Thriving in a gluten-free world

My friend Kim is awesome.  Not only is she a genius, but she attacks all obstacles in her life with optimism and courage.  Kim also has celiac disease.  Since I was talking about going gluten-free this week I thought it would be important to see how not being able to have ANY gluten can affect your life and how to thrive.


If you know someone who has Celiac Disease or any gluten intolerance please share this with them.  Kim makes some great points and provides many helpful tips.


Take it away Kim...

When I was first diagnosed, it seemed like a life sentence, if that makes sense.  No more good food for me!  Plain white rice and dry chicken for my wedding, and apple slices instead of wedding cake, will be awesome.

 

But then I talked to a dietician, who said to me, "Let's change your thinking around.  Rather than thinking about what you CAN'T eat, let's think about what you CAN eat.  Your homework is to write me a list of all the things you can eat, and star the things you love the most.  Then make a list of the things you can't eat, and star your favorites there as well."  

So I went home and did my homework, and as it turns out, she was right.  The list of things I can still eat was exponentially longer than the list of foods I can't eat, and the number of stars on the CAN list was 3 times the number of stars on the CANT list. 

 

All fruits and veggies.  All meats.  All beans.  Out of the 30 grains I can name, only 3 are on the CANT list.  Milk.  Yogurt. 

There were lots of foods that I could eat.

 

Here's some other advice - Stay away from gluten free products, if possible.  

Gluten free substitutes are generally full of refined carbs - remember, refined carbs doesn't just mean white Merita bread.  It also includes rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, etc - those flours are gluten free, sure, but they will also spike your blood sugar and set you up for a crash later.  You'll then also be tempted to "cheat" if you are at rock bottom of your hypoglycemic crash.  My advice would be to choose one, maybe 2, gluten-free substitutes a week.  I love, love sandwiches, so I always have Udi's Bread waiting in my fridge for a grilled cheese and Amy's Low Sodium Tomato Bisque soup.  

Quinoa and corn blended pasta is a go-to - I don't make pasta a lot, as I don't necessarily miss it, but sometimes, when the urge strikes, it's nice to have spaghetti and meatballs.  I'd honestly rather have spaghetti squash, because with the substitute of the squash for a bunch of needless carbs, I'll let myself use ground beef in the sauce, or maybe even some spicy sausage for a treat.

 

 But generally, it's all about concentrating on what you CAN eat.  

And it's also about using a fork.  I never thought much about it until I went gluten free, but think of all the forkless foods that are out there - should we really be eating any of them?  Probably not.  Things that require a fork, for the most part, are far healthier to begin with.  I can't drop by a deli on the way home and pick up a sandwich to eat while walking home, or driving home.  Chick Fil A is delicious but they use flour and nasty malt in their chicken, so that's a no go.  Pizza, same thing.  Those things are all forkless foods.  

I also like to think of it as, "Who was the last person to do something substantial to this piece of food? God, or a machine?", and that applies to Gluten-Free and Gluten-Full people.  God created things that need forks.  Machines make food that you can eat while driving with your knees and applying mascara at the same time.

 

Don't think that you'll lose weight.  You might, but most likely, it's because you probably went from mindlessly eating to examining everything you put in your mouth.  Cutting out what could be a food group for people (fast food food group, cookie and cupcake food group) will automatically make you lose weight, but rather than being like the Atkins diet, where you could keel over and die from a heart attack like the Atkins founder, you will be drastically improving your health if for no other reason than you are now fully aware of everything that passes your lips. 

 

Soy sauce is the bane of my eating.  I like asian food.  But I only cook it at home now.  Cheap soy sauce, most of the time, has wheat as the SECOND ingredient.  WHY?  Rice Krispies, too - think they are just rice?  Nope.  Coated in barley malt - though Kelloggs rep guy told me last year they were going to make Rice Krispies GF soon.  I don't believe him.  

Reading labels is a must for clean eating but also GF eating.  You can discover that something that, if you made it, would have 3 ingredients, but when a machine makes it, it has 11, and the names are 68 syllables long.  Our US labels require specifically calling out wheat when it is a main ingredient - but we don't require gluten to be labeled.  Hello, malt flavoring, or scarily, hordeum vulgare (scientific name of barley that they use to hide it, sneaky bastards).

 

Things to look for:  wheat, enriched flour, hydrolyzed protein (protein of what?? could be soy, could be wheat), orzo, graham, semolina, sprouted wheat (ezekiel bread), spelt, vinegar (they dont' have to specify if it's malt or not), tricale, couscous, etc.  And beer.  Sad.  Bard's and Redbridge GF Beers are pretty good though, and don't forget about wine.  And liquors are fine, because the protein is not carried over during distillation.

 

I eat Corn and Rice Chex religously, meaning I eat a box of each per month, all by myself.  It used to be worse, when I let myself eat Cinnamon Chex nonstop throughout the day.  They are like small pieces of crack, coated in cinnamon.

Thanks Kim for writing and sharing all this wonderful advice.  I don't envy you.  Eating gluten free, like eating clean, requires more thought (and more forks).  However in the long run you are treating your body right.  And that my friends - is the moral of the story.

Love and cinnamon chex, 

Carissa and Kyle Kim