"Sometimes it's the journey that teaches you a lot about your destination." - Drake
Hey everyone! I’m back to writing after taking the summer off to be with my kiddo and travel and figure some things out. Honestly, I’ve also been struggling with what to write and how to write it. I’ve been pulled in lots of directions personally and professionally with health and nutrition and it is probably time for me to start to niche down more, even with my writing. My experiences have fueled my passion to help others. Others that are like me when I was dealing with health issues I didn’t know as much about, lost and not sure where to turn.
Previously, I was writing more about intuitive eating, which I’ve really loved on a personal level. I may still write more about it here and there but my heart is pulling me in a different direction with the types of clients I want to see and the work I want to do. If you want more on IE, let me know and I can point you in the direction of some great IE dietitians!
I am getting more into the integrative and functional side of nutrition as well as the food sensitivity piece. Basically, getting to the root cause of illness and using a more natural approach to health and healing. I am finding that a lot of people with autoimmune diseases, GI disorders, acne, chronic inflammation among other problems are really struggling to feel better with conventional medicine alone. Lifestyle and nutrition, among so many other things, can play a huge role in symptom improvement in these areas but it’s hard to know where to start. I am learning so much and have so much more to learn that it has been a bit overwhelming but exciting at the same time.
So, as I’m doing more writing and working on creating new recipes, you will probably see me reference gluten-free, grain-free, dairy-free, AIP, etc because it is where I am and will hopefully help others out that might be needing the same. I have been gluten-free for almost a year now and I thought I would share with you why and how it is going for me.
Last summer I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, or an underactive thyroid. I got the call from my doctor’s office and was told that my medication was called in and I would go back in 6 weeks for more bloodwork. I was given no other information, not even when or how to take the medication, which I don’t think is abnormal. BTW, the medication is pointless if you aren’t taking it correctly so it’s a pretty important piece to tell someone that is just starting on it, right? So, I made it my mission to learn more (not an area I have done much work with), do what I could to help myself, and seek out another opinion.
I started reading books and listening to podcasts about thyroid health and learned so much. I, thankfully, did not have thyroid antibodies so I did not have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis but I treated it as such until I had a better handle on my levels and what it all meant. This was when I decided to remove gluten from my diet.
As some of you who may have done similar things know, it was a hard adjustment. I also went mostly dairy-free and later, pulled a few other things out. The hardest adjustment for me was traveling and eating out. We don’t eat out frequently but it is the perfect date night for my husband and I or just a night that I don’t have to worry about feeding all 4 of us who eat very differently. I just make sure I check out menus before we go and do the best that I can. We traveled to Belize not long after I went gluten-free and that was much harder than I expected but we made it work…but not without a few breakdowns.
I wasn’t sure if going gluten-free was going to help my hypothyroidism and I’m still not 100% sure that it did because I can’t necessarily correlate the two things. What I did notice was that it improved my Raynaud’s disease over the winter. I didn’t have near as many episodes, even though I was out walking my dog in the cold almost daily. I also avoided the painful bumps I get on my fingers called chilblains, until later in the season. Unfortunately, once they start it is hard to get them to go away. The biggest improvement I saw was with my mood and anxiety. Again, not 100% better but enough to say that I was prepared to continue with my gluten-free lifestyle and it’s been about a year since I started.
That is briefly my gluten-free journey. One of my biggest hurdles is calming all the negative talk and worry in my head. I worry about what others think because I don’t have celiac or another diagnosis that absolutely warrants a gluten-free diet. I worry about other dietitians judging me. I worry about what to say when someone at a restaurant asks if I need gluten-free for an allergy…because I don’t but I don’t want to discredit those who do. I worry about if the little bit of gluten I ingest by accident is causing me problems that I can’t see.
I also worry about the content I'm writing and the recipes I’m creating and what you all might think because they are now gluten-free. #Truth. It doesn’t mean that I think everyone should be gluten-free or that it is a cure-all. But, this is where I am and where I’m going right now. Feel free to leave any questions or comments below or shoot them over in an email.
Thanks for following along!
Lin