Gluten for Punishment

So I did a little gluten experiment today (read: Binge City). Here's what I discovered: this morning I ate a Kit Kat and a Little Debbie ho ho thing. Neither tasted very good, although yes, I still managed to choke them down. An hour or so later I was dead tired. Now granted, I'm tired today anyway from staying up until 11:30 and not taking a nap, but this was whole body-eyes drooping tired. Related? Perhaps. This evening for some reason I wanted more - I guess the cravings set in, plus I was curious to see if something I really wanted that wasn't a sweet would taste better. So I got some Pizza Hut breadsticks with marinara sauce from Target. Normally I LOVE these - scrumptious bready perfection. Tonight? They tasted 'off'. The sauce tasted very salty and not sweet like I remembered, and the bread was just O.K. While roaming around Target after eating them, I felt slightly congested, and wondered if I felt that way before and if that were perhaps why the breadsticks didn't taste fantastic. By the time I got to Martin's 20 minutes later to pick up a few groceries, I had a sinusy headache. I figured "in for a penny, in for a pound," and decided to do some further testing by eating two of my favorite things from their bakery: a Boston creme donut and a strawberry cream cheese croissant. The croissant was the ONLY thing that tasted pretty good, but even IT had a much more artificial taste than I ever remembered before. I kind of craved more stuff, but by that point I think it was because I was so disappointed that some of these things I'd been fantasizing about didn't live up to the memory.

Now I'm home. Headache is a little better but still there. Still feel a bit sinusy. Still feel kind of tired, but not as much as this morning. But it's enough to make me think the wheat increased some of those things. Worst of all, the foods didn't taste good! Or maybe that's best of all. Maybe that will help me accept that wheat DOES seem to give me some physical symptoms, and I'll be able to stay away from it. Thinking about doing that forever makes me feel really freaky, so I won't promise that (hello, I've broken down about once every week or so since we started this back at the beginning of September anyway). Obviously I CAN eat it without dying. But if I continue, I know what will happen - I'll get right back up to the binge levels of before, I'll be a LOT more tired, and will have more frequent headaches. Just this amount showed me that.

Of course it's NOT as if I'm eating cleanly and healthfully even sans gluten and dairy and eggs. So that's the next step - if I embrace having to avoid most of those foods (and I haven't fully tested eggs or dairy, although I guess they were also in the foods I ate today), then the next goal is to expand my eating horizons and include much more healthy food than my current fairly steady diet of Hot Tamales, gummy bears, potato chips, and deli roast beef.

What can I say? I excel at finding the crappy food and at bingeing, even when on a restricted diet. But tomorrow I will stay away from gluten/dairy/eggs again. I will. Because I think even in spite of the junk I'm still eating, I feel better and have more consistent energy levels than when I'm downing the gluten like a glutton.

Yes, that was a terrible joke. I blame the donut.