Mike and I were gluten free for 30 days and it was wonderful. We felt great, lost weight, were experiencing many wonderful side effects and best of all, it was easy. You never hear about good side effects from medications, but there were plenty of welcome side effects with going gluten free. Read some of our previous posts if you want to get a better idea about the types of changes we experienced.
Still, we didn't stick to it after the initial 30 days. WHY?
Well.....we thought we would go back to our old ways of eating for 1 week to see if we would notice the reverse effects. Would we go back to feeling the way we felt before our 30 day gluten free challenge? Or would there be no change?
The answer to that question is that we felt worse faster once we re-added the gluten than we felt better when we eliminated it. That's a mouthful. Essentially, it took 3-4 days of being gluten free before we noticed significant beneficial changes and this was likely due to detoxing from wheat and gluten. But when we re-added gluten the negative effects were noticeable the very same day. I am not sure if the onset of the ickies was actually faster, or if our sensitivity to not feeling as well was heightened because feeling really good was so fresh in our minds. I am guessing more of the later.
That 1 week morphed into just shy of 3 weeks. You see, we had 9 days between the gluten free challenge ending on March 5 and our Arizona vacation beginning and we didn't want to have to worry about gluten on vacation so.... I bet you can guess where this is going. Yes, that's right. We decided to extend the gluten free for all until the end of our vacation on March 23. In hindsight, BAD IDEA!
What were we thinking? Well obviously eating gluten free wasn't and isn't a habit yet. We easily slipped back into our old ways of eating, and even with the bloating and discomfort we just kept enjoying the scones and the tortillas, etc. We didn't necessarily eat badly. No junk food was consumed and all the food we did eat was prepared from easily pronounceable, fresh (local when possible) ingredients. We did however eat larger portions than normal and we did not attempt to avoid gluten. On some occasions the choices we did make were gluten free, but that was because those foods are natural gluten free, not because we were trying to avoid gluten.
Getting back from vacation, bloated, feeling gassy and with our pants snug around the waist helped us realize that we have had enough of flirting with a healthy lifestyle.
Back on the wagon!
I'll see if I can get Mike so share some of the amazing pictures he took with his Samsung Galazy SIII. Arizona is beautiful. And Mike's dad is the most gracious host, taking us to many amazing locations. We had a lot of fun. Next year I think we need to check out the Sky Walk.
Mike, here. I shared all of my photos on Facebook. Here are public links to the albums. Enjoy!
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