Gluten free's the way to be.

Ah, the best of both worlds....

Going gluten-free means making a lot of little changes in my everyday diet that I would have never imagined. After 4 months of not being able to drink beer (as all beers are either made with some sort of mix of wheat, rye, barley, etc.), I fiiiinally found a pretty delicious substitute at Whole Foods last weekend: Redbridge Gluten-Free sorghum beer. Ahhhhh. This was an awesome find for me because I'm much more of a beer drinker than I like liquor, shots, vodka, etc. It was sad for me to find out I was gluten-intolerant not only because that meant I had to eliminate all wheat/flour/barley/rye products from my diet, but also because that included most all beers...buh-bye to my XX and Coronas. I had my options between 2 different kinds though, and settled on this one as it seemed to be a bit lighter than the other.

Being gluten-intolerant doesn't mean that my food choices have to be limited - it simply means that I have to be smart about knowing what foods I can and can't have, and learn to enjoy my options I have from everything I can eat. And I can eat a lot! It's just hard when I've gone almost every day of my life eating flour or wheat products on a near to daily basis, and go to strictly eliminating all of that and sticking to corn, potato, and other gluten-esque substitues for my meals. It's a weird change, and it's taken a little bit to adjust to it, but I can already feel how it's positively affected my body. I feel lighter, I have more energy, I feel as if my body doesn't feel so weighed down by the gluten inside.

And this almost works to my advantage, especially right now in the middle of my marathon training, in which I'm trying to train to my body to be as fit as possible. With my gluten-free options, I now have the ability to work towards my ideal goal of a slimmer figure which should only benefit me in the long run towards my training.

It's definitely hard, and especially since it took me 4 months to actually do the research about beer and find out about the 2 beers I can drink, it's something that I'm still getting used to. But I've found lots of alternatives to my daily meals, and I'm excited to say that this is going to be a permanent change to my lifestyle, one that I'm going to work hard at maintaining.