My Trendy Friend

[kareng]

This is a friend I have known since we were little. Are mothers are very good friends. We haven't seen each other in years but keep in touch on FB. This girl has always been very conscious of calories and, as a result, was and still is, very thin. She also like to be trendy.

This is her post:

"Day one of my 1,000 calorie no gluten, less sugar diet. Side affects....grumpy--check, hungry--check, upping my caffeine addiction--check, ready to eat my own arm--check!"

This is my response:

"As a person with Celiac Disease, I wish people wouldn't play at being gluten free. Taking croutons off salads and eating one bite of cake at a restaurant, makes it hard to get them to take those of us with a medical need seriously."

Think she will respond? Think her mom will call mine?

[jerseyangel]

Thank you, Karen. If they call, hopefully they will understand when you explain it.

[Lisa]

THIS is the reason, I stress my celiac disease as "I get really, really get sick if I eat any wheat/flour or wheat/flour products" when ordering at a restaurant.

 

Yeah, speak your thought Karen. Will you let us know if she replies?

[GottaSki]

Good job K...will be interesting to hear the response .... maybe she will simply delete her post ... minimally she will likely consider more carefully before posting about her fad diet attempts - well hopefully.

[StephanieL]

Good luck. 

 

I have the same argument with people claiming intolerances are the same as allergies.  Sure, lactose makes your tummy hurt. It can kill my child. So not the same thing.

[kareng]

I bet she ignores my response. And all the people that were making responses to her will probably stop cause I spoiled their fun.

[IrishHeart]

Spoil sport.  Check!

 

You "done good", kid--- telling it like it is.   G F Dabblers do us no favors. 

 

Happy skiing.

[shadowicewolf]

I could understand if, say, someone with diabetes wished to try it to see if it would help them control their blood sugar.

[tarnalberry]

So what is necessary and sufficient evidence for her to try a gluten free diet?  The implication, karen, of your reply is that, unless she is diagnosed as celiac, she shouldn't be trying gluten free, because it belittles the diet for other people who truly need it.  I know that is not what you really mean, of course, but that's what it sounds like.

 

I'm not sure what would have been better, but I can't quite get into the camp of people who think it's a good response either.  I know you meant well.

[kareng]

So what is necessary and sufficient evidence for her to try a gluten free diet? The implication, karen, of your reply is that, unless she is diagnosed as celiac, she shouldn't be trying gluten free, because it belittles the diet for other people who truly need it. I know that is not what you really mean, of course, but that's what it sounds like. I'm not sure what would have been better, but I can't quite get into the camp of people who think it's a good response either. I know you meant well.

I guess I should have put the other responses before mine. One was even from her hub. All laughing about how miserable she will be. She is just doing this to loose weight as she is 5'6 and now weighs 115 lbs. It would have been better if she had just said she was giving up sugary foods and bread and pasta for awhile.

From her post, it seems quite clear to me that she is just doing to loose weight.

[shadowicewolf]

I guess I should have put the other responses before mine. One was even from her hub. All laughing about how miserable she will be. She is just doing this to loose weight as she is 5'6 and now weighs 115 lbs. It would have been better if she had just said she was giving up sugary foods and bread and pasta for awhile.

From her post, it seems quite clear to me that she is just doing to loose weight.

Ummm... that seems to be a bit underweight for her height...

[tarnalberry]

I guess I should have put the other responses before mine. One was even from her hub. All laughing about how miserable she will be. She is just doing this to loose weight as she is 5'6 and now weighs 115 lbs. It would have been better if she had just said she was giving up sugary foods and bread and pasta for awhile.

From her post, it seems quite clear to me that she is just doing to loose weight.

 

I totally believe you, and even imagined it that way.  You've known her for quite a while, so I'm certain that you read it right.  But all the other people reading your response may or may not take it the same way.

 

I keep trying to figure out what I would have put in place of what you wrote... probably something about how much everyone loves my gluten free breads and cookies and muffins

[GFinDC]

I actually think it's great when other people try the gluten-free diet.  There are so many of us undiagnosed because of medical incompetence it seems likely at least a few real celiacs will discover their issue that way.  Heck, we know there are people walking around with silent celiac too, who might never be diagnosed if they don't get the idea in their head to be trendy sometime and try the diet.  Regardless of their motivation when trying the gluten-free diet, if they get a benefit from it I think that's great.  I would like to see many more people try a gluten-free diet really.  Maybe 30 million, or what the hey, maybe 300 million or more.  Why the heck not?

