Embracing the Gluten-Free Diet Makes Life Easier

As someone who used to fill up on bread and salad when dining out, leading me to take most of my entrée to-go, I know what it’s like to change your diet (and life) in a way that’s almost inconceivable to most people. It’s still unclear to me why I was able to adapt to the gluten-free diet (and lifestyle) as easily as I did and it was certainly not all wine and roses from the get-go.

Like most people, I thought in the beginning that I’d never be able to learn the ins and outs of the diet, let alone learn how to eat out and travel safely. Most people I encountered when I started this journey were more than happy to tell me I would not be able to do any of those things and that I just needed to accept it and move on. To this day, I’m so very grateful to all those ‘naysayers’ who prompted my decision to prove them very wrong.

Think about this. Most people don’t want to be on a restricted diet even for a relatively short time. Yet we’re expected to be on one every day for the rest of our lives. It’s really a hard pill to swallow, so to speak. We don’t even get weekends off or vacations or holidays. It’s a never-ending chore to watch every morsel of food and every sip of drink we consume to ensure it’s safe.

If we chose to feel deprived instead of focusing on all the gluten-free goodness that is available to us now, we’re doing ourselves a huge disservice. Who cares about what we have to do when the items we can enjoy greatly outweigh the things we need to avoid? The truth is the average person living gluten-free eats a much more varied and interesting diet than the average person who has no diet restrictions. Also, many people choose to make healthier food choices once they have started reading food labels. At our house, we learned that many of the food items in our pantry were full of things that we now know aren’t real food ingredients.

It’s more fun to focus on the positive rather than the negative in almost any situation. This is obviously very true when talking about the gluten-free diet and lifestyle. All of us have our off days when we just want to grab a bite without having to put so much thought into what we’re eating. We want to go to the holiday party without playing 100 questions with the hostess or caterer. We want to go out for a burger and fries and have a bun – and fries – regardless of how they were cooked. It’s normal to have those feelings and be annoyed about our restrictions at times. But trust me when I say that it makes life a lot easier to just embrace the diet, learn the lifestyle, and dare I say – move on.

*If you’re new to the gluten-free diet, be sure to check out our Gluten-Free Diet Guide.