"The Gluten Made Me Do It"

Hi everyone! Sorry for disappearing for like 2 months. I've been off eating gluten and feeling like poo. It started off with a cookie here and there and it ended up with a big lowf of sourdough on my counter. It felt so liberating to be able to eat whatever I wanted! I ate toast, sandwiches, pasta, like it was nobodies business....but then the "doom" set in (as my paleo friend calls it). It tookabout 2 weeks for me to start feeling the "doom".

For all of you who have never experienced the "doom" before it is the feeling that something is wrong or about to go wrong. You have no idea what it is but you have a feeling that everything is about to come crashing down. I felt paranoid and anxious about the stupidest stuff. I thought it was because I wasn't going to my crossfit box anymore. Exercise is a big stress relief for me and always has been. So I started exercising again at my non-crossfit box/regular people gym. The exercise seemed to help but not as much as I would like or had hoped. My chest still felt tight and it was hard to take a full breath. Nothing specifically was worrying me....I couldn't figure out why I was feeling so anxious!

So yesterday was like the worst doomsday ever. I ate spelt pasta the night before, toast yesterday morning, and a half a jar of Biscoff cookie butter around lunchtime. I almost had a complete meltdown. My chest got tight and I was so irritable. For a second, I thought I was about to have a panic attack. Ok ok you may think at this point I'm a crazy person....but I swear the doom was at it's highest!!! I talked to my fellow paleo friends and read a lot of articles about how gluten affects the mood. The things I read were astonishing and the people described symptoms that I was feeling after eating a ton of gluten.

After talking to the awesome people of The Result Cult and reading articles on the nasty nasty of gluten I decided to abandon my lunch of leftover pasta and get a salad from our work's downstairs cafeteria. It wasn't the best thing in the world (two words: iceberg lettuce) but I put a ton of veggies and protein on it. For dinner I had veggie soup, salad with avocado and tomatoes, and baked pork chops with pears. I still felt crappy but I knew it was only a matter of time before I would start feeling better. This morning I made a fruit smoothie and made some eggs and turkey sausage. After a good nights sleep and almost 24 hrs free of gluten I'm starting to feel better. I don't want to jinx it but I have a good feeling about this.

The moral of this story is I guess you have to figure out why eating paleo or gluten free is important to you. Is it because its the latest fad? Is it because your family does it? Or do you think you may have an allergy or sensitivity to it? Whatever the reason it's important to find out why it's important to you. For me I knew I felt better eating paleo but I didn't truly appreciate it until I had my ultimate doomsday gluten experience. My experience has helped my change my mindset from a diet fad that made me feel pretty good to a need for good fuel to support a healthy and happy body and mind.