 

It seems to me some times celiacs think they own the gluten-free diet.  When it could be that the gluten-free diet would help many people with diabetes, Crohns, mental conditions, or other diseases.  Heck, we could have a national no gluten month if you ask me.  It would probably save us a fortune in medical costs.  Hmm, the trendy people probably wouldn't like that tho.  It would make them average Joe's instead, if everyone had to do gluten-free for a month.

 

Hmm, I can almost hear the screaming now, oh no, gluten-free month is coming again! 

[Adalaide]

No, celiacs don't own the gluten free diet. At the same time, people trying to lose weight and claim to be gluten free are usually no such thing. They have given up bread, pasta and cereals, maybe a few other things that are super starchy and all the calories that go with those, and that accounts for the weight loss as long as they don't replace it with anything. It isn't some magical weight loss bullet, and picking croutons off a salad in a restaraunt while claiming to be gluten free to the staff only screws over the rest of us. I do not even try to hide how much I despise these practices by these people and the devastating effects it has on those of us that medically require a gluten free diet. Wanna dabble that way? Fine, but it is called cutting carbs, not gluten free.

 

For those who truly go gluten free for an attempt at helping any of a host of medical issues. I absolutely applaud them because it isn't an easy road, not to be sick and not to be truly gluten free. I only hope each of them finds the help they were looking for.

 

As for your friend, if she is on a 1000 calorie diet at her weight and height and trying to lose weight, I would suspect she has some sort of eating or self image disorder. That isn't healthy at all.

[JNBunnie1]

I'm 5'7" and 125lbs. I'm on the 'shove as much in my face as often as humanly possible

within my irritating restrictions' diet. I say your friend is nuts.

[Juliebove]

Good luck. 

 

I have the same argument with people claiming intolerances are the same as allergies.  Sure, lactose makes your tummy hurt. It can kill my child. So not the same thing.

It is an attitude like this that just slays me.  This coming from a person with multiple food intolerances.  And my daughter has multiple food intolerances.  Does the thing have to kill you to make it be bad?  Lactose is not our problem.  I can't speak to how much a lactose intolerance can affect a person.  But I do know how our foods that we are intolernant to affect us. 

 

For my daughter?  They put her in Special Ed.  School thought she had ADD.  Nope!  She was just so sick so much of the time, and her stomach was in so much pain, she couldn't pay attention.  Both of us were constantly running to the bathroom with the big D.  Chronic ear, throat and sinus infections.  When she ate peanuts or had something with peanut oil, she'd get a weird, seeping sort of a nose bleed.  Not like a regular nose bleed.  But a watery, bloody dishcharge that did not want to stop.  And now I'm getting the same.  What could it be?  I don't know.  We also got skin rashes.  She had scratched her scalp bloody because I used a shampoo with something she was intolerant to.

 

Nope.  These things won't kill us.  But they will adversely impact our lives.  Sometimes for as much as several days at a time.  And that's no fun! 

 

I don't like it when people say stuff like, "My thing is worse than your thing."   I also wouldn't go so far as to say that a food intolerance couldn't kill.  Like I said, we used to get horrible sinus infections.  I worked with a guy who got what was called a "super" sinus infection.  He almost died.  Some people have died from sinus infections.  If it reaches the brain, it can kill!

 

I also know people who must avoid certain foods for other reasons.  Like gout, GERD, and arthritis.

 

Bottom line, some of us have to avoid things.  No matter the reason to me.  The point being that we *have* to avoid them.

 

But people who choose to avoid something just because of some other reason that is not even vaild?  Well...  In my mind, they're the ones causing us a disservice.

 

I also will tell waitstaff that I have an allergy to whatever is that I'm trying to avoid.  I do actually have OAS to some nuts.  But nobody wants to listen to the thing about, it's not a true IgE allergy, its just an intolerance.  And some people (even some of my Drs.) refer to this as an IgG allergy.  I have seen people here with celiac who say they too refer to it as an allergy when ordering food.  I have no problem with this whatever.  Whatever gets the job done.

