Gluten Free Diet Plan

We are pretty good eaters but going to gluten free is going to be a challenge.  I have crazy cravings and I am not very nice when I don't get what I am craving so this will be hard.  Good in the long run but hard.  I had the wonderful opportunity to talk to Anne Woodhouse at Boise Natural Health about how we are going to make the switch.  I met her once before through JDRF.  She has an adult daughter who is a Type one and she is gluten intolerant. She was wonderful and I got of the phone with her and felt like I can actually do this. Now it would be nice to talk to her everyday just so I have someone telling me that I can do this.

I have had so many questions about our game plan is so here it is.  Our first priority when we take care of Rose is diabetes, then gluten intolerance, and finally cholesterol.  When we know what the order of priority is caring for Rose it makes it a ton easier to make decisions.  First is diabetes.  Luckily I have that pretty much under control.  Of course we have our highs and lows but for me it is completely manageable at this point.  Next is the gluten intolerance.  If you don't know a lot about gluten intolerance here is a little information to make it easier to understand.

Gluten intolerance in an auto-immune disease too.  It has over 300 symptoms and is almost always misdiagnosed.  Rose was complaining of stomach aches every time that she would eat. That was really the only symptom that I noticed with Rose at first.  Now looking back I can see some of the other symptoms.  Here is the whole list of symptoms.  The thing about it, is that most of these symptoms can be anything so it makes it almost impossible to know for sure if your child is gluten intolerant unless you get a blood draw or take gluten completely out of your diet.

What is Gluten? Gluten is a protein that gives elasticity to dough to help it rise. It is in just about everything.  It is in things from bread to certain types of drinks. When you are intolerant to gluten your internal organs get inflamed and you have several of the previous symptoms.  Gluten intolerant is kind of hard to understand because it is at a molecular level.  I am still learning about it and I haven't gotten a full grasp of it.  One thing that I do know is that when you are gluten intolerant it can affect your cholesterol levels.   Which was great news for us.  We are hoping that if we go gluten free that we will be able to lower Rose's cholesterol with out cutting out all animal bi-products.  YEAH!

After talking to Anne here is our game plan.  We are hoping to start our new gluten free life on April 1st. We will be very strict with no gluten replacements for the first 4 weeks.  We are trying to clean out Rose's body and get it back to it's natural state.  After 4 weeks, we might start trying new things such as potato flour and rice flour. But until then we are going to eat things that are naturally gluten free.  Such as vegetables, fruits, brown rice, quinoa, legumes,poultry, nuts, and seeds. Anne made it easy for me.  So stated that the first thing I need to do with every meal and snack is start out with two vegetables that are two different colors.  Now for breakfast we might substitute veggies for fruit.  Then we need a protein such as nuts, seeds, meat, or legumes.  We also need to have a complex carb, such as a low fat dairy product, brown rice, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and quinoa.

The other thing we need to add into our diet is a Bone Broth.  I haven't gotten a recipe for this yet basically you boil bones from chickens or beef and get all of the minerals our of the bones.  This bone broth helps to rebuild Rose's intestinal lining and replenish her system of the much needed minerals and vitamins she hasn't been able to get with her internal organs being inflamed and also not having insulin to digest her food properly. We will also be switching to every thing organic.  That way we can give Rose the purest form of all of her food.  That includes milk and we will be finding someone local to buy eggs from.  My sister says that Costco has a ton of organic products and also sells organic milk.

These is the plan now I am trying to figure out meal plans for four weeks.  Our 28 days with gluten free breakfasts, lunch, dinner, and two snacks a day.  I will post them when I get them done.