Never have I ever…had a restricted diet. DRINK! However, it was just the once. The previous few weeks I had been eating my normal, healthy (enough) diet. I enjoy the odd Dominoes every now and then, who doesn’t? But then I started to suffer the symptoms of what I felt was gluten intolerance, becoming bloated anytime I ate, getting stomach aches and being constantly drained-but that one could have been just me still not used to the early risings of having to go to work. So as us young silly people do, we rely too much on what the internet has to say and I went straight to Google. Of course Google had me dead. Jokes, but the symptoms I was suffering and the results Google provided me with were all too familiar.
Sooo, I got advice from a friend that the best thing to do would be to cut gluten out of my diet for a week and see how I reacted to that. This, I was already annoyed at because I love, love, love food and telling me to not eat something would be a sin. Put any food on my plate and I’ll eat it. Oh wait!! Except mushrooms. (Trust me I’ve tried to like them, A-LOT). Anyway, I hesitantly agreed and went through with it. I really was hoping that it was just a case of restricting the amount of gluten that I ate. Of course my mummy thought I was being dramatic and trying to be trendy and conforming to the ‘I don’t eat gluten’ craze. Not the case.
It was hard, having to study the ingredients of the products I was buying in my weekly shop and trying to plan ahead my meals for the week, on a student budget. The joys. The first day I didn’t notice any change, sure it was only day one. But as the week went on I couldn’t believe the energy that I had, feeling lighter and happy to go about my daily routine. I gym 4-5 days a week and so it was definitely a great benefit to leave not feeling completely drained each evening and could happily socialise later in the evening, without being exhausted. I didn’t have any of the symptoms that I’d felt the previous few weeks which was a positive as I wasn’t suffering but a negative for me as I really didn’t want to be gluten intolerant.
Going gluten free for the week thankfully made me more aware of foods that can have adverse effects on my health, I know we all need that 80-20 balanced diet but you get what I mean! Anyway, as that week was over I returned to my regular diet, putting gluten back into the diet and my symptoms had greatly reduced. I took from this that I really just needed to reduce my gluten intake as the symptoms weren’t as re-occurring as before and I wasn’t completely intolerant as I’ll have to admit, sometimes I may have eaten too much of it. Oopsie. But, so far so good! Hats off to those who have had to give it up completely! I’m glad to have experimented the gluten-free life for a week and shows how I can easily change my habits, but I’ll unfortunately always be a sucker for it!