 

That being said, gluten isn't an issue for me.  If I order a burger, I could easily just pick the bun off with no problem.  Assuming that there were no buckwheat, oats, egg or dairy in that bun. I can never be sure though.  Most buns aren't going to have egg or dairy.  But a multigrain roll might have the buckwheat or oats.  Oh and then there's the nut thing.  Some bread and buns is subject to cross contamination.  And if I ask at the restaurant what is in the bun, they often don't know.  Better that I have it left off.  I have picked croutons off of a salad.  And then I got sick. It only takes a speck of dairy for me to get sick.  Also happened when I was eating a salad and found a shred of cheese.  One shred.  Picked it out.  Got sick.  Had to spend the next 24 hours really close to the toilet.

[Juliebove]

I could understand if, say, someone with diabetes wished to try it to see if it would help them control their blood sugar.

I am a diabetic and I do avoid some things for that reason.  I also have gastroparesis and can't eat certain things like broccoli.  If broccoli is on my plate, I'll either eat around it or if possible take a salad plate or whatever and pick it off onto that.  Or if there is another diner there that wants it, I'll give it to them.  A whole piece of broccoli has the potential to make me very ill.  And could even mean my needing surgery to have the bezoar removed that it caused.  But a tiny speck of the stuff is likely to pass right through me.  Undigested but probably won't cause harm.  If it gets past my lips that is.  Because I hate the stuff and even a speck will usually gag me. 

 

As for the diabetic thing...  Let's take pie for instance.  The other day I bought a vegan strawberry rhubarb pie.  Nothing in it that I am intolerant to.  Assuming I could get a piece of such pie in a restaurant and assuming that I decided that the filling would be enough carbs for me but the crust would be too much, I would just pick off the crust and eat the guts.  I often do not eat all that is on my plate.  I have ordered the gluten-free pasta from Olive Garden or The Old Spaghetti Factory.  I do not need the gluten-free but I need my meal to be egg free,  Which that is.  No guarantee that the regular pasta is egg free.  And even if it starts out that way, it may be subject to cc.  But...  That plate of pasta is waaaay too many carbs for me.  So I'll just eat half.

 

My point being, if there is something there that isn't going to sicken me if I get so much as a speck of it, it's no big deal for me to simply avoid it, give it to someone else or in some other way get it off of my plate.

 

But if it's something I am intolerant to, I need it not to be on my plate at all.

[Juliebove]

So what is necessary and sufficient evidence for her to try a gluten free diet?  The implication, karen, of your reply is that, unless she is diagnosed as celiac, she shouldn't be trying gluten free, because it belittles the diet for other people who truly need it.  I know that is not what you really mean, of course, but that's what it sounds like.

 

I'm not sure what would have been better, but I can't quite get into the camp of people who think it's a good response either.  I know you meant well.

I hadn't thought of it that way.  My mom doesn't have to avoid gluten.  But she does have to avoid wheat and nightshades because the flare up her athritis.  I would say as long as there is a valid reason to avoid the food, it doesn't matter to me what that reason is, whether the person was diagnosed or not.

 

Garlic really bothers me.  I'm not intolerant to it.  I'm not allergic.  But it gives me bad stomach pains.  So I avoid it. 

 

But in the case of this person, it really does come off to me as though she has jumped on the grain free bandwagon merely as a way to lose weight.  It would stand to reason that when you're going to eliminate a whole group of foods and not replacing them with something else, you might lose weight.

 

And then there is me who only seems to lose weight when not trying.  Otherwise I can just look at food and gain.  And the harder I try to lose it, the more I do not.

 

I read a lot of magazines.  I get most of them for free or for cheap.  But the thing I am seeing time and time again in the magazines is the grain free diet.  Women's magazines, health magazines, fitness magazines.  All kinds of magazines.  Go grain free!  You'll feel better.  You'll lose weight!  No more brain fog!  Etc., etc.  And I'll bet you that most of the people who see these articles and try this are not really grain free.  They just avoid the obvious things.  I say this because I once had a neighbor who told me how she put her kid on a gluten-free diet.  Just serve rice or potatoes instead of pasta.  No matter that she was serving Rice A Roni as the rice.  Or putting wheat containingi soy sauce in their food.  No, her daughter didn't get any better in the two weeks that she tried it.  Her daughter was learning disabled.  In that case I must say that perhaps her daughter might have been helped by a gluten-free diet.  Or might not.  But I don't think two weeks is long enough to know.  And she wasn't really gluten-free at all! 

