Why You Should Stop Complaining About Your Gluten Free Diet

The other day I saw the following comment on Facebook. The comment is referring to one of our t-shirts, which bears the phrase “Too Cool for Gluten”.

“I wish I could actually say I’m too cool for gluten. I like gluten. But gluten hates me. I get extremely sick when I eat it. It’s not a case of sensitivity or a choice that I made to see how it works. It’s an absolute necessity. And I hate it. Really. I want to be able to order a pizza with the rest of my family, or have a regular piece of birthday cake, or eat a bagel with cream cheese. I am definitely not too cool for gluten. Celiac sucks.”

When I first read this, I thought (in Jerry Seinfield’s voice), “Come on, people! Its a joke!”. This shirt is supposed to be humorous, not an actual statement of the reasons the wearer does not eat gluten. Duh.

Sadly, this comment is not unique. It only takes a quick look around popular gluten free sites on the Internet to see that there are hundreds of people saying similar things about their gluten free diet. In fact, there are entire sites that seem dedicated to whining about how hard it is to be gluten free.

It seems to me like gluten free people (and I’m referring exclusively to those who cannot eat gluten for health reasons) generally fall into two camps: those who are positive and those who are negative. The negative side of gluten free is easily recognizable: they constantly complain about their dietary restrictions and seem hell-bent on making sure everyone knows how sad their life is. But living on the negative side is a sad way to live one’s life. I know, because I’ve been there.

In 2008 I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease, and I haven’t eaten gluten since. I can’t ever cheat on my gluten free diet, as it would cause great harm to my body. As our Facebook commenter noted, eating gluten free, is, for me, “an absolute necessity”.

Cutting gluten out of my diet cold turkey was a monumental task. I love food, and especially bread, doughnuts, cookies, and cake. Basically, all of my favorite foods were suddenly off-limits for forever. It was a horrible feeling. To make it worse, the gluten free products I found at health food stores were sandy, dry and tasteless. I thought for sure that I would have to live out the rest of my life eating salads, exclusively.

But cutting out gluten wasn’t even the worst part. Just a few weeks into my diagnosis, something happened that I totally did not expect. Celiac Disease began to take an emotional toll on me. I began to feel the same way our Facebook commenter felt. I wanted to go out and eat pizza with my family! I wanted to eat normal birthday cake! I just wanted a bagel with cream cheese! Suddenly things that were so simple before, like eating out with other people, seemed impossible.

At one point, the emotional burden felt so heavy that I went to see a therapist. During our session, she asked me what the hardest part about having Celiac Disease was. I welled up with tears and barely managed to say, “That I have a disease. That my life will never be normal again.”

For a while, I lived with that mentality. My life wasn’t normal. This was really hard.

But the worst part is that I articulated these feelings by complaining to anyone and everyone. I sounded just like the above Facebook comment in my everyday conversations. I was the poster child for living on the negative side of gluten free, and I was becoming more and more miserable.

A few years later, I started dating a wonderful man, who would eventually become my husband. One day, after complaining to him about everything I had to deal with for the thousandth time, he said simply, “Hey. Don’t let this ruin your life.” There was something in that statement that hit me hard. I realized it was the word “let”. I was choosing to let Celiac Disease ruin my life and make me unhappy.

I decided to make some changes. Most importantly, I decided that I was going to focus on what I had, rather than what I didn’t have. Soon, I realized that even though my life didn’t feel “normal”, I had so much to be grateful for.

First, I have food in general. Do you know who also can’t eat pizza or birthday cake or bagels with cream cheese? Children, in our communities, who go to bed hungry because their parents can’t make ends meet. And I’m worried that I can’t eat cake?

In addition, I have food that actually tastes good. True, there are many, many gluten free products that do not taste good. But there are plenty of things that taste amazing. At this very moment, my freezer is stocked with gluten free chicken strips, doughnuts and cinnamon raisin bread. I’m obviously not suffering.

I also started trying to bake gluten free versions of my old favorites, and I learned that it is not that hard. It took some time, but I can now bake and cook some amazing stuff, and I don’t use 20 different flours to do it.  I make homemade pizza, cinnamon rolls, cake, breads and everything in between that would knock your socks off.

And lastly, I get to eat at restaurants. There are so many amazing restaurants that generously offer gluten free menus. Sure, there are restaurants that claim to be gluten free but don’t understand cross-contamination, and yes, I can’t eat at every restaurant in town. But right now I could go grab a gourmet gluten free burger on a homemade bun, or battered chicken thigh at an amazing Asian street food place. I really don’t mind that I can’t eat at every restaurant. There is still plenty of awesome food out there that I can eat.

After a while, something happened that I once thought was impossible. My life felt normal again. I was eating pizza at restaurants with my family, I could have cake! And not only could I have bagels with cream cheese, but I could have muffins, toaster strudel, and doughnuts. So what if I had to go to a specific restaurant or buy different ingredients? The point was that I could still eat things that tasted awesome and that became enough for me.

I am not saying that being positive about being gluten free happens overnight. Feeling positive about my gluten free diet was a process, and there are still days that aren’t fun. Sometimes I just want to be able to jaunt down the street and pick up a hot and tasty doughnut. Other days I fantasize about setting fire to my local pizza place because it smells so good. (Only sort of kidding) And I still vent to my husband on occasion about how much I want a frickin’ churro. But I don’t let those days set the tone for the rest of my life.

Being positive about being gluten free has changed my life, and honestly, being gluten free doesn’t bother me much anymore. So basically I’m saying that I’m too cool for gluten. I’m too cool to let it get me down, because at the end of the day, it’s just food, and my life is just as awesome with or without it.

Rachel

p.s. If you missed it, we hosted a tshirt giveaway on Twitter yesterday. To enter, our followers tweeted something positive about being gluten free with hashtag #toocoolforgluten . The giveaway is closed, but you can still view or use that hashtag to spread some positivity 😉