Ever since I can remember I’ve had issues with digesting food. Whenever I ate a sandwich I would feel sick and whenever I ate pasta I would fall asleep. After years of just accepting it and avoiding those foods I finally got tested for food intolerances and it turns out I have gluten intolerance.
For those of you who don’t know what gluten is, it’s a protein composite found in foods processed from wheat and related grain species, including barley and rye. Gluten gives elasticity to food and often gives the final product a chewy texture.
Anyway, as soon as I found out about my gluten intolerance I was ecstatic because it meant that I finally knew why these things were happening and how I could stop them. The thing I wasn’t happy about though was how little food it seemed like I was ‘allowed’ to eat. It felt like everything that tasted good was no longer acceptable in my diet – no biscuits, crisps, cake or even certain chocolate bars!
After a few days of searching in shops and all over the internet I realised it wasn’t as bad as I had originally thought though…phew! I found plenty of gluten-free alternatives for times when I craved a treat, and I started to enjoy creating recipes from the naturally gluten-free foods too.
It felt so great to finally be able to make a meal without dreading eating it!
I’ve been gluten-free for 5 months and have been pleasantly surprised by how easy it’s been. At first I was dreading eating the packaged gluten-free foods whenever I wanted a treat as I didn’t know how they would taste or what the texture would be like without the gluten. But I was quite pleasantly surprised by most of the foods. Some of them you can tell the difference as they are pretty dry without the gluten in them, but the majority taste the same as ‘normal’ food. Yay!
Although I’m far from mastering living gluten-free, I’ve come a long way since January and I definitely feel so much better than I did 6 months ago.
Now I’m less scared of the gluten-free world, I’ve started to create some delicious meals from mostly naturally gluten-free foods and I’ve also been baking some gluten free cakes. I always loved baking before but stopped for the first few months of living gluten-free as it seemed so daunting to try to master a new concept in baking. I’m slowly getting better at it though.
I will post some of my new recipes soon so you can try them and let me know what you think, but for now I just wanted to let you all know the beginning of my journey so that if any of you are diagnosed with the same intolerance then you hopefully won’t freak out.
Living gluten-free really isn’t that scary.
Read more posts about going gluten-free:
http://happyhealthynat.com/8-things-that-no-gluten-free-person-ever-wants-to-hear/
http://happyhealthynat.com/10-things-you-need-to-do-when-you-go-gluten-free/
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