Making progress

Okay, so I have some bad news... I broke down on Monday and ate wheat. It was pizza night at our house and we bought out pizza from my favorite pizza place. Do I consider myself a failure? Absolutely not. Just because I broke down once doesn't mean I didn't improve at all. You see, I only ate wheat for one meal out of the day and the next day I didn't eat any wheat at all. So in four days I only ate wheat once at one meal compared to most of my life where I ate wheat everyday for every meal and then dessert. It's like someone saying they have a goal of losing 30 pounds in 6 months and they only end up losing 20 pounds. Did they fail? No, they're much better off than if they didn't try. Same here. Anyways, I'm still doing this.
So here's a little more about me and why I'm doing this. I'm an average sized person, not skinny but not fat. I'm a size medium on everything. I don't have a desire to be rail thin and unhealthy but I've wanted to lose just a little bit of weight for awhile, say 5 to 10 pounds. But I can never seem to lose it no matter how much I exercise. I haven't tampered around too much with my diet because I felt that I had a healthy diet for the most part but now I'm starting to see that if you don't got a good diet, exercise can only help so much. So I'm trying to find a good diet. However, I'm not doing this without educating myself during this journey. I've been reading up on why wheat is supposedly not good. I think i'm keeping a healthy dose of skepticism because I know data can be misinterpreted or construed to get the desired results if somebody is determined to believe in something. But I am still keeping an open mind by actually doing this experiment. The book I'm reading is called "Wheat Belly" and I'll be sharing some of the stuff i'm learning from it in my later posts. Till then.

The starting line

I have decided to start an experiment for the sake of keeping an open mind. It seems a recent thing that wheat allergies and gluten allergies have all of a sudden popped up all over the place. Wheat sensitivities are running rampant and carbs (which basically means mostly bread) are the cause of obesity. When I first became aware of this trend I scoffed at it. To me, it was the silliest thing. We have been eating bread for hundreds of years and now its a bad thing? People are just trying to scrounge for a reason why they feel so bad, have low energy, are gaining weight and so forth instead of facing the fact that maybe they are responsible for their lifestyle choices. I started to give it more of a thought when my husband kept mentioning how he feels different when he eats wheat and when he doesn't. Actually, it took me awhile to believe that too but I realized that my husband is very sensitive to foods. Much more sensitive to foods than I am. I noticed how they affected his mood and his body. For example, he would start to shake if he took too long of a break between meals. I am the exact opposite. I don't notice any physical or emotional difference really except that I may feel guilty for having eaten too much of a bad thing and of course my tummy will growl if I'm hungry, but nothing beyond that. But still, it made me wonder if there really was something to all this "wheatless" talk going around and maybe the people with more sensitive stomachs, like my husband, were catching on to it quicker. Maybe I don't feel bad if I eat wheat but maybe i'll feel better if I don't eat wheat, who knows? So for this reason, I have decided to conduct a 4 month experiment of abstaining from wheat. I will, however, make two exceptions during this experiment. I attend church weekly and take the sacrament, which involves eating a small piece of bread. It is a very small piece of bread and is only once a week so I do not believe it will significantly impact me. Also, If somebody is kind enough to invite me and my family over for dinner, I will not make their task any harder and impose on their generosity by asking them not to serve anything with wheat when an allergy to wheat does not really exist. I will limit my quantity of any wheat dish though. Seeing that we probably only get asked to be guests for dinner about 5 times a year, I do not think this will be a problem either. So there it is, the rules are laid out, and I am ready to begin my wheatless, gluten free journey. Bon appetit!