Third post and all is well. As I sit here and wait for my baby boy to fall asleep I am trying to think of something with some substance for you to digest, so for the sake of a pun lets start with food.
They say "You are what you eat". Everyone has heard this at some point or another but how much do we pay heed to the message? I used to think I was reasonably healthy, ate balanced meals and looked after my diet as much as I thought I needed to but now when I look back I was eating all the wrong foods and actually I had stopped listening to what my body's needs were. I couldn't hear what they were for the din of the combine harvester rattling through my digestive system.
One of the first things I did for myself was to stop eating grains. Early September I stopped eating breads, pasta, rice, couscous, oats, noodles......anything that you would think of normally to make a quick easy meal was out. The decision came easy because I was so desperate to feel better and up until this point I was that person who would hear of someone else losing weight on Atkins and mutter to myself "if only I could survive without bread/pasta". Well blimey Riley, when you drop the grains you not only survive you start to thrive! I noticed lots of little things happening in my body. For a quick example, I always seemed to have sinus congestion - a little tiny thing that I had accepted as just something I had, one of my (many) quirks.Now it's gone! I cant count how many years it had irritated me and yet I never thought it would be anything serious enough to make a doctors appointment for - but its gone.
I won't go into detail with everything that changed (and believe me you wouldn't want me to either) but these little improvements have convinced me to eat as grain free as I can now. And no, its not always easy, and yes, I have to plan ahead to feed my family, and Christmas time is a minefield for yummy wheaty snacks so yes I fall off the wagon every now and again but the bottom line is I feel better for being grain free. I feel so much better for it and I hope everyone can at least think about trying wheat free or gluten free for some, if not yet all meals.
This is a huge topic though and there are loads of amazing blogs and websites dedicated to wheat/gluten/grain free information, I would urge you to investigate for yourself. From what I have read though, I understand that wheat damages your insides. And your insides are important in helping your body absorb the goodness from your food. (Please note the use of the word 'insides' as being a technical term here). So the aim for grain free is to help your insides repair themselves (that is what insides are good at).
Something else that really is a great help to me is a menu plan. A weekly menu plan can take time to come up with but is worth the effort to ensure you are not caught short for a meal and have to grab a sandwich or make another pasta meal for dinner. I read somewhere recently "Failing to plan is planning to fail" and its true in my house - the one week since September I didn't manage to write a menu plan we had wheat 5 days out of the 7. And that is with me trying to put in extra effort!!
So that's my tuppence worth for today. Baby is sleeping peacefully now so I can get on with some other jobs now but I hope this has given you something to think about. Why not make it your New Years resolution to give up the grain? Help your gut to heal and you are on your way to better health.
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