Mixing it up in the kitchen...

My body once again hates the food I eat. So what's a girl to do?

Go gluten free for a while.

"Gluten free!" you gasp. Yes, gluten free. Bye bye wheat and all your little gluten filled buddies, for several weeks I'm cutting you out!

"But why?" you ask. Simple. Something I've been eating on a daily basis is making the natives VERY restless, and that's just no way to live! Now I love bread and pasta as much as the next person (and maybe a little more considering my vegan years) but no food is worth feeling miserable all the time. And what good is any food when it can't stay in my body long enough for me to absorb any nutrients from it? None. So, I've got to figure out what's going on. And how many foods to we really eat consistently every day? For me, not that many. I eat as wide a variety of foods as I can. The only sure things in my daily diet are bread of some form, oatmeal, peanut butter, odds are some form of dairy, and whatever fruits and veggies cross my path.

Since the only tried and true way to figure out food intolerances is by some form of rotation diet, that's what I'm doing. It's always worked before. Either one food I'm eating isn't right for me anymore, or a combination of them together is causing the upset (sometimes this is found with dairy and grain together). My solution therefore is to go 3-4 weeks without gluten or oats. That gives me enough time to see if it makes any difference. During that time I'll eat some form of dairy every day. If I'm still noticing problems every day then I'll cut out the dairy and peanut butter. By then things should be calm. If not then I can only assume there is something more complex going on with my digestive system in general, and I'll suck it up and go talk to the doctor.

I should also point out that I have an autoimmune disorder (some arthritis like thing) that is flaring at the moment, so could be influencing this whole drama. However, when trying to find the source of my long standing iron deficiency anemia (still a bit of a mystery) the doctor tested me for Celiac's disease and the blood work came back negative. So I'm pretty sure I'm not having an autoimmune response to gluten at the moment. But the blood test can't tell you anything about intolerances (since they occur in different ways) so the only way to figure it out is to cut it out of my diet entirely for a while.

Should be fun I think! I'm always up for a challenge in the kitchen. After working in food service for years I've picked up some skills and am a pretty decent cook if I do say so myself. So I say bring it on...lets see how creative I can get with this! Life is too short to eat bad food (or food that hates you)!