GLUTEN FREE VS GLUTEN FREE AND BEING HEALTHY

So recently I felt like I was the only one not following some sort of eating plan... Everywhere I read  or someone that I spoke to was following some way of eating or diet. It really made me question (again) the way we are eating. Were we wrong in how we were eating in our household? Did we consume the wrong food groups? Did we need more or less protein or more or less carbs?

And of course we are a gluten free and corn free household. So who am I to be the pot calling the kettle black and questioning these sort of things?

But after much internet reading and searching and thinking I've come to realize that:   

Health is an evolution or ever growing state of mind and body.

&

What I ate a year ago I may no longer deem fit to eat now.

CHANGE

If I look back at my recipes from when this blog started to now there are certainly recipes that I don't
make anymore (they are perfectly good recipes) but some contain way more sugar than I would like to consume anymore. Like this coconut ice recipe - it is by all merits gluten free but it is also not very healthy. We now eat less and less sugar but not because we are forcing ourselves to but because we feel so good not eating it that when we eat it we don't like the results of how we feel.

GROWTH
Being gluten free started us on a path to health that I never expected: It made me read and question every ingredient on food packaging. Which in totally honesty was a PAIN when we first started out. But we had to change for our sick childs health at the time. What parent doesn't want a healthy kid? So we changed what we ate  and now we are healthy and better for it.

People who don't know all we have been through or haven't experienced the healthy side of not eating wheat flour etc. feel sorry for us - PLEASE DON'T we love how feeling healthy feels :)  --They even suggest we have a cheat day and have bread as a treat... we never do because the 1 time we did we got sooo sick we hated it!!!--


GLUTEN FREE VS HEALTHY AND GLUTEN FREE
So you can be gluten free and still sick on so many levels. At first when we took out all the gluten in our diets all the horrible side effects of breathing issues or stomach issues went away and you feel better! yay right?
Well it is good, and we all felt so much better. Which is great. BUT we looked to keep eating pasta and bread. We did happy dances every time we found a new gluten free substitute for pasta and bread etc... ... and most of the time these are more REFINED replacements,,,, like white rice pasta instead of wheat pasta. And gluten free bread instead of wheat bread. Now don't get me wrong we do sometimes eat these things still but in much smaller quantities and much more seldom.

VITAMINS AND NUTRITION
It took me quite some time to get out of the cycle of eating bread and pasta... we were used to eating it all the time. (at least a few times a week) But eventually after much reading and watching I came to realize that : If you eat a lot of pasta and bread there is not much nutrition in this. Even when it is gluten free. 

Ive shifted my focus over the months and years slowly to eat more nutrients ... It started with always added some sort of greens to our plate every evening whether it was hot or cold (so it was veg or salad or even both). Now this may seem obvious to you but we were very erratic in what we ate in the past so some days we ate lots of veg and salad and other days we ate only white rice pasta in a white sauce with lots of cheese - yip mac and cheese, not much nutrients in that! Our poor bodies!!! You think you are fueling your family but really you making them full in the stomach but not much else.

Now days we do have the occasional Mac and cheese but it is accompanied by a big salad and I sneek some roasted cauliflower into the mac and cheese to amp up the nutrition just a tad.



RESULTS
What ever stage you are at at this moment, remember that the little changes in your diet can have long term impact on your health if you stick to them eg swopping out soda for water or changing from rBST hormone filled milk to hormone free organic milk (and knowing why you are doing it and sticking by it will do so much for you!) Just remember to research why you are changing that item and then you will be less tempted to reach for the "bad" item when you have a moment of "oh darn they are out of hormone free milk - well I just get the regular milk" cause you'll know that if you drink the milk with hormones in it you will be effecting the hormones in your body and your families body: higher risk of cancer and other hormonal side effects (like the mustache you grow on your upper lip)

Pics are from my instagram account here