Original Posting Date - May 1st 2019

Making a lifestyle or diet change can be challenging. No matter which lifestyle is forced upon you, It's going to be challenging. Even those you choose for yourself are going to take perseverance. It takes 21 days to break a habit. In the beginning, I really had no concept of how to eat gluten-free. If you’re going to have to eat gluten-free, now is the best time to do so. There’s all kinds of information out there about gluten-free diets.

You can learn what’s good, and what’s not good as well as, just people sharing their stories of their journey. If you want to read mine, you can do so by reading Struggle Is Real, which talks about the start of my journey. Eating gluten-free is for the long term, so you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. This will be a journey. Just take a deep breath and don’t freak out; it’s going to be alright. For a list of gluten-free foods to start with, you can find them over at A List Of 20 Foods We Can Eat.

Step One: Take Inventory

The first thing to think about is the way you were eating before. What are your favorite foods? What’s most important to you? If your favorite food is pasta, then you’re in luck; you can get gluten-free pasta. Bread is also available; however, it’s just regular sliced loaf bread, and you can find it in the frozen food section. It’s nothing special like Focaccia. That’s alright, though. It’s much better than never being able to have bread at all again! If you’re like me, that was a concern of mine. Bread, doughnuts, pasta, and pizza were first on my list to find. You can find many foods at the Gluten-Free Mall.

Look through the grocery stores in your area to see what’s available. Check to see if there are gluten-free versions of your favorite foods. Where I live, gluten-free food is available in one or both of these places. Either it’s going to be next to its regular gluten counterpart or in a dedicated gluten-free section of the store, probably along with dairy-free and organic food items.

Check all the food labels to make sure they’re not made in a facility with regular wheat items; otherwise, they could have traces of gluten in them. Once you have a good idea of what you want to buy, then buy those items.

Step Two: Learn About Gluten Free Cooking

 I was hoping for immediate relief because I was experiencing stomach discomfort. It didn't work that way for me, and I'm still figuring out what does. Since eating out was no longer an option, learning how to prepare gluten-free meals was essential.
Not having any ideas despite learning that learning to cook gluten-free was essential? Find some recipes! Here, you can find recipes, and the collection is expanding. Depending on your lifestyle, it might be difficult at first, but no matter how busy you are, there is a way to prepare all of your meals at home. Finding the ideal day to meal prep could be a good next step if you discover that meal preparation is necessary.

Step Three: Work Out The Kinks

It seems that a lot of people who have to eat gluten-free also have a problem with dairy. If that’s you, it's alright; it’s going to be okay. I mourned cheese and Ice cream as well. I mourned pizza the hardest because it’s gluten- and dairy-free. I realized that most gluten-free convenience foods like frozen pizzas and TV dinners (at least the ones I liked before) have dairy in them, and dairy-free food isn’t gluten-free. I was less than thrilled about gluten-free and dairy-free food. I tried it, and it was all nasty. The daiya pizza I tried in my desperation It was better than nothing, but it just wasn’t the same. Ever since then, I’ve been working on a dairy-free, gluten-free pizza that tastes good. To be honest, I never cared for frozen pizza to begin with. With the exception of Stouffer’s French Bread Pizza. (I ate those all the time as a kid.) That brings me to my next point: once you find food that you can eat that doesn’t leave you hungry (those first 3-5 months were fierce because I always felt hungry), then you can work on what your long-term goals are for how you want to eat.

You can work into your plan any other food eating goals you have. My goals were:

1. I wanted to get rid of my stomach pain

2. I wanted to feel better physically (External) 

3. I wanted to feel healthy (Internal)

4. It’s Important to eat organic and eliminate processed food. 

For me, these are all ongoing issues that I still struggle with. I even fell back a bit because I had gotten rid of processed food from my diet, but like I said at the beginning, I was hangry, so I bought gluten-free cookies, bars, popcorn, cereals, and whatever else I could find. I don’t make good choices when I’m hangry. In this ongoing journey, you too can recognize where you want to make changes. 

How do you act when you’re hungry or around food that’s not good for you? Create a list of goals for yourself. Remember, this is ongoing, so if you don’t do it perfectly, that’s totally ok. Even once you meet all your goals, you’re not done; you have to continue to work towards keeping them. Once You have a system in place, It won’t be so hard to keep up.

Step Four: Take The Next Step and Keep going

You now know what’s available in your area. You have access to recipes. You have long-term goals. You’ve been cooking and learning as you go. Now you just have to keep going. There will be temptation to fall back into eating gluten. I did It. I fell back and ate doughnuts and pizza. It was yummy, and I savored everything I ate, but I paid for it later. My stomach let me know its displeasure. So Stay Strong. Get a support group of some kind if you need to, but honestly, it’s not worth the suffering. Here’s something: even people who don’t have to eat gluten-free but do so because they have a family member or child that has to, have said that after being off gluten for awhile and then going back, they feel terrible. That says a lot about the production of our wheat here in this country.

I hope this is helpful. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

Good Luck On Your journey.

Disclosure: There may be some affiliate links in this post and I may receive commissions for purchases made through links in this post, not all links are affiliate links, some are just to more Information about the topic. Thanks for supporting The Love Feast Kitchen 

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