Twenty years ago this August the eldest was born.
Almost three years later came the youngest.
By the time he was 13, it was obvious something was wrong.
And a few years later, the youngest started the same wasting away.
Numerous doctors and a hospital stay, finally a diagnosis, and five years of gluten-free living and the eldest is thriving.
Little sister has grown 3 inches in the last 6 months on the gluten-free diet at 17 years-old.
Now it’s time for Mom to regain her health and her figure. It’s so easy to put yourself on the back burner when your kids are sick. They have made amazing progress in gaining weight and growing inches. Their overall health is excellent and such a change from a few years ago. There is still lingering guilt on my part that I couldn’t get them well for so long. As I approach the half century mark, I want to let go of the guilt, the weight and the poor health of undiagnosed celiac disease.
I’ve been sifting though old photographs and seeing a definite pattern of weight gain and weight loss throughout my life. At 17, our home was destroyed by fire and two weeks later we moved to California. Moving in the middle of my senior year in high school threw me off my teenage ‘grand plan’ and left me depressed and I turned to food for comfort. The food I chose was bread, bagels, and pasta and that was a pattern that continued until last year when I was given proof that I had celiac disease. Gluten was my drug of choice. Wheat in all its forms was my tranquillizer. A good dose of it and I would feel drowsy, foggy and I could escape my problems and take a nap. My weight would drop when I was happier and more active and not hitting the bakery aisle of the grocery store or boiling up pots of pasta and eating the whole thing. When I went gluten free I was suddenly looking for that almost narcotic effect and tried wine, but when you’re the taxi for teens and you don’t drive with even a sip of wine, that doesn’t last long. Then there was sugar. Never a dessert eater , suddenly I was dipping into the kids’ cookies and lunch snacks. The weight started piling on as I searched for a new fix in a life without gluten. Add to that the gluten-free products that are full of refined starches and fat and it was a recipe for a size 14.
So tomorrow with the help of some gluten free experts, I start changing the unhealthy patterns of a lifetime. My goal is to stop gaining and losing the same 20-30 pounds and to develop healthier eating and coping behaviors that support my healing and health after living with undiagnosed celiac disease for probably 10 years, perhaps longer.
