There is so much discussion and many varying opinions on the whole “Gluten Free” thing. I thought maybe I should post on it…well my experience with it anyway.
In July I started a program called the Whole30. I felt like crap and was 20lbs over, what for me is a comfortable weight. Nothing I was doing was helping me lose that weight, so I decided, pretty much overnight that I needed a drastic change.
You see, I am a bread junkie. I LOVE bread. Love it..and whether you fall for this gluten thing or not, it is a proven fact that bread makes you fat.
Period.
So in the Whole30 program, you eat clean. No processed food, no dairy, no sugar and no grains of any kind. I am not going to lie to you, it is an effort to pull this off, at least it was for me. You have to change absolutely everything.
Shopping involves the outside of the grocery store…nothing in the middle. And you actually have to plan what you are going to eat instead of grabbing a sandwich to fill the void.
But in the end of that 30 days…I felt amazing and to date I have lost that 20 lbs that I knew I shouldn’t have gained.
Once the Whole30 was over, I continued to eat the way I was eating during that month, the only real changes I made back to my old eating habits were cheese and yogurt.
In the last couple of weeks I have found myself reverting back, not continually but I have been baking for Christmas, so you know there is going to be stuff that normally I wouldn’t eat, now in my house. Like sausage rolls and shortbread cookies.
Yesterday, we went for breakfast at Roberts Lake Resort…they give you this amazing homemade bread with your breakfast, which I usually just give to Bruce. But the breakfast was small, and the bread was delicious. So I ate it.
I have come to the conclusion that life is short, and once and a while if there is some kick ass bread available, I should eat it. And pie…ya same.
The thing about that is…I always, always feel like shit after I eat it.
A perfect example of that is lunch at work…I have forever taken sandwiches to work for my lunch, and without fail, an hour after I eat I feel like I need to take a well earned nap in a corner somewhere. This year, I ate salad for lunch, pretty much every single day…and you know what? I did NOT feel like I needed a nap after I ate, I was full and I was full of energy.
This in itself tells me that my body is better off without the bread. It is a fairly easy concept to grasp. If you eat it and you feel like shit. Stop eating it!!
I feel now, after I have had a gluten binge day, like I have a hangover the next day. My body just has no idea what the hell is going on.
It’s not brain surgery for me to get that I am better off not eating bread or anything that contains flour on a regular basis, it doesn’t do my body any good to eat it just to fill the space, good food is always a better choice for me and how I feel.
So while the debate over whether “Gluten Free” is just a fad or a real thing continues, my opinion of it is that it doesn’t do my body any favors, and as much as I love bread and will occasionally fall off of the “Gluten free” wagon, I am consciously making an effort to avoid it and how it makes me feel.
You can really only base the decision on your own body and your own reaction to what you put in it.
So that said, I guess my point with all of this is that I am not falling for the “fad” that is Gluten free, I am just old enough to understand that some things aren’t good for me and life is too short to feel like a bag of crap. So I am making a conscious and adult type choice to feel good.
If that’s a new fad, then I guess I am in on it…
Happy Monday everyone!