guest post – gluten free sis

I’m a proud big sis.  My little sister has an awesome blog, youaregolden.wordpress.com, and you all should check it out!  She shares a lot of the same passions as me – happiness, food, fitness, health, etc – and today’s post on her experience going gluten-free is one I just have to share.  I’m posting it in its entirety, but you should definitely go read her other posts!  Enjoy!

A glutton for gluten

I suddenly have a new respect for people who have severe allergies. Or really just any allergies at all. Everytime I go to a doctor, they do their routine questioning. Do you smoke? Do you drink?  Do you have any allergies? No, yes, and then I respond with my mom’s canned response. “Not that we are aware of.” I was always a little bitter about this. I mean a cool allergy could be something unique to tell people. “My throat swells up when I eat eggplant.” Or, “I get insane hives up and down my arms when I get within 4 feet of licorice.” I guess it really would only be fun if it was something I adequately disliked as well. (hence the eggplant and licorice) I couldn’t even imagine being allergic to peanuts. Seriously. How do you do that? I love peanut butter with all my heart. That is one of those things on my potential mate’s list that isn’t negotiable. That sounds ridiculous. But you must have heard those stories of someone with severe peanut allergies dying from kissing someone who ate something contaminated with a peanut. That would happen constantly. And I suppose feeling like you can’t breathe or swelling up isn’t that fun for a future hubby, at least not on a daily basis. I mean I know love takes some sacrifices. But peanut butter is not one I’m willing to make. And I can’t really ask someone to risk their life just to be with me. Right?

Anywho, after years of doctors telling me I might be gluten-intolerant, and that going g-free might be an improvement in my health and diet; I’ve finally done it. Well, I’ve done it for 7 days. But hey, you have to embrace small victories in life, right? I have a co-worker who has been g-free for over 20 years, so I know it’s possible, even though right now I keep thinking how I’ll never have a Reese’s again in my life? (AHH. What? Surely I can take little exceptions.)

Nutritional restrictions aren’t really new to my life. I became a vegetarian when I was 14. Then started eating fish again then went back veggie and now am back to a pescetarian lifestyle. At some point I read Skinny Bitch and went vegan for 3 days. Then I realized I loved cheese too much, and threw that out the window. I consider myself nutritionally educated.  I have always read nutritional labels. And by always I mean starting from around ninth grade (although honestly I thought everyoone in the world could eat 2,000 calories a day, even when you were 5′2″ growing girl so it didn’t mean much to me.) My nutrition class in undergrad really inspired me to think more about what I ate (P.S. Roberta Anding , you are my hero.) and ever since then it’s been an issue present in my life. Mostly,  I’ve always just scanned at the calories and serving size…trying to mentally break down in my head what “they” think I’m supposed to eat and what happens if I eat the entire package. (You’d be surprised how many individual things are actually supposed to be for 3 servings, so annoying.) Sometimes I looked at the fat, but I was never that crazy about counting fat grams or anything.

Now it’s all a new game. I scan the ingredients and try to figure out ifi anything could possibly be glutenous in some foreign language or hidden with chemical compounds around it I don’t recognize. In general, I’d like to eat things where I could recognize all the names on the ingredients anyways. But this makes it extra important. Trader Joe’s is pretty easy though since I can just scan the shelves for the little g and know what I can choose from. So far I havne’t seen a huge difference in my life. Although my co-worker (the one who was g-free) asked on Friday (that was really 2 days of the new gfree lif, and one of those being an Ash Wednesday fast) if I had changed my diet. I told him I had strated going g-free and he said my aura was really clear and that my eyes were bright. No comments there. I’ll take it as a compliment regardless of how valid or realisitic it is to see a noticeable difference in 48 hours. It’s probably actually because I am working out at a 24 hours Fitness: Derek Jeter. That’s actually the title. Who does that? (Another topic, another day)

Places I have recently learned  where gluten hides for no apparent reason:

Salad dressing. Really? Why? (It’s expensive and I still have a lot of bottles that have gluten in it… so I’m just considering it to be a trace amount and then I’ll only buy g-free ones in the future)

Soy Sauce. Ooops blew that one at all you can eat sush and sake Friday. (Evidently they do have special soy sauce with no gluten, but I don’t carry packets in my purse for obvious reasons)

Beer. Okay, that might not be so hidden. But it is one of the sad ways I’ll have to change my habits. I don’t want to be the girl who always orders wine even when we are at a really casual Irish pub. I mean I hail from a land full of beers. I feel like it’s an insult to Belgian’s finest breweries. But, I suppose that might just be my fate.