After years of abusing my body with an unbalanced diet and a decent amount of alcohol, my body has slowly nagged at me to sort myself out.  Over the past couple of years it’s fair to say I’ve cut down on the fast-food chicken and Dairy Milk, and I eat as much fruit & veg as I possibly can, but I still feel my body moaning at me about something.

It now seems that I have a slight intolerance to wheat, and after spending a week or so avoiding my usual sandwich for lunch or pasta for dinner, I can safely say I feel so much better that my body for the moment is no longer moaning.

I was at an Italian restaurant and Mirel noticed how gradually tired I got throughout our meal.  I’d enjoyed a starter of a small selection of bread and then had a pasta dish for the main, and by the end I was knackered, and I couldn’t figure out why.  Mirel suggested that maybe I had an intolerence to wheat, and suddenly it all made sense.

The thing that gets me is that I should have worked this out years ago.  Whenever I went out on a Friday and drank beer I would begin feel tired after 5 or 6 pints, and would be forced to move onto Gin or Vodka.  Some of my friends though could easily get through 10 beers in an evening, and I could never figure out why they could and not me.  But of course, now it makes sense, my fatigue was caused by the wheat in the beer.

Sometimes I’d have so much wheat in a day that I’m surprised my body didn’t give up on me years ago.  Imagine a breakfast of wheat infested toast, a lunch of wheat infested sandwiches with a wheat infested Kitkat, then a dinner of wheat infested pasta, and then going to the pub to drink wheat infested beer.  Then on the way home I may have a wheat infested hamburger, or some wheat infested Digestive biscuits at home.  That is just too much wheat, and now sadly I have to cut down.

I can’t even have Wheatabix, because as you can guess by the name, it contains wheat.  However the same company have introduced Oatabix, and Oats are perfectly good for me.  I just hope this Oatabix tastes ok.  However if it doesn’t, I have corn-bread to fall back on.  I tried some last night without any butter, just to get a naked taste of it, and to be honest I wasn’t very taken by it, as all it resembled was stale wheat bread.  However if I toast it and add a slop of butter on top, I’m hoping it’ll be in for a nice breakfast.  Failing that I’ll just have to eat a fry-up everyday 🙂

Changing my diet for lunch is a really tough one, because the supermarkets don’t really sell pre-made wheat-free lunches.  So that means I’ll have to get into the habit of making my own lunch at home, and its a habit I’ve failed at many times before.  It’s just that when I get home I’d rather relax than do anything to do with work, and that includes spending precious spare time making lunch.  I guess my priorities will have to change.

Dinner is a bit of a hassle as I love pasta dishes.  Not only that but before I go out on a Friday I normally chuck a pizza in the oven.  Luckily there are wheat-free pizza bases/pasta etc though it’s all a bit pricey at the moment.  Hopefully one day the prices will go down.

Anyway I guess sacrificing a few foods isn’t a bad price to pay for feeling good in return.  I just wonder how many other people out there are wheat intolerant and don’t know about it…