You might be giving up gluten because you’ve been sick for a long time, and your recent diagnosis with celiac disease has come as a big relief. You might be giving it up kicking and screaming, because although you’ve had no symptoms, your doctor says you have no choice. Maybe you are going G-free because your pediatrician has suggested a gluten-free, casein-free dietary intervention for your autistic child, a subject I’ll be discussing in detail in Chapter 16. Or perhaps you simply want to lose a few pounds before swimsuit season! If this is your goal, even removing just a little gluten from your diet can be an effective weight-loss tool.
Whatever your motivation may be, adapting to a new diet—and by extension, a new lifestyle—is fraught with challenges. My own transition to G-free living was anything but swift. When I first read about celiac disease (years before I got an official diagnosis), I thought that going “gluten-free” sounded completely fanatical. Despite matching every single one of my symptoms with those of someone with celiac disease, I was not about to let some random Web site dictate what I could and couldn’t eat for the rest of my life. My instinctive response was not compliance, but full-on rebellion. I thought to myself: Oh, really? You think I can’t eat gluten? Oh, yes, I can: Just watch me now.
Instead of giving up gluten right on the spot, I decided to prove that not only could I eat gluten, I could eat it in champion quantities. I went out and bought a family-size container of Oreo Double Stuff cookies, then proceeded to consume the entire bag in one night. Needless to say, I nearly passed out from pain and nausea, and was soon crouched on the kitchen floor hating my headstrong nature. Then again, I rationalized, who wouldn’t be sick after consuming an entire bag of Double Stuffs?
Even after that, I continued bingeing on the very foods that the celiac Web sites were telling me were off-limits. Maybe I was trying to ambush myself to the point where I could no longer question my self-diagnosis. Having just a little wheat wasn’t clear-cut enough for me. I was determined to go all out, to prove my allergy beyond any doubt.
Eventually, I was convinced: After every gluten binge, I would be on my side for a week, racked by unbelievable abdominal pain. Still I kept on sabotaging myself. By the end of the third month, I could no longer deny that gluten, and nothing else, had been the culprit all along.
That self-destructive phase has long since passed, and looking back, I cannot believe that I ever played Russian roulette with my body like that. Though I love the smell of fresh bread coming out of a bakery’s doors on a Sunday morning in New York City, I am no longer even remotely tempted to taste it. The memory of the pain is still prominent in my mind, the damage to my intestine was done, and I never want to feel that way again. Between my loving family—including my two little ones (and another on the way!), whose days I am determined to make full and fun—and my vigorous work schedule, I simply don’t have the option to pass out in bed for three or four days at a stretch. Would I slack off a little if not for those factors? Maybe. As it is, with my family and my work on my heart and mind, remaining G-free is clearly the only option for my future.
I have been G-free for seven years. I’ve never had more energy in my life. My memory has improved. I no longer experience muscle or joint pain. My overall alertness is much better, too—and that’s after having two kids! I no longer feel as if my body is fighting itself. Not only does food satisfy me, but I’m able to work out and train harder because I’m no longer in a state of internal warfare. Once you set out on this path, I am confident that you will thank yourself every single day for making this lifestyle change. You can decide to go on the G-free diet today. Making the transition will take a little time, as you will be not only transforming your kitchen shelves, but also revamping your entire relationship with food. These adjustments don’t happen overnight, and some days will be better than others, so go easy on yourself! The following mental reminders have worked to keep me G-free and happy, and I hope they can help you do the same.
Sometimes after I would accidentally have gluten, I would feel defeated and depressed. I would think to myself: “Well, I might as well have more!” Instead, on a bad day, I would call my mom. She would tell me, “Today is over. The good news is that tomorrow, you have a fresh start.” A good message to take to heart, and to remember that regardless of a new diet or another big change in your life, or your reasons for being on that diet, everyone has occasional lapses—think of them as hiccups—especially early on.
Trust me: Even if your body responds miraculously well to the G-free diet, there will still be days when you do not feel that great. Every once in a while, you will crave foods with gluten. Or you will be at a wedding, and after accidentally eating a sauce that contains gluten, you think to yourself, like I do: Well, if I had the sauce, then I might as well have the pizza. And if I had the pizza, I might as well have the garlic bread… and on and on.
