Week 1 of my gluten free challenge has come and gone.
7 days without gluten. Why would I ever do such a thing?!
Click here to read why I decided to do something so stupid.
Gotta admit, Week 1 hasn’t been as hard as I imagined. At the end of the month I’ll do 1 long post documenting my entire gluten free experience, but right now, let me tell you about the Week 1.
Day 1 – Gluten Everywhere!
It’s insane when you look around, almost everything has some form of gluten in it. I went to my local Whole Foods to buy food and everything I wanted to eat had gluten. It seemed like 90% of the food there was contaminated with gluten.
Other than face palming myself like 100x for thinking this was a good idea, I didn’t really have any issues adapting to the new diet. No cravings. No less of energy or crankiness. I even had enough energy to work out that day, so that was encouraging.
Day 2 – MmmM Donuts…
Why can I not get the thought of donuts out of my head today?
This day was all about looking at my daily eating habits and seeing how I can hack it to make it gluten free (I’m not just going to eat salad for the next 30 days).
Day 3 – Would love to drop a deuce…
Started to settle into the routine of not eating gluten, but I’d love to drop the kids off at the pool yet since starting this diet…
Feeling kinda crazy today mostly coz I keep thinking about all of the gluten I’m going to eat when the 30 days are over. The willpower isn’t strong today, but I pushed through. This wasn’t my best day in terms of mental strength. Just felt over the whole thing.
It almost feels like being stuck in a room that you can’t leave.
Day 4 – Not really feeling any different, should I be feeling different?
Today was another reminder of how absurdly restrictive this diet is. Look at this menu. My friend sent me this asking to see if there’s anything I can eat on this menu for lunch tomorrow. Literally everything has gluten in it except the salad.
UPDATE: I found out during Week 2 that rice doesn’t qualify as gluten. HOWEVER, soy sauce has gluten in it, so make sure to use Tamari aka GF soy sauce.
I’m also kind of waiting on my gluten-free superpowers to kick in…
Day 5 – There’s gluten in sausages? Why? Why does there need to be gluten in sausages?!
Google has been getting a lot of activity from me over the past few days since I found out sausages could have gluten in them. Now I’m literally googling “Does [fill in blank] have gluten in it?” for everything. It’s gotten to the point where, I swear, Google was turning everything I googled into that question (even when it WASN’T a food search).
“Does ESPN have gluten in it…”
“Does Star Wars have gluten in it…”
“Does my horoscope have gluten in it…”
There was this sense of paranoia coz I didn’t want to cheat or screw this challenge up.
Day 6 – “When my 30-days are up, I’m totally going to eat…”
All of the gluten in the world!
Day 7 – 1 Week Down, 3 more to go…
It could just be me Jedi-mind-tricking myself, but I feel a little better today. The GOOD NEWS is that the intensity of my workouts haven’t been affected at all. I was really afraid since I mostly do cardio activities, and I feared the lack of carbs would cause me to half-ass my workouts. But, up to this point, that doesn’t seem to be the case.
Week 1 Summary
At first, I kept wanting to give up on this gluten free experiment.
“I eat pretty healthy already and I exercising regularly. I don’t NEED to do this…” I kept thinking.
But, I decided to see this thing through, especially after the mini mental breakdown from Day 3. However, on Day 4, I changed my entire mindset about the whole thing. I took a moment, tried to visualize what the end of this month would be like, and that really helped me push through. Willpower isn’t enough to get me through this challenge.
NO PITY PARTY HERE!
Click here to learn more about the power of visualization
After 7 days and a mind shift, I feel like going gluten free has, in weird way, made eating easier this week. WEIRD, RIGHT?! The reason for this is coz of the constraint. The constraint become a freedom. Since there is so much I can’t eat, I spent less time thinking about what to eat. I almost don’t want to give up this diet after the 30 days simply coz my eating has been the most efficient it has EVER been. But I’m saying that when I’m not allowed to eat a big bowl of mom’s fried rice…
In terms of how my body handled the first week, it took a couple of days to adjust to the sudden change in diet. Numero Dos went back to it’s usually-schedule-programming after a few days though. But yeah, that was probably the most annoying thing about the first week.
Overall, I feel slightly better. Still more Bruce Banner than The Hulk. I didn’t do this to lose weight, but I did drop a couple of lbs since starting (I’m sure this will level off as the 30 days move forward).
Now that I have a routine for this, I’ll be interesting to see how the next 3 weeks go. Should be interesting…
Wanna follow along?
Over the next month I’ll be writing about this dumbass gluten free experiment right here on Chillpill.
I’ll write a post each week like the one you just read for Week 1 about my eating, my body, emotions, thoughts, and any other random stuff that comes to mind.
At the end of all this, I’ll recap the whole thing and talk about tips and hacks I used to survive for anyone interested in trying this out of for themselves.
You have to be getting some joy reading about my pain and misery living this gluten free nightmare.
Better me than you, right?
Well, liking Chillpill on Facebook, following us on Twitter, as well as subscribing to our mailing list will get you immediate access to my weekly updates.
See you next week!
