Giving up wheat

watna

Recently I haven't been feeling very well. I've had tummy problems and have been feeling nauseous/acidy every so often. I've also been unbelievably tired despite sleeping for more than 8 hours every night, eating well and taking extra vitamins. Recently I've been getting rashes/hives as well. The doctor says I have a new allergy but we don't know what it is.

After reading up on a few things I've been thinking about giving up wheat to see if that has any affect on how I'm feeling. A friend of mine was suffering from similar symptoms (dodgy tummy and a rash) and have up wheat for a few weeks. He says he feels much better afterwards. I was thinking I'd give it a go for a week or two and see does it help.

Does anyone else here not eat wheat? Any advice?

I've been looking up what you can eat and it's great that you can eat potatoes and rice. I really love my bread though! NZ seems to have a good selection of gluten free products. The only thing I'm worried about is lunch at work. I always have brown bread or something similar as it fills me up and is easy. I really can't think of anything that I could replace the bread with apart from cooking rice salads or eating leftovers from the night before for lunch every day, which isn't always practical. Just eating a salad wouldn't fill me up enough.

Any suggestions?

ash_18x

you'd be surprised about the salad filling you up, i always thought the same and started having salad and cut out the bread. i find it grand, just bulk it up and put in some kind of meat.
you can also have ryvita, oat cakes, soup etc....there are loads of options!
best move i ever made was giving up bread and wheat! i used to be terribly bloated with cramps and generally feeling crap! i have never felt better!
good luck with it!

watna

ash_18x wrote: »

you'd be surprised about the salad filling you up, i always thought the same and started having salad and cut out the bread. i find it grand, just bulk it up and put in some kind of meat.
you can also have ryvita, oat cakes, soup etc....there are loads of options!
best move i ever made was giving up bread and wheat! i used to be terribly bloated with cramps and generally feeling crap! i have never felt better!
good luck with it!

Thanks, that makes me feel hopeful!

How Strange

watna wrote: »

Recently I haven't been feeling very well. I've had tummy problems and have been feeling nauseous/acidy every so often. I've also been unbelievably tired despite sleeping for more than 8 hours every night, eating well and taking extra vitamins. Recently I've been getting rashes/hives as well. The doctor says I have a new allergy but we don't know what it is.

After reading up on a few things I've been thinking about giving up wheat to see if that has any affect on how I'm feeling. A friend of mine was suffering from similar symptoms (dodgy tummy and a rash) and have up wheat for a few weeks. He says he feels much better afterwards. I was thinking I'd give it a go for a week or two and see does it help.

Does anyone else here not eat wheat? Any advice?

I've been looking up what you can eat and it's great that you can eat potatoes and rice. I really love my bread though! NZ seems to have a good selection of gluten free products. The only thing I'm worried about is lunch at work. I always have brown bread or something similar as it fills me up and is easy. I really can't think of anything that I could replace the bread with apart from cooking rice salads or eating leftovers from the night before for lunch every day, which isn't always practical. Just eating a salad wouldn't fill me up enough.
Any suggestions?

I've been on a wheat free diet for about 8 years now and I swear by it. Some people think it's a fad but I get a sense of general unwellness if I eat wheat that I prefer to avoid it.

The one concept I had the greatest difficulty with was giving up bread. How could I live without it? I was devastated. But you get used to it and now I really don't like eating a lot of it. Similarly with pasta; I used to love pasta and now when I eat spelt pasta I feel so full that I can rarely eat more than a very small handful.

There's so much to learn about cutting wheat out of your diet, I learned it as I went along and it's the hidden ingredient in a lot of foods. Bottom line is cut out all processed foods and anything in pastry, batter, breadcrumbs and all biscuits.

I've noticed that spelt is becoming more and more popular here now and I can get gorgeous spelt bread in superquinn and now also in dunnes. Spelt pasta tastes as good as wheat pasta and alot of italian food stores sell it.

For lunch I usually eat some spelt crackers with soup or maybe salad and some chicken.
Oatcakes are great for a quick snack and you can get sweet oatcakes now which are nice for when you want to dunk something in your cup of tea.

PM me if you have any more questions or want any info.

siochain

watna, give it a shot for a week and see. I stay well clear of just white bread and it alone makes a big difference to how I feel.

I'd be interested in hearing your results,

watna

Thanks everyone. I'm definitely going to give it a try. I'm carrying a bit of extra weight at the moment (not a lot but I had two winters this year because of moving abroad so I kind of have two winter bellies!) too so I don't think cutting out bread and other tasty things like biscuits will do me any harm anyway!