 

But if a person reads such an article, really does try very hard to avoid gluten and finds that they really do feel better or in some way that their life is improved by such a diet, then I say great!  That sort of thing may in fact help someone who truly does have a problem with gluten but just didn't know it.

 

I however do not have a problem with gluten.  But when my daughter was intolerant to it, I went gluten-free along with her.  And I can honestly say that it didn't improve my life in any way, shape or form.  Except from the standpoint that it made me feel better, perhaps only in a small way that I wasn't making her feel bad by eating gluten in front of her.  Or making her worry that their might be cc.  I eventually did go back to eating gluten, but pretty much only things like bread, crackers and pretzels.  She had her own toaster and I was very careful to keep my food away from hers. 

[Gemini]

I see that some are really overthinking this one!  It is annoying when dopey people claim to be gluten free when they aren't and especially annoying when they are already thin and go on 1,000/day calorie diets, which is insane. I don't care if people want to eat gluten free but don't like it that I have gotten really dumb comments from people who will never get it and yes, it does affect our ability to be taken seriously.  I have had a number of waitstaff ask me outright how guten free I have to be because the dope that ordered before me claimed to be gluten free but ordered the gluten dessert.  How does that help us in a world where people are massively food stupid to begin with?  This woman deserved the answer that Kareng gave her. 

 

People post the dumbest stuff on Facebook and I still don't understand that. I have to admit I do not do Facebook at all but understand the good uses as far as families staying in contact with each other.  However, why on earth some think that their friends are interested in the smallest minutia of their lives or in such uninteresting comments that are made is beyond me.  People put everything out there for the world to see and hear, even when it is boring or non-relevant.

It's getting harder and harder to have a decent conversation today......  

[kareng]

.This is her post:"Day one of my 1,000 calorie no gluten, less sugar diet. Side affects....grumpy--check, hungry--check, upping my caffeine addiction--check, ready to eat my own arm--check!"

This is getting silly. Look at her post. She doesn't say she is doing it because she has stomach issues or anything else. It's pretty obvious it's just for weight loss!

[GottaSki]

Recipes for tasty "Lo-Cal" BBQ sauce to coat that arm - check

[IrishHeart]

Recipes for tasty "Lo-Cal" BBQ sauce to coat that arm - check

 

 

      spit coffee on keyboard...check! thanks for that, sillypants

[StephanieL]

It is an attitude like this that just slays me.

 

I don't like it when people say stuff like, "My thing is worse than your thing." 

 

 

Sorry it slays you.  If it can kill you in minutes from even trace ingestion, sorry, it is a worst thing. 

I'm not saying intolerances shouldn't be treated accordingly. They do hurt people and make them ill and maybe over time can kill them.  Calling it an allergy is irresponsible, incorrect and dangerous to those with actual allergies. Just as saying you are "gluten-free but a tiny bit won't hurt so I'll eat cake on my birthday" is irresponsible.

 

It may be semantics to you but until you send your kid out the door to school every day and wonder of/when you will get the call that they are on the way to the hospital and unable to breath, you won't understand. 

[Lady Eowyn]

Personally, I think the majority of the population would benefit by being gluten free or gluten light.

I think gluten is at the root of many modern day illnesses and health problems so I don't think anyone needs a 'valid' reason to give it up.

 

It strikes me that gluten is in lots of processed food where it shouldn't be in the first place (along with soy, I hasten to add) so possibly the more people that jump on the band wagon, the more likely gluten free things might appear. This would certainly benefit children - to have less gluten in their diets.

Don't let me even start on soy!

 

As for eating in restaurants - you're always going to run a certain risk, in my opinion, whatever the restaurant/staff say.

 

I have had people who know nothing about gluten be very sensible with me and celiacs who have come out with complete rubbish!!

[Takala]

I have both intolerance and allergies.  Do I have to have my asthma attack within a certain time frame of ingesting the wrong item to make my semantics legitimate in your eyes, StephanieL ? 

 

 

Addressing the original topic, if a person that tall and allegedly weighing only 115 lbs seeks to eat a 1,000 calorie per day diet, which isn't healthy or sustainable at all, plus they've added in my category of food avoidance (due to medical issues,) and is talking about it on facebook as a good thing, they might have "issues" beyond my control to get worried about.  They'll discover soon enough it makes no difference for their situation, in the rare case that it could, who am I to say that their self experimentation is forbidden ?  Leave that for all the "Registered Dietitians" speaking on behalf of the Wheat Council.