Progress Report

Alternate titles for this blog post include "How I became the person with the most annoying list of off-limit foods in the Inland Northwest," "You know things are really bad when you type 'blog toast' instead of 'blog post,'" and my personal favorite, "Will Jesus mind if I eat ALL the communion wafers?"

So, I have been gluten free (mostly) for two months now. I say mostly because I'm a little bit mellow about it. If a product does not have anything gluten-y in its list of ingredients, but comes with a disclaimer that it was packaged in a facility that also processes wheat, I will eat it. If I am making gravy with flour for Travis and I need to tell if it tastes good, I will sample a tiny bit (it was REALLY good). I've been known to use a little bit of soy sauce here and there. And I definitely partake in the regular old communion wafers at church. So I think I am 99.42% gluten free, approximately.

The following is my progress report of the experience so far, compete with letter grades and teacher comments.

• Side effects: C-. There are far worse side effects out there (also, did you know that if you take prescription Lastisse to grow your eyelashes your eyes might turn brown and stay that way? Not bad, per se, but definitely strange), but all-the-time nausea is bad enough to pull a solid C-. I've been feeling a lot better for the last few weeks, but for almost six weeks I felt pretty nauseated every day, especially between waking up and 2 p.m. (No baby on the way, sorry), and I still feel nauseated some mornings. People on the internet call this gluten withdrawal, though by "people" I mean bloggers and the types that frequent food-allergy message boards, and not actual health professionals. Throughout this entire process, actually, I have been keeping it classy by following the suggestions of people on the internet rather than my doctor. But did you know that 0% of the dozen or so doctors I have been to have suggested I go gluten free? I have become one of those people who say things like "I know my own body best" and ignore their doctors' advice.
• Substitute foods: B-. I have been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the substitute foods available, especially since I tried some of my friend Amy's gluten free pasta about 5 years ago and I am fairly certain it tasted like soggy cardboard. But at the time I had something to compare it to, and now the gluten-free version is my only choice, so I think it's pretty good! A few of my favorites are Bob's Red Mill pizza dough mix (Travis says I shouldn't call it pizza when it's wheatless and cheeseless, but it's really delicious!), Lundberg Brown Rice penne, and Udi's hamburger buns. These foods are really pricey, though, which brought the grade down to a B, and I have had no success with cookies, so the grade dropped to a B-. My saving grace in this category has surprisingly been WinCo Foods (if you are not familiar with WinCo, it's like a combination of the WalMart food section, Cash&Carry, and Grocery Outlet, but less fancy and with a lower-income clientele). WinCo has a lot of gluten-free products, and they are much cheaper than they are anywhere else. The only downside is that they are spread out throughout the store so you have to know where to look, but it's been a fun treasure-hunting experience.
• Cravings: C. I am finding myself more addicted to wheat than I thought possible, but I am also discovering that I have pretty well-developed self control after years of migraine diets and working with headaches. That said, this has been hard. Travis brought home some Krispy Kreme donuts in December and I called him a jerk (and meant it) for the first time in our marriage. In retrospect, he was not being a jerk, but he was over-estimating my ability to handle having Krispy Kreme donuts in the house and not eat them (he's actually been a really good sport through this whole thing). After two months I still feel hungry almost all the time, no matter how much I eat, and have cried actual tears more than once when I was really hungry and couldn't find something to just throw together. Pre-gluten-free, my average snack was 4-6 pieces of toast (don't judge). There was nothing cheaper and more delicious! I still think about bread several times a day, and wonder how it's doing, and if it misses me.
• Results: A. The ONLY reason I have kept this up so long is that it has been so ridiculously effective. It could be a fluke, but I have had 8 real headaches in just over two months. That's less than 1 headache a week. (I define a real headache as something pretty painful that sticks around, since I still get the occasional 30-second cluster headache or very dull background headache, but these barely register in comparison with the "big bads"). For the last 2.5 years, I'd say my average was 4-5 bad headache days a week, with months on end of 6-7 headache days a week. Nothing else I have tried (there's a list here) has ever come close to making such a huge change, especially in such a short amount of time. I have been keeping a pretty detailed health log in case my brain is just playing tricks on me, and sometimes I go back and count my 8 headaches to make sure it's really just 8. It is! There are some things I wasn't sure I'd ever be able to do as a person with bad headaches 5/7 of the time, but those things feel very possible for someone with bad headaches only 1/7 of the time! I might just take up water skiing.

Me and my gluten-free hamburger bun on a date at Five Guys. Travis chaperoned.

Cumulative GPA: 2.6 (B- average). My gluten-free diet would probably not make it into Whitworth, but it would do just fine at a larger state school. I bet there are even schools out there with water skiing classes.