"Lalala! I can't hear you!"
You have come to the realization one way or another that you should be eating gluten-free. Maybe it’s just a strong suspicion. Maybe your mother has been diagnosed with celiac, and you think it might explain why you are always so fatigued and bloated. Maybe YOU have been diagnosed with celiac. (That should be a pretty clear indicator that you need to eat gluten-free… if you ask me.)
So, you sit there munching away on your friday afternoon pizza with your friends while trying to ignore the searing pain in your stomach.
Or….
Maybe you steered clear of the pizza, and you ordered a salad instead. You’ve picked off the croutons (because you didn’t mention that you have an allergy when you ordered) and your just going to eat whatever the dressing is… even though it could contain gluten. If you don’t know, then it can’t hurt you right?
WRONG.
This my friends is what we call the denial stage of the gluten-free lifestyle. Some people are in extreme denial, and will sit there eating products that clearly are wheat based and decide that they will simply ignore the consequences. Other people (including me in moments of weakness) will choose to simply remain ignorant to the ingredient list because they don’t want to hear the bad news.
But here is the REALLY bad news: ignorance in this case is not bliss. Ignorance is bloating, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, fatigue, nausea, severe joint pain, rashes, infertility, weight gain or loss, mood swings, malnutrition…. sounds like a super fun friday night, right? Go ahead and eat that pizza, but make sure you cancel your plans for tomorrow. Chances are, you will be in agony.
So why, oh why would you do this to yourself?! (Assuming you aren’t just looking for an excuse to call out of work tomorrow.)
I’ll tell you why:
You want to feel normal.
You don’t want to have to ask for special arrangements. You don’t want to have to explain how this invisible thing that most people haven’t even heard of is going to cause you severe pain and suffering if you eat it (or in some cases touch it.) You don’t have the energy to read the label/negotiate with waiters to determine if our food is going to be safe. Sometimes, you are just hungry, and want to EAT without having to conduct hours worth of research to discover the origins and handling processes used to create the meal in front of you.
And, part of your normal is feeling sick.
Until you really make the commitment to eating completely gluten-free, you are going to stay sick. You will always feel the fatigue, bloating, congestion…all of those things that you don’t even notice anymore because they are just normal life. Once you make the switch, and all of those things go away – you will be amazed to realize that it wasn’t normal after all.
Change is incredibly hard, but incredibly worthwhile. After all, once you fully commit to making the switch – it becomes the new normal. It doesn’t feel strange at all to skip the pizza. It’s just like refusing to eat the newspaper, or chow down on your coffee mug. You will automatically reach for the foods that you love, that nourish you, that are totally gluten-free. It won’t even be weird to your friends anymore.
So, how do you get from here to there?
You need to be committed. You have to decide that your health and happiness is important enough to take on the challenge of overhauling your lifestyle. I’m not gonna lie… it is a challenge. It is vastly different, and it takes a lot of energy and thought on your part, but there are ways to make it much easier:
- Get support. Find a way to tell your friends, family and co-workers in a way that makes sense to them. A simple but powerful explanation will help them understand what you are going through. Let them know that this is a really hard transition, but vital for your health and that you need them to be understanding.
- Make new friends. Find other people who are eating gluten-free and enlist their help. While there are a lot of resources online for people to learn the technical aspects of gluten-free eating, and a lot of good recipe blogs – it can be hard to find simple day-to-day advice. Look for local meet-ups or support groups, reach out to people online, or find a coach or a class that can help you through the transition. Health food stores can be a great resource for this.
- Realize there is hope. It really does get easier, I promise. You have to read every label in the beginning, and try lots of new things (which may or may not prove edible) but you will come out the other side with a natural and easy new way of eating that takes far less effort.
Do you recognize yourself in this post? Do you have a case of denial? (I’ll admit it, sometimes I do when I go out to restaurants. But, every time I pay the price and those cases of denial are becoming less and less frequent thankfully!)
What are your thoughts about the denial stage of gluten-free eating? Leave a comment below!
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