With the holidays quickly approaching, the one thing that often comes to mind is the dreaded “Eating so much turkey, potatoes, and Christmas cookies that it hurts.” We all seem to fall victim to it. Without realizing it we may put on that extra “warmth”, or so I like to call it, for the winter.
I’m going to give you a little challenge. I’m challenging you all to try the gluten-free “diet,” for one week. I put that in quotations because it’s hardly a diet. Gluten is found in products containing wheat, barley, oats, and rye. Sounds like you’ll be eliminating tons of good food, and won’t be any sort of fun right? Wrong! Surprisingly, it’s really not as bad as you think!
Eating gluten-free is mainly for people with Celiac Disease, a disease causing the villi of the intestines to be damaged when foods with gluten are consumed. 1 in every 133 people will be diagnosed with Celiac Disease, and lucky for me, I’m one of those 1’s! So maybe I’m a little biased because I HAVE to eat this way, or maybe I just want everyone to jump on the bandwagon so I don’t feel like such a statistic. Anyway, enough of the scientific terms and whatnot, here’s my point!
Everyone’s doing it, Celiac or not! Celebs like Zooey Deschanel, Victoria Beckham, and Gwyneth Paltrow, have all gone gluten-free just because! Madonna even served gluten-free brownies at her 52nd birthday party recently! Eating gluten-free eliminates some of those crazy carb counts of breads, some pastas, and baked goods, which make up a lot of those holiday pounds. It forces you to find alternatives such as more fruits, veggies, and natural foods, instead of processed foods, to satisfy those cravings (as best as you can with healthy foods). BUT, just in case your cravings aren’t satisfied, there are plenty of gluten-free cookie recipes that taste just as good as the normal kind!
So try it for 1 week, even a day! I would recommend not over Thanksgiving Break, considering the obvious. You may surprise yourself at how you feel. Most people don’t notice a significant change until they have been gluten-free for awhile, but it’s something fun to try, a true test of your self-discipline!
For more information on celiac disease and going gluten-free, go to http://www.celiac.org/and for some great recipes, try this website.