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Last night I was going over my food and symptom journel to see if I could pin point what is making me so sick. The thought came to me, "I wonder what the other gluten sensitive people eat?"

So, what do ye all eat for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks? I guess I am worrying I am not eating right. Anyway, thanks to those brave ones who want to share.

Good idea discussing this, Coleslaw. Here's what I typically eat in a day:

First thing in the morning, I drink a quart of water with the juice of half a lemon squeezed into it.

I follow that with a big green smoothie made from a quarter of a lemon, one green apple, a big chunk of ginger, half a blender full of greens (celery, parsley, chickweed, miners lettuce, dandelion greens, and/or kale), 3-4 cups of water, 1 T flax seed, 1 T bee pollen, and 1/4 cup avocado.

Then mid-morning I have 2 servings (big bowl) of hot cereal (buckwheat or brown rice porridge) with a handful of frozen berries, one sliced banana, and rice milk.

For lunch I have leftovers from the previous night's dinner. Yesterday's lunch was a big bowl of squash soup with a cup of quinoa. If it hadn't been SQUASH soup, it more typically would have been a legume-based soup with a grain or baked potato, yam, or sweet potato.

My snacks are really variable each day. Yesterday I had a living buckwheat parfait made from sprouted and dehydrated buckwheat, chopped fruit, and cashew "cream" (came from a restaurant). Another day it might be tofu pudding or fresh fruit, like an apple plus some stewed prunes. Another time it might be veggie sticks or GF crackers with chili bean dip.

Dinner typically goes like this: bean, starch, greens. Last night's dinner was lentil soup with garlic bread (made from EnerG's no-yeast brown rice bread) and braised broccoli. Tonight it was braised kale instead of broccoli. For the starch, it is usually potatoes, yams, sweet potatoes, squash, quinoa, brown rice, or EnerG bread.

That's it! That's what I typically eat in a day. HTH!

Hi Jen,
Your morning smoothie sounds fantastic! I've made smoothies with greens added but have gotten out of the habit.
Do you put in a whole quarter lemon, peel and all? I know that the rind is good for you, but doesn't it make the smoothie taste bitter?
Also, have you been using bee pollen long?
How has it affected your health?

I think I see more smoothies in my future...
I'd love your input.

Thanks,
SlimKat

Hi slimkat,

I ADORE my green smoothie each morning. I've even had them for dinner too! DH and I are almost addicted to them. It's a painless way to eat more fresh greens in a day. I forgot that I like spinach in them too (it's one of the greens I rotate in them).

Good question about the lemon. You're right, I peel the lemon instead of putting the rind in there. I read somewhere that citrus rinds can be allergenic, and I figured I didn't need to be adding another allergen to my "do not eat" list in the future. So, I only use a bit of lemon "zest" now and then in my cooking.

BTW, the lemon really wipes out the bitterness of any dark leafy greens you might put in the smoothie. If I'm putting more bitter greens, like kale, into my smoothie, I use half a lemon instead of a quarter lemon, to cut the bitterness.

I've been using bee pollen probably two years. I started out with 1 teaspoon of bee pollen and worked my way up to 1 tablespoon. I haven't noticed anything specific in terms of health benefits from the pollen, but there are so many good things in it, including B vitamins, enzymes, special lecithin that feeds the brain, and all sorts of stuff I never seem to remember! If I stopped taking it, then I might notice a difference! I suspect I'd have less energy and feel somewhat depressed compared to how I feel now, but no proof of that.

What do you like to put in your green smoothies?

Lots of people make green smoothies with regular blenders. I would just blend the fruit and water first, then add the greens bit by bit, then add the avocado at the end (so the smoothie comes out super smooth).

Hi Jen,
Thanks for the tips. I love that the lemon cancels out the bitterness of the greens -- that will be great for kale.
Also, good to know about the benefits of bee pollen. I tried it a few years ago, but didn't stick with it. I wasn't vegan at the time, either. Now that I am, I bet the B vitamins and lecithin would be a good daily nutritional additition.