I don't really eat processed foods (apart from sweet things which I admit I have a weakness for). I always cook our dinner from scratch so I'm happy enough with dinners. I'll just replace any pasta I eat with gluten free pasta and make sure to eat more veg. It's the only wheaty thing I'd eat for dinner anyway. If potatoes and rice are fine then that's plenty of options.

For lunch at work I'll just have to get inventive and make big salads with a bit of variation. Again, not aside from the wheat issue, not eating bread for lunch can only do me good. I think the oatcakes sound like a good idea. Do you just get them in the supermarket or a health food shop? How about the spelt crackers? Our local supermarket seems to have a good gluten free aisle so I'll check it out.

I think what'll be hard is the things that I wouldn't thing had wheat in them. I know sausages can because of the rusk that is used. Is there anything else that has wheat that you wouldn't expect?

I have two questions that may seem a bit stupid but I eat porridge for breakfast every morning. In NZ they call porridge oats so I'm presuming that that is wheat free and is ok to eat?

Crisps - I have a weakness for crisps every so often. As they are potato crisps, are they ok?

I know beer is a big thing for people giving up wheat but I don't drink beer. Is there any other alcoholic drinks that have wheat in them?

I do a bit of baking once every two weeks. Does anyone have experience with non wheat flours? I know you can get buckwheat and a few others. Are there any that are particularly good for baking?

Thanks, any help id a bit appreciated. I never realised I was so clueless as to what had wheat in it!

watna

Just a bit of an update on this.

I've been wheat (and oat) free for the last week and it's going well so far. I've definitely noticed that I don't feel nauseous as much as I did before. I've only had one slip up which was when I was quite drunk last night and ate a steak and cheese pie!

Instead of porridge for breakfast I've been having greek yoghurt with fruit and sometimes a bit of honey if I need the extra sweetness. It's actually really nice and doesn't give me that bloated feeling that porridge used to.

For lunch I've been making nice salads (did a very yummy blue cheese and chicken one during the week) or I've been bringing potatoes to work and baking them in the microwave and having sour cream and cheese. I've also been snacking on corn or rice cakes to fill me up.

Was at a work do last night with a buffet meal and I was very good - byepassed the bread and pasta and just had meat and salad and potatoes.

It's been awkward a few times. I really do love my bread and pasta but so far so good. We went out for brunch this morning and the place we went to had a full gluten free brunch free menu which was awesome.

For dinner I've just been making extra veg and no pasts dishes I'm going to try the gluten free pasta this week too I think.

I got some rice flour and a gluten free baking mix so will try to make muffins or something tomorrow.

Luckily I'm not tryin to lose weight or anything so the food I'm having is still pretty tasty - just wheat free!

LivingDeadGirl

Hmmm Watna you're beginning to inspire me to give up the wheat, or at least do a trial run. I always feel very bloated, sluggish and tired, and suffer from indigestion quite frequently(strange seeing as I don't eat much fatty food), could wheat be my problem?

watna

LivingDeadGirl wrote: »

Hmmm Watna you're beginning to inspire me to give up the wheat, or at least do a trial run. I always feel very bloated, sluggish and tired, and suffer from indigestion quite frequently(strange seeing as I don't eat much fatty food), could wheat be my problem?

It could be but I think it's hard to tell officially. I have been feeling very similar to you for the last while and am just giving the wheat thing a go to see if it helps. I think a lot of people trial it first to see.

I'm definitely feeling less sluggish and bloated but not a huge amount so I'm not sure if it definitely is wheat. It has only been a week though and apparently it can take loner for you to feel the effects of cuttin out wheat. It's making me eat more healthy which is a good thing anyway. I don't think it's good for you to heat a lot of wheat anyway so I tend to think of it as cutting back as opposed to I'm allergic and need to give up. Some things I've eaten over the past week have had small quantities of flavouring from wheat but I figure it's best to cut down on the big things first.

I had a gluten free pita for dinner (bf is out and couldn't be arsed cooking) and it was horrible. I'd rather have no bread than gluten free bread!

LivingDeadGirl

Thanks for the heads up anyway, and best of luck to you, I hope you've cracked the problem!

Cutting down on the wheat henceforth!! :cool:

laughingtoaster

are you trying to go wheat free or gluten free? or both?

as far as I know spelt does contain gluten, though it is more digestible. It could be ok for you if your problem is wheat and not gluten.

You can get a buckwheat pasta in the health food shops, it looks a little grey but tastes good.