Eating Wheat Free / Gluten Free

Helpful Tips for Gluten Free/Wheat Free Eating

A compilation of tips, principles, etc. that have helped me find good wheat-free meals, encouraged me when I felt discouraged and just helped me have a good attitude.

• 1Go with your eating style -- If you're already an adventurous eater, than you've already got a leg up on transitioning to gluten free eating. There are tons of new recipes and foods out there for you to try as substitutes for gluten-filled foods. Use quinoa instead of rice for a side dish, or experiment with alternative flours.
  
  If you are a more picky eater or tend to stick with familiar foods, you might want to first try substituting ingredients gluten-free ingredients in your favorite recipes. Try some rice-based lasagna noodles in your favorite lasagna recipe, or use a baking mix to make chocolate chip cookies. They may not have a completely identical texture or taste, but if you're using good GF products, you can get really, really close to the original.
• 2Get some support -- When I was first diagnosed with a wheat allergy, I was fortunate enough to have a friend's sister with celiac disease to talk with about adjusting to my new way of eating. It was really helpful to have someone who understood about going to a birthday party and not being able to eat the cake, or figuring out how to make a halfway decent gluten free mac and cheese. If there's no one you're able to talk with about gluten-free eating in your life, there are gluten-free forums like Celiac.com's Celiac and Gluten-Free Forum to connect with others who are on the gluten free journey.
• 3Have realistic expectations -- Don't assume that even the best gluten-free food substitute will taste or have a texture EXACTLY like the 'real thing'. If you go into gluten-free eating thinking you'll never know the difference all the time, you will be in for disappointment. Yes, there are alternatives that can and do fool non-GF people because they're so good, but not everything will be perfect. I go for 'good enough' in the arenas where I haven't found the best alternative yet, and keep tweaking a recipe when I figure out something different to try.
  
  It may take awhile for you to figure out your new gluten free favorites, so there are times where you'll see a product that looks good but tastes terrible. Hopefully the list of my faves farther down the page will minimize the 'buy a box but only eat a few bites' syndrome for you, but when it happens, don't be too hard on yourself. That stuff happens.
• 4Rejoice in what you CAN eat -- There's still a lot that a gluten-free person can eat without tweaking. My personal favorite is chocolate. While eating gluten-free has its challenges, I think avoiding gluten and/or wheat is much easier than avoiding all the corn products with my corn allergy.
  
  In a nutshell, it's usually happier to practice thankfulness for what you have rather than dwelling on what you can't eat. Believe me, though, I've had more than a few instances of food envy and feeling sorry for myself, especially at the beginning where I had to make extremely significant dietary changes effective immediately.
• 5Take a tour of your grocery/health food store with new eyes -- If you're new to GF eating, or you're feeling like you're in a rut, one thing that I've found helpful is to go to Whole Foods, the local health food store or my local grocery store's gluten-free sections with a notebook. Go with a generous time limit, and go alone (unless you have a friend who's extremely helpful with this kind of thing), and just peruse the shelves. Write down products you think you might like to try. Buy a couple if you want, but take your list home to research on the internet for reviews of the product.