, etc).
#3 There's no magic pill, fancy snake oil, treatment... just sticking to a gluten free way of eating for life - 100% (it IS possible, I promise)! No cheating!
Stats say that, of the general public - 1 in 133 people actually has an issue with gluten - but half of them don't even have symptoms and there are no solidly conclusive tests, so it's hard to diagnose (even though it's really easy to treat!) But major companies started to take note of the rise in gluten-free requests/inquiries and things like gluten-free Chex cereal (all but the wheat and multi-grain... but not their snack bar/trail mix yet) and some Betty Crocker gluten-free baking mixes (yummy chocolate chip cookies, brownies, and chocolate and yellow cake!), and entire gluten-free lines like ALDI's live gFree collection - have become available over the last decade, which makes me do the "happy dance" on a regular basis! There is pretty much a substitute for everything... Pop-Tarts, Oreos, Saltines... just expect to pay at least TWICE the normal price for the gluten-free variety!
Explaining science at a 2nd grade level... it's the best I can do!
With gluten intolerance, I'd basically been killing the little finger-like villi of my intestines whenever I had eaten gluten-containing foods in the past. Visual for you: spread your fingers out and wiggle them (healthy villi) and then eating gluten is like chopping off your fingers at the first knuckle (unhealthy villi). See the photo at the bottom of this page! So with my little "chopped off fingers" I have basically been starving my body of nutrients because it's not absorbing a lot of important vitamins (Bs, D, K), calcium, or fats that my body needs... which probably explains why, for my entire life, I have been off the charts (on the low end) thin and typically "underweight". I would come home every day from grade school and make a HUGE hot fudge brownie sundae with The Works, having been "prescribed" by my doctor to gain 5 pounds a year. It also explains my sudden weight loss and the fact that my body may have started shutting down, so I'm kinda lucky that I caught it when I did. This is NO diet, I always tell people... I actually ended up gaining some weight (up to 15 lbs at one point) from the whole experience, but it's honestly a lifelong commitment to repair the years of damage and not cause problems in the future (early onset of cancer, osteoporosis in my 30s, joint pain, etc).
There's no magic pill, fancy snake oil, surgery... just sticking to a gluten free diet for life! I even went to a "lunch 'n learn" that my sister's work had on Celiac/gluten about 4 weeks into my "test" of the GF diet... the gastroenterologist giving the presentation confirmed everything I was doing was exactly all I could do. He even confirmed that it would be a waste of my time and money - and run the risk of insurance companies slapping me with a "pre-existing condition" - to come in and have the blood tests and endoscopy to actually diagnose Celiac or an intolerance because I've already started the diet - and along with it, the overall healing process - so I would probably get a false negative on the test because my "levels" would show me as being almost normal and all they really do is diagnose you, put you on the diet for life, and their job is done. So that was encouraging news! Yay for saving time and money and not giving the insurance company another reason to jack up my rates!
A great place to start... Celiac.com "Safe" and "Unsafe" Ingredients lists!
PS - I also had to restrict most lactose along with gluten (lactase enzymes are on the "fingernail" of the little villi "fingers" so they are the last thing to grow back once the intestines repair themselves), but after about 8 years, I was able to reintroduce a number of dairy products back into my diet! As a farm girl raised in Wisconsin, I think the dairy was harder than the gluten, personally! I am so thankful to have cheese and ice cream back in my life - though I can no longer drink straight-up milk!
Cheers to a healthy tomorrow!
~Kati
