Kaycee's Blog

A lot happens in a year

Celiac.com Sponsor (A13):
In a year, I've gone from food ignaramous to foodie.

Junk food eater, to food nut.

I used to read labels on products to guage the fat and calorie content, but now it is more for the ingredients. Last week I found out that food labels contain the amounts of protein and carbohydrates in them

My favourite reading went from bestsellers to food labels. Lol

I've gone from unhealthy to getting better.

I have found a new passion. Can you guess what?

It has been quite a year. A growing year and full of discovery about me. I started of with a feeling about being gluten intolerant, that will be fine, piece of cake I thought, doing this gluten free diet can't be too hard. A bit like when hubby takes over looking after children for a week, he claims that was easy. It was easy those first few weeks, I noticed changes and took stock of them and did a major panic thinking if I ever want this to be diagnosed, I had to move quick before all the gluten was out of my body and undetectable which would mean non-diagnosis. So I took up all my courage, and waltzed into the doctors surgery to talk about bowel habits and food issues. Actually that was the easy part, yet prior to thinking I had a gluten problem I wasn't looking forward to seeing a doctor about something so personal.

Diagnosis came back positive, and I went yay, at least there are no drugs to take, and my wellbeing is all dependant on diet. That is when the real panic started. It was all too much to take in, my health is in my hands. What did I know about food apart from calorie content?

I guess the first few weeks were a mental blur, I was stressed, I was tense, I was grumpy and I felt all alone. I kept repeating myself and my son pointed that out, but I used that as a guage to see whether I was coming back down to ground. Once I stopped obssessing and repeating, I knew I was getting there, and on top of that I knew I was getting comfortable with the diagnosis and diet. And the hubby knew by then that everytime we went walking the dog, I was not going to give him a run down on all things gluten. Maybe everyone had a sense of relief then?

My fears were that I would be eating gluten unawares, but that did not happen, as I was so scared of food the first few weeks, I avoided anything that might look risky. But then I got to the stage where I trusted labels too much, not realising that a flavour or a colour could have a gluten base. If a food had gluten legally in NZ it had to state that. I tried so hard to keep eating the same sort of things, apart from bread. But I came unstuck quite a few times especially when I thought bacon and ham and corned beef were fine, as well as a lot of chocolate, muesli bars and alcoholic drinks, I did avoid beer, so there should be some brownie points there. I just became a mess, the changes I initially noticed disappeared and I was back to the loo more than before, and talk about stomach pains, they were not a problem previously. So I had to re-evaluate what I was doing wrong? I believed that I was eating too much processed foods and if I was having a problem with something I would not know what it was, there was just too many things it could've been. As I knew all food and veges and unprocessed foods were fine, I went back to eating unprocessed food. But then I guess I have been eating processed food all my life, so how can I say going back to it?

I did do better with unprocessed foods, but then I would rebell and the same problems came back. So over a few months I eliminated most processed foods, learnt how to cook from scratch again and felt better, and when I did eat something I was not sure of I kept an eye on it.

I've gone from thinking I had intolerances to peanuts, soy, legumes and dairy. The elimination diet for those was hard, as I did not make any progress even after I wasn't eating any of those things. I was lost as to what it was, until my sister said something about water. So I made one change and that was to not drink the water out of the zip at work, and I just would not have believed it, but that appears to have been the thing that kept giving me dairhoea without the stomach issues. So I had reached a stage where I could comfortably bring back suspect foods, and now I am eating everything except the soy. Soy in moderation, but being on such a low food processed diet, there is not much soy there, so I won't worry too much about it at all.

I have stomach issues occassionally, but it is more when I indulge in cola drinks or coloured fizzy, or it usually is something I never can figure out. It is probably something like touching a bread bag and not washing my hands.

But that first year has gone, and I am looking forward to this year. I intend to loose weight and this morning it said 80, so that is two kilos down from Jan 1. Way to go!

Cathy