Yes we can! Accentuating the gluten & soy free positive.

I've always been an optimist.  When my children were young they would often come to me because they had lost something.  "Don't worry, it will show up!" I would say.  Not what they wanted to hear - "But I need it NOW!" they would respond.....

When I realized that both gluten and soy were the cause of all my years of digestive distress, I had a "moment".  In that moment, I went to the place that says, "Ain't it awful?  I can't eat bread anymore...and I love bread.  I can't eat cookies anymore....and I live for cookies.  I can't eat pie anymore....and...and...and..."  But it was only a moment.

I saw quickly that the only way to do this huge change in my life was to accentuate the positive.  I needed to focus on what I CAN eat and not on what I can't.  So I began to investigate and research all the possibilities for a gluten and soy free diet.

The first, perhaps most obvious replacement staple I saw was rice.  I liked rice.  I had always liked it.  So versatile - dress it up, add to it, flavor it, use it for dinner, use it for dessert, use it for breakfast, eat it soft, eat it sweet, eat it crunchy.  I looked back into the dim and distant past and there it was.........rice pudding!!!

My mother used to make rice pudding for me when I was a child.  She never cooked it on top of the stove.  No, it had to be baked.  She would put a small amount of rice and sugar in the bottom of the special oval shaped dish she kept especially for this dish after buttering the sides liberally.  Then she would add the milk.  The final flourish was a copious amount of nutmeg grated on the top.  The whole thing was - very carefully so as not to spill - carried to the oven.  There it sat on a low heat for a couple of hours eventually filling the kitchen with a wonderful nutmeggy aroma.

To eat this concoction was to be transported to heaven!  Soft in the middle but with a brown thick "skin" on top, it was unbelievably delicious.  The family would fight to scrape the sides of the bowl where all the ingredients had baked together, sticking to the edges in a chewy, toffee-like goop.  Yes, I could eat rice pudding again!!

As I focused more and more on what I could eat, I found more and more items.  Anything made of corn was fine (some people are unfortunately allergic to corn but I am not) - corn tortillas, corn chips (although I found I had to watch what they had been cooked in, sometimes it is soy oil), cornbread, grits, polenta.  Here was another cornucopia (pun intended!) of items to consume and re-think as part of my diet.

Breakfast has never been a focus for me.  Mostly I am just not hungry in the morning but my investigations unearthed a variety of gluten and soy free choices - Rice Chex (or the less expensive generic equivalents but not Corn Chex, they have malt, made from barley in them), Cream of Buckwheat (which has become my favorite), Corn Flakes (again check the ingredients, some are ok, some not), gluten-free instant cereal and even a hot cereal made from potatoes!!

Add to this new discoveries such as quinoa and gluten free pasta and I am set.

You know.....this isn't nearly as limited as I thought it was going to be.  In fact, I have more choices now than ever.  In addition, I enjoy my food so much more knowing that it isn't going to make me sick and I can experiment with new and delicious choices.

Eating gluten and soy free, as with any change in life, bring challenges and choices but it also brings opportunities.  There is always a silver lining to any cloud, always the sun shining above the storm, always happiness just around the corner.  Just say "I can!  And I will!"

Getting it down to the gluten - a process of elimination

I tried eliminating many different foods and drinks before I finally found out what was causing my digestive disturbances.  The first thing to go was red meat.  That was about 25 years ago.  I was newly single and cooking for myself.  I hadn't made a steak for myself in months and as I wasn't a fan of hamburgers, they had gone from my eating habits too. It wasn't a conscious decision.

Then one Saturday night I went to an event with friends and prime rib was on the menu.  I dug into it with gusto!  The next day I was really sick.  I called my friends.  Were they sick?  No, not one of them.  A couple of weeks later, I ate my first hamburger in ages.  Next day - sick again.  Slowly it began to dawn on me.  My gut just found it tough to digest red meat.  When I looked back into my eating history, I could see other occasions on which red meat had made me sick.  I stopped eating it and have never returned.

The next thing was alcohol.  My insides seemed relieved and I no longer had a pain in my side after the previous evening of drinking.  Then came caffeine.  My doctor recommended cutting down on coffee and anyway, I was beginning to like herbal tea a lot more.  Cola and soda went next.  If I was going to adopt a healthier lifestyle, I couldn't really justify consuming them.  About five years ago, I realized that, although I was still eating chicken and turkey, I wasn't enjoying it very much.  Maybe I would let those go too.  I did.  I kept eating fish (I still eat fish) but I didn't miss the white meats at all and......I did feel somewhat better.

The results of all this food elimination were variable.  I did feel a little better with each food given up but I hadn't got the results I wanted.  Then came the years of the creeping digestive eruptions.  The upsets got worse and worse.  Eventually it was happening every ten days or so.  Enough!

I went to my doctor who tested me for everything she could think of, including celiac disease.  Results - all negative.  Now what to do?  Even though the Celiac test was negative, I still had a nagging feeling that I ought to try eliminating wheat and gluten.

The rest - as they say - is history.  Three days was all it took to reveal that my body loved being gluten free, and another three weeks to discover that it also wanted to be free of soy.  Not a lot of time in the grand scheme of my whole life.

Although my process of elimination took a couple of decades, it was helpful for me to see what effects taking certain food and drinks out of my diet would have.  I could see the benefits of each one although none of them was as spectacular as being gluten and soy free.

If you suspect you might be intolerant or sensitive to gluten or soy or both, just try it for a few days, maybe a week.  This isn't long in the whole spectrum of your life.  If you don't see any benefit at all in that time, then maybe that isn't the answer for you.  I suspect however that, if that is the issue, you will begin to feel better very quickly.

I'd like to hear about your experience below!