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Tuesday, October 25. 2011

My Go-To Gluten-Free Breakfast: Granola & Brie

Lately I've been really excited to eat breakfast, I'm not kidding, I actually go to bed at night and get hungry thinking about it.

I've been keeping up my gluten-free diet. I'm less strict about it, but I notice that I do get definite reactions from it and feel better without it (and egg). It's much easier to do now that I'm living alone. I'm a little confused, though, because while I was going through some severe emotional trauma over not eating gluten last summer, I'm not particularly upset about it anymore.

The key here, I think, is my carb-laden breakfast!

Here are the ingredients for a delicious gluten-free breakfast -- this is what I've been having every morning...


Secret ingredients at the bottom

Handful of hot walnuts, hazelnuts or pecans (heated up in the microwave, 1 minute)
2 teaspoons lemon and lime curd (yum - I got this from the Wine & Cheese Festival last week)
Liberal dose of fancy cheese (I get excited picking it out in the supermarket. Brie cheese is good. Something creamy.)
Granola: any brand. No wheat in it!
Nonfat milk

And voila, you have my happy breakfast. I've tried it with muesli and porridge too but I like granola the best. And I combine this with genmai-cha or hoji-cha (types of Japanese tea). It really makes it a perfect way to start the day!

Thursday, August 11. 2011

Gluten-Free Eggs Benedict and Weight Loss

The other day I had my first bite of an egg for the first time in almost 4 months.

Well, it was more than a bite. I ate almost 3 eggs... yes, I basically consumed that whole plate above, but doesn't it look amazing? I'm still on my gluten-free diet, so I requested it without the bread. That smoked salmon and avocado eggs benedict from Em Le's in Carmel was delicious!

I ate way too much, though, and I think I should have started off with one egg instead of THREE... I got a headache afterward. I don't know if it's because I overate or if I'm having a reaction to the sudden intake of eggs.

I got on a gluten-free, egg-free diet last April, after taking a test recommended by a natural medicine doctor in Washington DC, Dr. Kannankeril. I'd been having stomach problems that other doctors couldn't do anything about. I've been exhausted, lightheaded when standing up, and just generally felt "fuzzy" and low energy most of the day. It turned out I was intolerant to those foods.

Basically, I didn't notice much of a change in my condition on this diet -- but I did lose a ton of weight and I've never felt so healthy before (while still feeling like crap!).

Although I was never really overweight, I was never skinny either. In fact after coming back from Japan last year, I found that I'd gained almost 15 pounds despite walking everywhere in Tokyo! The weight came off slowly as I went back to my normal routine in America, but the final burst came this year when I went on this diet. I haven't been this skinny since before university... And all I've been doing this summer is yoga and eating vegetables. It's ironic that I was never one for dieting to lose weight before.

But this diet was mentally one of the hardest things I've ever done. It sounds simple, but to actually not eat all this crappy stuff - minimize my carbs and eat asparagus instead of bread, nuts instead of snack crackers, and fruit for dessert - is hard. I experimented with all the various cool gluten-free grains that are out there but eventually my doctor suggested I cut back on carbohydrates too; I was even on a semi-candida diet for a bit. And while I stopped physically craving bread after awhile, I've found that the worst part is the emotional hole it puts in my life. I feel good not eating it but I feel so sad at the same time! And social life centers so heavily around food - it really affects you when you can suddenly eat hardly anything at all on a menu.

Now I'm trying to reintroduce gluten and eggs into my diet: eggs I definitely want to eat again, and gluten I want to stop worrying about all the time - it's so easy to accidentally eat it. But I know I don't want to ever go back to eating sandwiches, cupcakes and pasta all day. I'm worried I might lapse into my old diet, but I'm going to do my best to keep up this health-conscious attitude.