The Details of my Gluten Free Diet

In a previous post, I had discussed whether or not gluten-free was the way to be. The link to that entry was http://flowonlupus.blogspot.com/2007/12/is-gluten-free-way-to-be.html

While I briefly touched on the subject, I didn’t actually discuss what my diet consisted of.

DAIRY:
Dairy = gonzo. It’s amazing how much you miss something only when you’re told that you can’t or shouldn’t have it. I do like ice cream, and I like drinking milk. For a while, I did stop drinking milk and using dairy on a regular basis for I felt that I was lactose intolerant. I don’t think I was/am now. I think it was the fact that I had a perforated bowel for God knows how long…and the dairy, along with almost any other food, irratated my stomach.

My substitute for milk was soy milk or goat’s milk (my naturopathic doctor said goat’s milk was acceptable). I also ate soy cheeses. Sometimes for breakfast I like having a fried egg with a slick of melted cheese on the top. My main complaint with the soy cheese that I bought was the fact that it didn’t melt the way regular cheese did. But the taste was decent.

MEAT/SEAFOOD
Beef was allowed on this diet thankfully. So was chicken, but I was told to minimize the amount of chicken I ate. The only meat that I was to stay away from was Pork. I didn’t think that I ate pork that often until I woke up one day and wanted to eat some sausages. Guess not! Now they DO have beef breakfast sausages, but unfortunately I had to stay away from those too! Why? Well, sausages contain breadcrumbs in them. Breadcrumbs = GLUTEN! 🙁

I really love seafood, but I don’t eat it that often simply due to the fact that it isn’t always readily available in my house the same way chicken or beef would be. It really hurt my heart when I was told to stay away from shellfish. No shrimp, no crab, no lobster. I was soo sad. I was allowed to eat fish like salmon and halibut and stuff. But like I said, you never know how much you really like or want something until you’re told to either minimize it or stop it completely. That’s how I felt when I was first put on dialysis back in 1996 and I was told to minimize that amount of fluid I drink. Me, the girl who drank 2 litres of slurpee almost daily just the summer before. Even though I was VERY active, that was GROSSLY unhealthy for me anyways…but the point is, it’s clearly human nature to want what you’re told to stay away from. Oh yea, speaking of slurpess… I wasn’t allowed to drink pop. *cries*.

GLUTEN-FREE!
This was super difficult for me. I LOVE my carbs. So to be told that I cannot have pasta, cake, cookies, bread, etc, was so hard. There are so many hidden sources of gluten and you really have to keep your eyes open and do your research. I went to McDonalds once with my mother and decided that I was just going to have a small fries. (Potatoes are allowed on this gluten free diet). When I got my fries I also decided to grab one of those nutritional charts that they have at McDonalds. Can you believe there’s gluten in the fries? Basically what that tells me is that the fries contain more than just potatoes? What else is in there? Well, i’m sure we all suspected that McDonalds fries had SOMETHING in there, which would be the reason why they’re so gosh darned good!

Another thing I had to be watchful of was cereal. Rice is also allowed on this diet, so I used to eat rice krispies and nothing else. Perhaps I’m just going crazy, but I’m sure that I looked at a box of Corn Flakes in my house soon after going on the diet and noticed that there was gluten in it. Then when I saw a box of the same cereal in the grocery store, there was no gluten to be found on the box. I was happy to hear that, because I love me some Corn Flakes.

It wasn’t until I went gluten free that I realized that there were several gluten free options out there. In my grocery store travels, I found many great things such as gluten free pasta, dairy free ice cream, gluten free cookies, gluten free cereals, etc. It was great, and I was very pleased. My only complaint about gluten free foods is the fact that it was more expensive than everything else. In the summer of 2006, I went to England to visit my aunt. There was a lot of gluten free food in the grocery stores there too, and they weren’t anymore expensive than anything else in my eyes.

Now there was a lot of other things that went into my diet. My naturopathic doctor also told me to drink something called ultra-clear GI for about 2 months or so. It’s a powder and it comes in a container that looks like those containers that creatine comes in. This was to clean my colon. As stated on the webpage http://www.camdenclay.com/colon_cleanse.html , the reasons to clean your colon include:

Re-establish healthy pH balance of gut which supports appropriate lactose producing bacteria that allows to reduce cholesterol, reduce inflammation, and increase aliveness.
To improve nutrient absorption and increase energy.
To remove unwanted parasites from the gut.
To detox the whole body. You can’t get rid of waste if the sewer system is jammed.
Remove build-up of mucus that are very sticky and adhere to the wall and allow a perfect place for candida and parasites to hide in.
Body purification leads to inner purification, increase lightness of being, increase elevated mood.
The colon is the assimilation and seat of the emotional body according to Chinese Medicine. Cleanse the colon to cleanse your attachments to emotional drama trauma.
To restore appropriate G.I. flora for healthy living. (80% of Americans have B Coli with increase pathology and degenerative diseases.) Eighty percent of Primitives gastrointestinal tracts have healthy lactose producing bacteria.
Most raw foods, especially greens, feed friendly bacteria. Cooked and processed foods feed harmful bacteria.

Like I mentioned in my previous Gluten Free post, I really did feel better on the diet, but had to stop it when I perforated my bowel. I couldn’t be on the diet then because I would have lost too much weight. By the way, if you’re looking to lose weight….go gluten free! You’ll lose weight and it’s good for you.

Hmm…now that I’m reminded of ultra clear GI, perhaps I should start drinking it again to clean my colon…