Two Weeks Wheat Free

I'm going to admit this upfront: I figured removing wheat from my diet would be hard.

Even though I'd pinned some yummy-looking gluten-free recipes, read Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef cover to cover, and already was accustomed to eating a few gluten-free foods from stealing bites of Little Man's snacks, I still thought I'd miss all my usual wheat-filled treats.

But the great thing is, I really haven't. Since giving up wheat, I have still made chicken and dumplings, pizza, corn bread, spaghetti, muffins, and even snickerdoodle cookies. I've still eaten toast with my breakfast on occasion and have snacked on some yummy crackers. And I've even eaten out—quite a few times—and managed to find plenty of menu options that, even if they weren't labeled as gluten-free, likely didn't contain anything with wheat.

I know things won't go so smoothly. I know there will be times when I am dying for a bite of my favorite sugar cookies or when the fresh bread at a restaurant looks too good not to eat. I know eventually I'll come across some gluten-free recipes I don't like that well and I'll yearn for the "real" thing. I'm sure I'll spend many a nights at restaurants where the pickings are slim for someone who's avoiding wheat.

But right now, two weeks in, I can't complain.

It's too early yet to really know if ditching wheat is making a difference with my endometriosis symptoms. Part of the reason I stopped eating wheat when I did was because my symptoms were the worst they'd been since before I was pregnant.

Over the past few days, my symptoms have definitely improved. But that also could be because I'm at a different point in my cycle now, too. It's really too early to say with any certainty. The digestive issues that had become particularly troublesome have eased up. That, too, could just be a change in my cycle. But I'm guessing that might have something to do with the wheat.

I guess we'll see!

For those of you who have given up wheat, did you hit a point when you lost steam and desperately craved your favorite wheat foods? How did you fight off the cravings? At what point did you really start to notice a difference in your health? Please share your experiences—I'd love to learn from you!

Ditching wheat

For breakfast, I love a fresh, fluffy biscuit or a nice, crumbly muffin. Give me a cookie with my coffee in the morning or for an afternoon snack with my tea and I'm happy as can be. Few things make me swoon like a perfectly flaky pie crust. And a warm, crusty slice of bread with dinner? Don't even get me started.

And yet, as of Monday morning, I gave up wheat.

Why?

Because there are a slew of foods that can exacerbate endometriosis, and one way to keep symptoms in check is to remove these offending foods from your diet. Guess which one is always at the top of the list? Yep, you guessed it. Wheat.

In fact, a recently released study published by an group of Italian researchers found that painful symptoms of endometriosis may decrease after 12 months of a gluten-free diet. The study followed 207 patients with severe, painful endometriosis-related symptoms who maintained a gluten-free diet for 12 months. At the 12-month follow-up, researchers found that 75 percent of the patients reported a significant decrease in painful symptoms, 25 percent reported no improvement, and no patients reported worsening of pain.

What does wheat have to do with endo? Wheat may contain hormones that have estrogenic effects in the body. Some people think wheat may also stimulate inflammation. Or the culprit may be the gluten, which has become increasingly problematic for people with or without endometriosis.

Some proponents of removing wheat from an endo sufferer's diet say that endometriosis pain subsides in as many as 80 percent of their patients, according to Living Well with Endometriosis. And when wheat is re-introduced? The pain returns.

I've hesitated to remove foods from my diet, mostly because the items on the no-good-for-you endometriosis list pretty much cover all of my favorites: wheat, dairy, coffee, alcohol, sugar, red meat. (In some cases, that list is even longer, but those are probably the most-often cited offenders.)

I actually came close to trying a total elimination diet a few years ago when my endometriosis started flaring up, but soon thereafter I got pregnant and—hooray!—my symptoms went away all through my pregnancy and while I was nursing my son.

Now, though, they're back in full force, and I've decided that just "dealing with" these symptoms is getting old—and isn't good for me.

I'm not, however, in enough pain or struggling enough to want to eliminate all the major endometriosis offenders from my diet all at once. So I'm started with removing number one from the list. Yes, my lifetime love, wheat.

At the same time, I am trying to cut back on the others a bit—reducing the number of cups of coffee I drink, making alcohol and red meat only very occasional treats, opting for more fruits and veggies and fewer sweets. I don't do much dairy as it is, except cheese. I love cheese. Next to wheat, cheese may be my downfall. Er. And butter. I love baking with butter. So perhaps dairy is more of a problem than I thought.

Anyhow.

The thing is, cutting out wheat might not be such a bad move, anyway. A lot more people are discovering they have a sensitivity or allergy to gluten. And wheat products have also been shown to contribute to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, dementia, depression, and more, as this article explains. 

The challenge is, wheat is everywhere! It's in baked goods, of course, but also in pasta, many sauces, breading, soups, ice cream, cereals, beer, you name it. To start out, I don't know how closely I'm going to monitor every label at the store for wheat products. But if it is a primary ingredient in something, I'm avoiding it. Simple as that (I hope).

Fortunately, it's a whole lot easier to eat wheat-free than it was even a few years ago when I first toyed with the notion of ditching wheat. In recent years, demand for gluten-free food products has skyrocketed—and the quality of those products has increased along with their availability. Now you can find gluten-free menus at many restaurants; entire cookbooks and blogs devoted to the topic (here's my favorite); and decent versions of most wheat-filled foods like pasta, crackers, breads, and cookies are now available sans gluten.

I'll keep you updated on my progress—and share some of my favorite wheat-free recipes along the way, too.

Now I'm curious: Have you ditched wheat to help with your endo? Has it made a difference?