Gluten Free for Me

I’ve had some strange experiences with food. Once I ate a candy bar and felt like my brain was lifting out of my skull like a UFO. In my twenties, I used to regularly get this crazed, stressed expression on my face if I ate sugary food on an empty stomach. Those were interesting, unpleasant times. But as I’ve aged, the weird phenomenon shifted; the Crazy mellowed out and was replaced with an insatiable hunger. Until I became gluten-free.

As a teen, I could eat six cans of Campbell’s soup in one day. I was thin as a piece of asparagus, weighing no more than 110 lbs. on my 5’ 6” frame, until my late twenties. Then I started to gain weight, and that was okay. I gained enough to be able to get pregnant and nurse a child for four years. I was fine with weighing 140 lbs. instead of 110. But then a couple of years ago, something changed. I was eating all the freaking time. Even my parents noticed it when I visited over the summer. And I was gaining weight, and weighed up to 155 lbs at one point.

I tried a couple of methods of losing weight, which have been chronicled on this blog: South Beach Diet, and walking. They worked for the short term, but then the weight would come back. I didn’t really know what to do.

Then I was visiting my in-laws over Thanksgiving and was talking to my sister-in-law, who has been gluten-free for a couple of years. She noticed I got really tired after eating a bunch of wheat products. She got me to thinking about it…what if I just quit wheat? And then, all the gluten-y wheat family grains like rye, barley and spelt? What would happen?

In mid-December I quit wheat, thinking it would only be for a few days. I was astounded; the hunger went away. I no longer needed to snack every few hours. I could eat food and it didn’t make me hungrier.

I was doing alright wheat-free, but then two days into it I felt really out of it and wonky. Kind of how I felt a couple days into the South Beach diet (which coincidentally also has you quit wheat in the early phases). I stayed off the wheat, soon felt better, and merrily went to see the in-laws for Christmas break, where I was easily able to continue the gluten-free course, since my sister-in-law was already doing it and foods were readily available for me.

At one point during our trip, we went to a Chinese restaurant. I didn’t ask, but know that my appetizer must have been using a wheat-containing soy sauce. I knew because the hunger came back for the short term. Along with the hunger came a crazy, out-of-it feeling. My husband even noticed I didn’t seem right. I couldn’t really contribute to the conversation anymore and just sat there.

In past years at the Christmas family party, I would sit quietly and not really talk to anyone until they spoke to me. Now free of gluten, I could go around and have active conversations with people. It kind of blew my mind, really. Could part of the reason I’m an anti-social introvert be simply because I’ve spent my entire life up to now in some kind of zonked out food coma?

At one point I ate a wheat-free cookie that was not gluten-free. It contained barley malt as a first ingredient. I ate it rather innocently, not expecting any real problems. But it made me feel awful. I was so wiped out I had to take a nap.

I’m now about 3 weeks into the gluten-free diet and have lost 4 pounds. But better than that, I am no longer controlled the need to eat every couple of hours. I have more energy and I rarely get tired after I eat.

I’ll try to write more about gluten-free stuff in the weeks and months to come.