Background

First a little background, A few years ago, my younger sister, Sara learned that she had Celiac Sprue disease.  If you have been living under a rock, and don't know, this is an auto immune disease that means you can not properly digest gluten, which is a protein in wheat and other grains.  When she was diagnosed, I had a blood test that was negative for the disease. (this test also has a high false negative rate.) Through seven pregnancies, I have had a lot of acid reflux issues.  Between a number of websites and a Dr Oz show that he did on Celiac and gluten intolerances, where I failed the quiz he gave, I started suspecting that perhaps, I have a Gluten intolerance, so I decided to do a gluten free trial for a couple of weeks to see if it was indeed gluten that was causing my problems. I ate gluten free for about a week and was feeling really good.  Then I went to Panera, one of my favorite places.  I figured if I was going to cheat a little, I was going to cheat a lot, so I had a half turkey avocado club sandwich on country bread, and a half order of tortellini alfredo and a side of french bread.  I hadn't even finished eating before I was doubled over from acid and gas pains right at my sternum. Holy cow! It was a pretty convincing wake up call.

So I started eating gluten free the best I could.  It turns out that we eat a lot of fast food, and there is very little fast food protein that is gluten free. (There will be some  gluten free fast food posts in the future!)  I did a lot of cheating, mostly because I didn't realize that driving though a fast food drive though is no longer a real option.  And that I would need to pre-plan what I was eating.  I also didn't realize how much of what we ate at home had gluten.  It also didn't help that I started around the holidays when food consists of all my gluten laden favorites. Its a new year, and time for a fresh start and a new approach to eating gluten free.

On top of figuring out that I need to eat gluten free, we also figured out that my husband has hypoglycemia, and needs to have regular snacks every 2-3 hours.  We both have decided that we want and need to eat healthier, exercise and lose weight and get healthy.  We have decided that gluten free is going to be a jumping off point to moving our family toward healthier whole foods diet and leaning towards a paleo/primal diet.  But we want to do this wisely. We want this to be lifestyle change and not a diet. We want to occasionally enjoy a treat. We want this to stick, we want to eat healthy for the rest of our lives.  Gluten free is just a jumping off point for changes that have been a long time coming.

So are you ready? We are! Ready, set, go!