Why a Gluten Free Blog?

In the past 6 months, I have been asked many questions............What is Celiac Disease? What is Gluten? Why can't you eat it? I only used 1/4 of a cup, can't you eat it? I can just scrape off the seasoning, right? Cant you just pick off the croutons? What will you eat for Thanksgiving? It's Christmas, can't you fudge just for the holidays? You can drink milk, right? Can't you have a chef salad? It just marinated in it, that's all. Did you go shopping? How long do you have to do this? Can I just order you a sub on white instead of wheat?

After hearing these questions, and I'm sure there are more, I realized that maybe I should start a blog. I've been thinking about doing this for a few months and in that time a thought of why I wanted to write this blog (other than the the obvious above!)

1. To help my friends and family understand me better.

2. To help others that may have Celiac Disease or are wondering if they do.

3. To answer the many questions that people have.

One of my main goals in writing this blog is to help my friends and family understand me better. This is a lifestyle that was chosen for me, I did not choose it. I'm not doing this because I think I'm fat for because I've been in Eugene long enough to turn into a hippie. I'm doing this because in August, after about 6 months of wondering what was wrong with me, I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. To solve this problem, I simply cut out gluten from my diet. Well, it sounds simple but in all actuality it's not. It takes a lot of learning to understand it. That is why I started this blog.

The second goal I had with this blog is to possibly help others. I was medically diagnosed by a doctor but she, or the 4 other docs I went to, are not the ones that thought I could have Celiac Disease, she just ordered the tests. I am very thankful to my sister-in-law, Sabrina, for mentioning a gluten allergy to me. One day she told me about a co-workers husband that had arthritis and got a lot of relief from eating gluten free. Hmmm, I thought, this sounds really familiar. To make a long story short, I looked into it online, and then called my doctors office. In the end, it was other people that helped me, so I would like to maybe help someone else that may have Celiac Disease or the symptoms. Pass along this blog to anyone you know that may have the symptoms but doesn't have a diagnosis yet. I would love to help someone else know what is going on with them because I know what it's like to not know.

Lastly, I want to be able to answer any questions that my friends and family may have. There are obviously a lot of questions that I've gotten already and maybe you have more questions after reading this post. Sometimes it can be hard to explain multiple times why I brought my own food, why I can't eat or why a chef salad doesn't exactly solve the problem. In the next blog post I plan on answering the questions I've gotten above but if you have another question, please send it to me and you could see the answer on the next post!

Thanks for following my blog! I'm excited about the posts that will be coming soon!