These slipups happen to everyone—do not waste time beating yourself up about it. The important thing is to get back on track ASAP. And you can! Your body is resilient and forgiving, so just focus your energies on getting back to where you need to be.
So you have gone on a major gluten bender, and hit the reset button to start over. Now you just need to put a little faith in your body—it was built to weather the most challenging storm. “The body has enormous capacity for regeneration,” says Dr. Andrew Weil, “and the digestive tract especially is very good at that. I think if you stop putting in the irritants, and you do things that help the digestive tract heal, there’s every reason to believe you can heal all the damage.”
The truth is that if you have been G-free for a good chunk of time, the first few days after “getting glutened” will be really tough. Speaking for myself, if I do meet up with gluten, I feel intense pain, fatigue, loss of concentration, moodiness… followed by an insane craving for more of the same. In my imagination, I can only compare this reaction to that of an addict who has just ingested a forbidden substance: Even the most minuscule morsel of gluten will send me spiraling for the next three or four days. Though my stomach will be killing me, I must battle my desire to continue poisoning myself with more gluten.
However difficult (or even excruciating!) it might be at first, you have to get back into the saddle as soon as possible. “The day after eating gluten,” Dr. Weil says, “you have to make a real effort not to ingest any. And remind yourself that your body will bounce back—it’s very resilient. You should also try to drink plenty of water and make sure that you’re moving your bowels. All of those measures are really important.”
Whatever digestive crime you have committed, do not let your brain stop your body from starting afresh. It will take a few days to feel sane and G-free again, but you will get there.
If you are among the 12 million Americans who have at least one food allergy, or one of the 30 million with food intolerances, you probably know what it means to have a complicated relationship with food. Struggling against your body at every mealtime can really take the joy out of eating.
Over the course of my twenties, I went from loving food to completely fearing every single thing I put in my mouth. When I first went G-free, I approached food as a fuel—period, end of story. I remember several years ago a woman at a dinner party turning to me and saying, “Isn’t this meal exceptional?”
“We’ll see tomorrow,” I thought to myself. In my mind, food was exceptional if it didn’t hurt me. It was exceptional if I could leave the dinner table in one piece, if I did not have to go home with the seat fully reclined, waiting to pull over for a rest stop, if I did not spend the next three days curled up in the fetal position.
Despite some really great experiences with chefs who tried hard to make things taste good for me, I still had a long way to go in terms of repairing my relationship with food. It wasn’t until I was pregnant and eating for the benefit of my child that I made a real effort to take pleasure in eating again. I went on a mission to find and make G-free foods that tasted good and made me excited about eating again. I discovered that, with a little know-how, the G-free diet can be as varied and delicious as anybody else’s.
Getting to a better place with food is absolutely possible. Living without gluten does not mean giving up your passion for food—you will get it back tenfold!
At first, the doctor’s order to “give up gluten” might send you spinning. The same day that her then two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Katie, was diagnosed with celiac disease, Kathy Burger headed to the health food store to restock her kitchen.
“I was the mom who was going to conquer the world,” she said. “I remember standing in that aisle and reading about everything Katie couldn’t eat. It was overwhelming, so I just picked up a whole bunch of random things—I didn’t know what else to do! I brought them home, and when Katie tasted one, she was ready to throw up… because the food was that horrible. And my husband tasted it and tried to fake enthusiasm, but he thought it was awful, too. It was hard. That’s the worst part in the beginning, the feeling of being so overwhelmed and thinking, ‘What am I going to feed my child?’”
I met Kathy when she was an audience member on The View. When she told me that her young daughter had just been diagnosed with celiac disease, I felt an instant connection with her and what she was going through. We have kept in touch ever since.
Kathy’s experience is probably familiar to a lot of people who have had to give up any major food group for medical reasons. Upon first getting diagnosed with celiac disease, many people do not even know what gluten is, much less where it’s found.
