Wednesday, December 7, 2011

goodbye grains


I'm not really even sure where to start.

As Americans go,
we eat healthy.
Whole grains, and lots of 'em.
Cold-pressed good-for-you oils.
Honey - raw, of course - and Xylitol instead of sugar.
Whole wheat pastas, 
except for the 4-6 times a month 
the kids have mac & cheese or curly noodles.
For goodness sake, we drive over 2 hours
one way
to buy our milk.
To say I care, greatly, about the nutrition of my family
is an understatement.
Those 4-6 serving per  month of white pastas?
I feel guilty for
every
single
time.
I only buy them because the kids like them so much
and it's an easy thing to fix if I'm gone.
And really, when the bulk of our diet is good,
I figure it can't hurt that much...

Last Tuesday,
I followed a link that Elizabeth shared to this post.

One look at me
and you can see I have 'issues'.
I continue, even with severely reducing my food intake
(of healthy foods)
and exercising some (although admittedly, I could do more...)
I am gaining weight.
I weigh more than I ever have in my life.
In my life, people!
I have been pregnant 10 times!
And then there is the pain.
I've had pain in either my SI joint
or my heel
or both
pretty much every day
since February.
Some days the pain has been debilitating,
sometimes it's just a nuisome.
But I don't think I've had even three pain-free days in 11 months. 

Tyler, while his weight is fine for his height,
has a bit of fat in the worst possible place - his belly.
He also has high blood pressure,
liver 'irregularities',
high cholesterol,
and is considered pre-diabetic.

After reading The Post last Tuesday,
I immediately sent it to Tyler.
A few hours later, he sent me a link to this post.
I spent the entire day on the computer.
We emailed.
We talked.
We prayed.
I may have shed a tear or three.
We decided that we would probably do a 
60 day wheat free experiment 
starting in January.
We watched the documentary Fathead.
And I couldn't bear the thought of feeding my family wheat
again.
Yes.
I have 450# of wheat in my pantry,
and with the exception of Friday, being Jeremiah's birthday
and Saturday morning pancakes for the kids
and a few other times 
when the kids have had a tiny bit of wheat in something
We have been wheat-free for a week.

I'll be honest,
when I was looking for ways to help my husband live a long life,
I wasn't expecting to find that we'd need to do something so extreme.
so counter-cultural.
('cause we are so normal ;-)
Most of my research was comforting, actually;
pretty much everything said 'more whole grains'.
That, I could handle.
I also determined we needed more leafy greens
and more exercise.
But the nagging thought was there,
why,
if we are eating so well
(for the most part)
is Tyler having these health issues at a fairly young age?
I pretty much decided he just had lousy genes.

I'd been exposed to the idea of going wheat free before,
but come on - I've got those buckets and buckets of wheat...
And how could that even be healthy?!
Bread is the 'staff of life'.
it began to make sense.
And as I studied further, it seemed foolish to wait until January.
So
 that is how
a wheat-grinding girl like me
said goodbye - in December, no less
(perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever)
to Saturday morning waffles
and my finally-perfected wheat biscuits
(that I never even got posted, I so recently perfected them!)
and our delicious whole wheat bread.

2 comments:

  1. Boy! this sure goes against the "grain" for all of us! Pun intended- I'm going to have a piece of whole wheat toast right now before I go any further - it may be my last- think I'll cry! - Who'd of thought! I am very befuddled !!??

    ReplyDelete
  2. I hear ya, Mom!! that would have been a great title for this post!

    ReplyDelete

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