(no subject)

[alexseanchai]

I am doing SCIENCE.

Hypothesis: I am celiac, like two of my sisters. Experimental procedure: beginning Mar 4 and continuing through at least Mar 31 (better, Apr 14; better still, Apr 28), eat no gluten, and see what happens. Then, reintroduce gluten, and see what happens.

Insights thus far:

* Banning gluten from my food supply means only banned foods are tasty. Even though prior to banning gluten, there were lots of entirely desirable naturally-GF or trivially-rendered-GF foods, and in fact this past week's menu was drawn entirely from that list!
* If it's not tasty, it's a real struggle to eat it.
* I function better when fed.
* Framing this as an exercise in mindfulness, which puts it in the spiritual/religious realm, doesn't make it easier to accomplish.

Hrmph.

...Advice?

Comments

[niqaeli]

Honestly? This is a hard one. Because it seems like it's a reaction to being Not Allowed A Thing, and the problem with celiac's specifically is if you don't cut gluten ENTIRELY you're still going to see symptoms.

That said. If you're not actually invested in rigourously testing at the moment, I'd... consider unbanning gluten to some extent. Couple ways I can think of to do that, one is gluten-minimise without banning outright. That is, gluten is not off the table altogether but do pick, of any options that are tasty-sounding, the least gluten-containing option? Another way being, allow yourself one gluten-containing item per day, or week, or whatever is sufficient to lift the kicky-feet BUT IIII DUNWANNA reflexive reaction to not being allowed a thing.

Or -- well, this third way might not work/be viable but. I get fucked up about food having moral stuff attached, which is why the way I kicked my taste for Chik-fil-A was not to BAN it, but to impose a tax on it. An equal amount of money as I spend on the meal to be donated to an appropriate cause (Scarleteen and Planned Parenthood were the beneficiaries the two times it came up). So I lost my taste for them, not because I wasn't ALLOWED but because their food isn't THAT good and then they just stopped being ON my radar as a place to eat. You wouldn't have to make it a monetary tax, but, gluten is Allowed it just has Something Else You Have To Do if you do eat it. I dunno, maybe an hour volunteering at a food shelter would work? Anyway, this can be a way to endrun around being fucked up over banning stuff outright while still strongly discouraging the undesired thing.

[alexseanchai]

Emotional response to paragraph 2: DON'T YOU TELL ME WHAT TO DO. *stubborn*

Not personal, you understand.

(Response to contemplating the shepherd's pie I brought for work lunch: still bleh. How helpful, brain.)

Paragraph 3 bears thinking on, though. Thanks.

[niqaeli]

COMPLETELY LEGIT. That's the reason I framed them as possibilities, not Things You Should Try, but I totally understand why it still pings hard!

<3 just glad I could at least provide something that might be a starting point for brain-hacking!

[alexseanchai]

:)

[alatefeline]

No big insights, but useful thread is useful.

The only way I've (usually) been able to eat less of Thing is by deliberately eating MORE of Other Thing that is also quite tasty but Better somehow. (e.g. fresh fruit). The trick for me, Other Thing has to really truly be good and also something I'm okay with devouring in quantity. Homemade salad from fresh garden produce, sure; fast food salad, no way in hell. And I cannot even do that much recently because food issues related to timing/stress and also money issues sooo...*shrug*

[alexseanchai]

Worth pondering, later, with cookbooks to hand :)

Also, sympathy.

[alatefeline]

Thanks.

[fred_mouse]

All my sympathies - been there, done that, don't test positive on the coeliac tests but still can't handle gluten.

My method of dealing is only viable if you have a reasonable amount of ready cash, and either a supermarket that stocks fancy GF treats, or you have a trustworthy restaurant that does GF that is accessible. Which is to say, when I first went GF, I bribed myself. I didn't make judgements on *what* I was eating, just that it was GF (and dairy free, because that is the way my body deals). And when I went 'but I want ..., waaah' I found a close facimile. It helps that there are quite a lot of tasty biscuit options where we are, and that I had already spent a lot of time cooking GF for friends so I had a lot of working substitutes.

But, oh, those first few months sucked. No amount of chocolate and biscuits and 'frozen non-dairy confection' was quite enough. Going out for dinner did help though, at least in the idea of 'but this sucks all the fun out' (Note that gluten is the fourth thing that I eliminated from my diet). Gritting my teeth and eating what I had was sometimes the only option. And I've absolutely done the stages of grief on it.

[alexseanchai]

*nod*

I have acquired a stash of rice puff cracker snackythings. (Mostly in kettle-corn and ranch flavors, because when I went back for more they were out of the cheddar and the chocolate.) I also, because Mom was in worry mode this weekend about the incoming snowpocalypse (about one inch of which stuck here for any length of time, and I only know that because I was driving in it to get home after work Monday), bought several varieties of non-wheat Chex (which at least can be made interesting by the strategic application of Worcestershire and whatever the hell else goes in homemade Chex Mix), and grabbed a couple hazelnut cookiethings. And I have a Cooking Asperiment in the oven, and I tasted the Catalina/Worcestershire marinade and the Catalina/Worcestershire/sweet-red-wine braising liquid both before I applied them to the steak and this should come out excellently. So I think I am okay for the nonce.

Good to know "oh good fucking gods this food lifestyle change fucking sucks" is not a unique experience, though! Thanks.

[fred_mouse]

Snacks! Also - snow!

I have been contemplating an experiment (this contemplation is probably a decade old, so not likely to go anywhere at this point), in which I make two otherwise identical batches of muffins/biscuits/easily made into single serves items, in which one has a proportion of the GF flour replaced with what is sold here as 'gluten flour', sticking them all in the freezer in single serves with unique IDs (possibly done by someone else) and then eating through them, one per day, recording symptoms, and then cross checking which type of muffin/etc preceded each set of symptoms. Because it might be that it is not gluten, but something else. But I'm too chicken - the amount of organisation/follow up required isn't likely to be something I can maintain.