One of my primary motivations for writing this book was to provide you with all the information you need to confidently navigate the world without gluten. The more you learn, the less constrained you will feel when it comes to choosing foods that nourish you and taste good. As you familiarize yourself with everything you can eat, you will start to feel more in control of your diet, and more comfortable around food in general. Without fear of the unknown hovering over every meal, you can finally let yourself enjoy food again. Conquering this unknown requires equipping yourself with the essential information.
Studying up on gluten will not only make eating fun again, but will also protect you from the pitfalls of a too-restricted diet. Knowing all you can about gluten and the better alternatives out there will grant you the freedom to eat as diverse and interesting an assortment of foods as anyone else.
This is crucial: Throughout this book, as I discuss various aspects of the G-free diet, I am never talking about solely eliminating gluten. It is about replacing gluten with healthier, high-quality alternatives. This is not a weight-loss trend that calls for the removal of breads and most other carbs. The G-free diet, as you will see, is about substituting, with a food that will heal you for a food that your body is not meant to have. For example, instead of having more wheat-based food, why not try exchanging it with rice?
Misunderstanding this point will undermine the benefits of the G-free diet, and undercut the potential that you have to improve your health. You might be saying, “I could never live without my sandwich at lunch every day.” Don’t worry—there is no reason for you to give up that sandwich! You will just be replacing your usual wheat bread with gluten-free bread that will satisfy your hunger and strengthen your immune system. “If I am trying to get someone off gluten,” says Ashley Koff (www.ashleykoffapproved.com), the go-to celebrity dietitian and author of Recipes for IBS, who customizes expert solutions for optimal health, “and that person is used to having a cookie every day, well, that’s fine. Maybe three months down the line I’ll say, let’s try not having that cookie. Let’s try replacing it with fruits and nuts, or we could even start making that cookie at home. But initially, we can certainly replace that cookie with a gluten-free cookie that is very similar to what they were used to having every day.”
“If you take a food away from someone,” she went on, “they are more likely to become obsessed with that food. So instead of removing pasta from a person’s diet altogether, I will suggest replacing it with a gluten-free quinoa or rice pasta. You can’t just say, ‘Okay, no more pasta. Have a salad instead.’ You have to make gradual shifts.”
This principle is key: Diets fail a person the second he or she feels deprived. “Removing without replacing” might help you lose weight in the short term, but this is neither healthy nor sustainable. If you are taking something out of your diet that contains elements your body needs, like the fiber in wheat, you need to seek out nutritious substitutions—especially since the G-free diet is about a long-term, lifestyle change. If you indeed have celiac disease, then you have gone without necessary nutrients for far too long. Now is the time to begin the healing process, and to give your system the nutrition it has been lacking.
Getting diagnosed with celiac disease is both a blessing and a curse. The curse is obvious: You have a chronic autoimmune disease, and you can no longer eat what may have been some of your favorite foods. Not now, and not twenty years from now. Not ever again, without serious consequences. You also can no longer casually swipe any old food off the shelf and dig in. For the rest of your life, you are going to have to ask questions, to read labels, to discuss and be aware of every item of food that you eat.
As you begin making adjustments, you might understandably overlook the silver lining here, which is that you have the unique ability to make yourself feel 100 percent better.
I would bet that most victims of disease would give anything to hear that they could be healed with food. In your case, you will not have to rely on an infantry of doctors, heavy-duty medications, and invasive surgeries. The great thing about celiac disease is that all you have to do is remove certain foods from your diet, and replace them with ones that are ten times better for you.
Don’t get me wrong—I am not saying that giving up gluten is easy, but when faced with the option of prolonged discomfort or a G-free muffin, it sure seems less daunting. So the next time you gaze at that bag of pretzels and start feeling sorry for yourself, take a step back. Yes, you have a disease, but you also know exactly how to control it—you have been given an instruction manual on how not to be sick! Will the beginning of the G-free diet be a cakewalk? (Pun intended!) No, probably not. Is better health within reach the moment you start eating this way? Absolutely!
Just say it: “I am going G-free.”
Great! Now, let’s get you there…