Wednesday, August 02, 2006

No Bread, No Muffins, No Crackers--but Rice is Nice!

A little more than a week ago I realized that I could go without wheat--something I've contemplated in the past because of suspected allergies but never accomplished. Normally I've never thought I could possibly pay enough attention to succeed at such an idea, but though there are distractions in my life, at this point it seems pretty easy, perhaps as if to prove the verse, "To everything there is a season..." For me it's less complicated than Weight Watchers or similar plans. All it takes is to keep on paying attention.
It's kept me from a whole table full of dessert possibilities at a potluck; a slice of wedding cake and some crackers at a reception; two batches of muffins I made here; and various meal portions such as noodles and tortillas. I imagine it might be about 600 calories' savings per day on average.
I've only had some miniscule slip-ups so far--breading on onion rings and on chicken, and part of a cracker. We don't eat a whole lot of extremely commercially processed foods here (there are certainly exceptions), so that makes it easier. And maybe it's also due to the fact that I'm making rice at almost every meal for our exchange students, so that's also an option for me when others are eating wheat.
Years ago I stopped eating chocolate (with the exception of the occasional spumoni ice cream--who could resist that?!) and stopped gaining weight though I didn't start losing...and then just in the last number of months the weight started going up again in spite of fairly constant activity. So with the start of this wheat diet, within a couple of days I'd gone down about 5 pounds. (I didn't weigh myself the first day, so I'm relying on a measure about a month ago.) It's bobbed around since then and now I think it might be 6 pounds lost. Seems frustrating to slow down, but when that's for just about two weeks' withholding one food product, I think that's pretty nice. I hope to do as I did with chocolate and make it a permanent or at least semi-permanent change until I lose most or all of my excess. I'll give you updates as it continues--for my own accountability if nothing else!

2 comments:

Leila said...

Good going Connie! :)

The Resident Writer said...

I also have suspected wheat allergies (that is the #1 cause of the neurological disease I have), but I was tested negative, and I'm scared of loosing any weight. I've tried the diet for weeks at a time, though, and was happily surprised at what I COULD eat. I recommend the book, Wheat free, Worry free by Danna Korn.