My smoothie has:
a couple of big handfuls of spinach, kale, lettuces, mache (whatever I have on hand)
an apple or 1/2 to a whole banana
a handful of frozen organic mixed berries (or fresh if in season)
1 T flax seed
1 small scoop All One powder in green phyto base (has rice protein, lots of vitamins and minerals, natural aminos, etc. -- wheat/gluten/etc. free)
OR spirulina
OR Pure Synergy

2+ cups water OR "water" from a young Thai coconut (lots of enzymes, very tasty, very low fat)

OK -- now I need to start doing them again -- I did them all last summer and into the fall, then burned out.
I'm going to add the bee pollen and lemon!

Best,
SlimKat

Hi Diane,
I have a blendtec blender -- like a VitaMix, same price range.
It was a GREAT investment. It makes the best smoothies, sorbets, blended soups, sauces, etc.
It is different than a food processor in that it is much more powerful. It can handle chunks of ice, frozen bananas, and the like.
If your blender is about to give up the ghost, spend the extra $$ and get a BlendTec or a VitaMix.
They use BlendTecs at Jamba Juice and Starbucks, I think.
Both brands are excellent!

Best,
SlimKat

Example of today's menu for groundhog(g):

Breakfast: Gluten Free (Nature's Valley???? I think) cornflakes/ sprinkled with ground flax, goji berries, and half a banana sliced over top....we used soy milk...I was using almond milk for a while, but soymilk this morning. Coffee...I'm a coffee drinker!

Mid morning...I used to have something like another banana or Laura Bar or something...now we're on a NO SNACK thing while we are doing this workout program for 90 days. So...just coffee for mid -morning.

Lunch: leftovers from previous suppers. Today's is rice macaroni with almond cheeze/ veggie pot pie with a sorghum biscuit-like crust/ and two Clementine Tangerines.

Supper: tonight will be stacked bean enchiladas, with the rest of the almond cheeze sauce and homemade salsa...steamed mixed veggies on the side...we don't do alchohol, but we do enjoy either pomegranate, or pomegranate/acai, or fresh squeezed grape juice, or something like that with the meal.

Often at night we used to make fruit smoothies and popcorn, or juice some veggies and fruits to have with our popcorn...we always put the entire lemon, peel and all in there, plus apple, carrot, something green, and sometimes some grapes or something in with that. Now we're on the NO SNACK thing until our 90 day workout is up...so we're just having water in place of those things at night.

Other typical breakfasts include French toast, made with EnerG Tapioca Loaf: what I do is briefly soak each slice in something like soymilk, almond milk, or coconut milk, and then brown them on the cast-iron griddle, sprinkle with blueberries or strawberries and drizzle with maple syrup. Other times I make pancakes with sorghum flour. We make hashbrowns lots of times too...but on workdays it's ussually either cereal like today, or chopped fruit/nuts mixture.

Lunches are always leftovers, except sometimes on weekends when there's time to make something.

Suppers consists of stuff like rice spaghetti or other pasta with some tomato-based sauce (I normally make all the sauces myself)-- veggie burgers (made from steaming veggies, mashing with a potato masher, and then adding enough rice flour and/or some brand of gf cornflake crumbs to make patties---"fry" them on the cast-iron pan with a sprtiz of Pam), veggie pot pies, spinach pot pie, lots of stir frys over rice, Indian curry-type things over rice, Mexican type stuff either on tortillas or rice, lasagna made with rice wrappers as the noodles, or almost anything leftover stuffed into rice wrappers and baked into eggrolls...even peanut butter and jelly eggrolls made this way...we also eat lots of salads, and use leftover salad as stuffing for wraps (I buy hemp wraps or whatever other gluten free wraps I've been able to find or use Lettuce Jammers lettuce leaves that work well as sandwich wraps--I always grill the hemp or whatever other flatbreads when making a wrap...makes 'em taste really, really good!). I normally bake lots of muffins with sorghum flour to go along with meals...used to make lots of sorghum flour cakes and cobblers, but we're laying off of that stuff during this 90 day workout routine...we'll get back to that later on, I'm sure!

Thanks to all who have shared what they eat. I don't think I eat enough. I need to drink more liquids, so might do green smoothies again. I liked mine with a banana, a pear, and greens, with water. I used to make a tomato soup type green smoothie when I ate the raw diet. Now, I am worrying that tomato based stuff is making me sick/bloated

Everyone who has shared thus far has given me a lot of good meal ideas. I ought to start gaining weight once I #1 start eating more, and #2 when my gut villi start healing, and I also feel, #3 when I leave off the oils. I'll try the frozen, thawed fruit and nut idea and see if my digestive system will allow me to eat it.

