A new start

[carrie78]

Well so far it ha been a long hard slog to try and get my head around what I can and cant eat and I had joined coeliac UK paying 15 quid for the privelidge and then spent an age looking through the gluten free foods list and making decisions on what to pick.I went to our local small sainsburys and they didnt have one of the things that I had chosen and put on my list, I ended up having a complete meltdown in the middle of sainsburys and left in tears.

You see I have CFS and fibromylagia along with a lot of other health issues and doing things like that take a lot of energy I really cannot afford to waste, I was exhausted after it and had to go for my shot that afternoon which makes me tired anyway, then I had the disappointment of thinking that I would be able to have regular food choices only to find they didn't have any of it, I was not impressed

Then I found this site and started reading the questions and answers and got brave and posted myself and the advice has been absolutely brilliant, I didn't understand how important cross contamination was and that the coeliac UK list is not gonna work for everyone, I am still having a lot of pain and discomfort but I read it can take 6 months to two years of being strict with your diet for us to recover.

I have spoken to my wonderful husband who has said that we need to try and get a seperate bread machine for me to use as I am risking cross contamination using the same one we use for his bread, he has said he will get me new chopping boards that I will have a couple of, use an area of the kitchen just for my food, have a cupboard that is just my stuff to avoid cross contamination and he has said he will get me some new pans that we can use just for my foods and anything we both have that is gluten free to stop me getting glutened unexpectedly.

I still don't know if I am coeliac or not as I am not going to go for an endoscopy and am not willing to cause myself the pain and discomfort of eating gluten for an extended period, but a lovely lady told me you can have non coeliac gluten sensitivity and the diet is the same, so either way, I need to behave myself

I feel blessed to have found this site and very grateful to those who have helped me so much already, my typing stinks due to co-ordination difficulties and word blindness when exhausted, which is all the time just now so people have to bare with my typonese but so far so good.

A huge thank you to all, and this is a fresh start for me and I am hoping to be able to say in the future that my health issues are resolving themselves

[Hidden]

Carrie, you sound so positive, welldone for picking yourself up and dusting yourself off, im proud of you it takes courage to do that. Everything that you have in place will help you more than you realise. Welldone Carrie good luck and remember there are lots of people on here to support you on your way.

Paula xx

p.s your hubby sounds lovely and supportive

[carrie78]

Thanks Mummyof3, you really dont know how much your kindness yesterday and today means to me. I am just trying to weigh up if I need to cut the dairy back out for now or not also as the last few days I have been having dairy again even though lactose is an intermittent problem, today I feel sick and bloated, tummy pains are severe, gurgling and rumbling, and very gaseous, SO I do suspect I will have to go back to removing dairy, or at least cut right back down. I know I can do this if I put my mind to it and I hd a lovely dinner last night of roast chicken roast potatoes carrots peas and roast parsnips, not a hint of gluten or dairy in sight and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I just need to get me and my husband to be a little bit more creative in the kitchen to avoid the boredom that I find knocks me off track. I will be reading all labels to ensure I am not slipping up whre possible and we can go from there. I am feeling an awful lot more positive today, and feel so much less alone from meeting you and everyone else on here. If small children can cope, then so can I!

[Hidden in reply to carrie78]

Your very welcome, sometimes it just makes you feel better to know others are going through the same thing!. It may be that you need to just cut out dairy or use the alternatives for a little while until you get back on track and then you can try and introduce small amounts back in?

I dont have a problems with dairy but do you/anybody find that if you swap milk for instance i only ever have skimmed milk, but hubby came home with semi-skimmed milk a couple of days ago and my tummy hasnt been right, sicky feeling on and off throughout the day, headaches, wind, and strange poos, (sorry tmi!) im back on skimmed milk today so will see if it all settles down.

WE WILL DO THIS TOGETHER CARRIE!!

P.S welldone on such a great weight loss im roughly at what you started at and this is the biggest i have ever been i hate it but it such a struggle

PAULA XX

[Apricot]

Carrie

You have done very very well..and I echo the praise from Mummy.

Yes, being creative in the kitchen,...will do you both..a lot of good. Fresh food is better anyway. If your Man feels deprived...he could always eat the "ordinary" bread away from you...

The dairy situation...yes at first that can be another cause of grief...but it often settles down...just put it on hold for a while..and see what happens...

Go for it!! You will both be fine...

J

[Hidden]

Hi Carrie78, how lovely that you have taken the time to let people know how much better you feel about things. I am sure others will find our story helpful.

I find dairy gives me exactly the same problmes, even a tiny amount, which feels very different from accidently gluten cross-contamination effects. You can buy milk that has the lactose coverted to smaller sugars so that it doesn't produce this effect, so if you like milk in your drinks you wouldn't have to give that up. You can even get handbag sized portions of this for visits. I havent taken milk in drinks for thirty years, but I know it is the sort of thing people find hard to change.

Good luck and well done for writing, and hello to supportive hubby - makes an enormous difference. The only way I can manage is to have a gf household (and no kissing till teeth brushed if he has been eating somewhere else!)

[carrie78]

Thank you so very much everyone, I am sure I can do this if I put my mind to it, and am currently baking a banana cake a love4ly lady with a poorly child posted on here, so fingers crossed It works as I could then tweak it with choco chips ( sigh dairy free of course hehehe) as banana and chocolate loaf is lovely. It will just be finding a way to get around the things I cannot have, my biggest issue is breaad, I miss bread terribly and cannot seem to find anything that comes close, but I read somewhere that as a GF eater you need to learn not to expect GF baked products to taste like wheat based products, they are never going to compare you just have to learn they are different and enjoy them in their own right, and this is what I am having most difficulty with, I expect GF breads and products to be very much the same as wheat based counterparts, and this is always going to lead to disappointment, though Kallo foods, freedom Jaffa cakes are vile, I bought them from Tesco, and I would rather not have jaffa cakes as these were not pleasant, and Sainsburys GF shortbread is equally yucky, but Morrison round short breads biscuits GF are really quite nice as are their digestives.