And yes, Diane, I need to , but don't want to, do the elimination diet. Last night I even thought, "what the heck, I may as well go get Chinese food with the breading and other gluten stuff. I eat gluten free and still have problems, so what the heck?" Of course, this morning I have come to my senses and will carry on as a good little girl.

Well, how can I doctor up the Elimination Diet so it won't be so boring? How can I eat a bowl of plain rice? Or a plain baked sweet potato? The only condiment allowed is salt, no sweetener or mayo, etc.. Ya, I'll make this red sauce I have a recipe for. It is cooked carrots and beet that is blended together to replace regular tomato/spaghetti sauce.

Anyway, much thanks to all.

Lois

On the elimination diet we can only add one food item at a time. We have to eat this item is large enough quanities for two days, then wait for a reaction. http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougal ... DietPF.htm
I have read and re-read this trying to get myself motivated. I guess I'm not as motivated as was Burgess Laughlin. He followed the elimination diet for a full year. http://drmcdougall.com/stars/burgess_laughlin.html

I followed the vegan raw food diet for app. 1 year, 5 months before going on the McDougall diet. Before the raw diet I ate vegetarian. I never followed the Macrobiotic diet. Although the red sauce recipe comes from a macrobiotic cookbook.
But, here is the catcher. Before going on the raw food diet I could pretty much eat anything without digestive problems. Except for dairy, because I had stopped eating dairy and like you said, I lost my ability to digest it. I even got sick for 2 weeks after a ladies tea party where everything had dairy in it.

Not to change the subject, but, what is with that Kim on the Vegan and Gluten-Free yahoo group giving out all those recipes? Seems no one is posting anything and it's all these recipes. Some of the recipes do look good and I might print off some of them. But, it would be nice to have a good discussion on a Celiac or gluten sensitivity issue.

Back to my eating 100% raw for 1 year, 5 months. No one seems to understand what I am trying to get at. First I need to back up to 1990 when I was found to have cancerous tumors in my uterus and both ovaries. I under went chemo and radiation treatments. I believe I got bowel damage. I feel the raw diet made thing worse and why I ended up with bad digestive problems. I don't know if bowel damage can be reversed or healed. I tried the Hallelujah Diet with 5 glasses of carrot juice a day. I did a bowel and juice fast cleanse twice. All of this seems to have made matters worse. When I continued eating the SAD from 1990 to app. 2002 everything was fine. My only complaint was bladder control. So, here I am today trying to figure this out. Wishing I could find another lady going through the same problems, because she had the same cancer and treatments, etc..

Thanks for letting me vent my frustrations. Yes, Diane, keep nagging me and one of these days I'll surprise everyone and go on the elimination diet.

Your digestion was okay from 1990 until twelve years later? It seems like it was long enough after the chemo and radiation to not have been caused by it, maybe, but I really don't know anything about that...how long it would take for damage to show up, etc. Then, if I've gotten it right, the actual digestion problems didn't come until in 2002, twelve years after the chemo and radiation, when you got going with the Hallelujah Acres diet? But from 1990-2002 you ate SAD, and didn't have any digestive problems? Is that right?

Were you drinking lots of barley green and eating lots of whole wheat products? I mean, it seems to me that a person COULD bring on celiac disease by replacing the meat/dairy, and junk food with green juices made from glutinous grains, lots of whole wheat breads, and sprouted glutinous grains.

It could be that if you suddenly got a bunch of gluten as mainstays of the bulk of the diet, and then kept eating that stuff, not knowing you'd developed a sensitivity, that your gut became overly reactive to many things because of continued irritation. I'm just guessing, of course...it is puzzling. It would be good if you could ever get your digestive system calmed down enough to figure out what things make you feel good and which ones do you in.

I've read that celiacs have problems with all the digestive processes, with sphincters responding inappropriately to normal pressures, enzymes not being produced properly, good bacteria being killed off because of lousy digestion, further causing even more lousy digestion and allowing wrong bacteria to take over, and everything just entirely out of whack. I don't know...as I said I'm guessing out loud here, just seeing your frustrations...but 12 years after treatments seems like an awful long time for damage to appear, and a sudden change in diet, such as Hallelujah Acres, etc., sure sounds like a possible culprit.

Have you been feeling any better at all lately? I was gluten free for a few months before I really started doing better.