Did you know that when film stars need to put on weight for a role, they are told to go eat pizza?
Anyway whether you did or not, or whether you agree or not, that ISN’T why I’m going to tell you about me eating a pizza.The thing is that I’m intolerant to wheat, I’m not allergic, I’m not celiac, I’m intolerant. STAY WITH ME, it could help YOU or someone you know.
So what does that mean, well for me, it means that if I eat a pizza (and I don’t mean a bite, I mean 1/2 -…), a plate of pasta, bread, a few pints of beer, I get snoozy a few hours later and the NEXT DAY, I will feel bloated, my wedding & engagement rings will feel tight and at some point I’m likely to have a strop.
I’m talking that PMT feeling, when you think everything is ok and then dishes haven’t been washed and you erupt like Mt Vesuvius and everyone around is like ‘WTF’ because normally you’re ok with a cup or two!!!!
In other words, everything is fine until it isn’t. It also makes me doubt myself, makes me think I’m crap in many many ways, makes me think I will never succeed at anything and actually ‘why should I bother trying’, makes me think I ‘have no friends’, (I do honestly), and why should I because I’m rubbish, it makes me possibly cry, it makes me impossible to have a discussion with if you have a different opinion to me, it makes me feel like a big fat blob and a bloody great big grey cloud hangs over my head and yes it makes me think ‘f… it, I’ll just eat more pizza, I’m fat and a moody cow anyway, if only I could get off the couch, which I don’t want to’. And Yes, it also makes me NOT want to exercise, which might actually help.
So why am I telling you this, well when I was in my late teens and twenties, I felt all of the above, not all of the time but a fair amount of the time. Not many people knew but maybe they thought, as I did, that it was just my personality, that sometimes I could be fun but other times, I was just a bit of a sad, pathetic, hormoaning, hormonal female. But here’s the thing, I wasn’t, well not all the time anyway.
Again, why am I telling you, stay with me again. Well hubster and I are on our hols in Espana and we decided that we would both have, for one meal & one meal only (spot the clever Mamma Mia ref, wrong country I know), the foods that we always used to love but didn’t love us back, me (as per pic) pizza, and him, pasta Carbonara. It would be our little ‘treat’ to ourselves as we both stay away from them in normal life. And ‘wouldn’t it be fun to have a little experiment to see if we still reacted’. We are on our hols after all and have no kidlets with us so if we become roaring lions, it’s just the 2 of us that will have to deal with it.
So we did and we bloody loved the pizza for me, and the carbonara for him.
Until we didn’t.
The next morning, we both woke up and thought ‘hmm seem to be ok, cool, maybe we’ve grown out of it’. That was until an airbnb lady rang me regarding our next apartment we were due to go and stay at. She was asking me to send information that I didn’t believe we should and did I let it go – oh no sirreeeee, I lectured and lectured until I was pissed off at my own voice. That done and hubster given the job to sort it out as clearly I would have committed ‘murder by telephone’. He dealt with it and fine, I seemed to be back on an even keel. Then he started to feel grouchy about lunch time, I felt fine by then and thought I’d got away quite lightly.
That was until we went back to the apartment to get ready to go out at night to a beach bar I HAD WANTED to go to. Hubsters grump had passed but now I didn’t want to do anything. I felt tired, I felt low, I actually couldn’t bear the thought of going out into a public space and being sociable even just to hubster. I went over it and over it logically in my head and knew where my thoughts were coming from, but I still couldn’t do it. I felt exactly how I felt when I was at college and had ALL those feelings I mentioned before.
We stayed in, under a blanket and watched a movie and went to bed early.
The next morning, I woke up and felt brilliant, the dark had cleared and I was back to me, as was he.
The point of this whole dire tribe is that sometimes HOW we feel isn’t necessarily our own fault, it’s in our makeup, genetic that is. You might not actually be a whinging, hormonal nightmare every month, it may the foods that you’ve eaten that month. – OOOHHHHHH – have a think about that!!!
Don’t get me wrong, that pizza tasted like heaven on earth but the next day I was in Hell as was the other half, and it just wasn’t worth it and won’t be happening for another very very long time.
I do get asked ‘well, how do you know you’re intolerant and to what’? Well, apart from all of the above being a clue, I have had intolerance tests done which I know many in the medical profession don’t rate, but I do. My kids have had them done too and we tested out the ‘intolerance tests’, (that’s another story, involving the girl rampaging through Tesco, aged 5 when I agreed to let her have red jelly when I’d been told, she was intolerant to red colour and refined sugar!!!!) Trust me, I believe in them. But also, when I was going through my Personal Training qualification (16 years ago) and we were studying nutrition, I had the conversation with the lecturer (I had also had ezcema on my hands when younger, now I don’t – off wheat) and he simply said “come off it for 2 weeks and see how you feel”. Within 2 days, I felt miles better and that month, didn’t argue over nothing or cry the day before my period.
Since then, many women have gone through nutrition programmes with me and so so many of them tell me that their symptoms of grumps, upset, skin issues, sleepless nights have all but gone when they’ve reduced certain foods. It could be wheat, dairy, sugar, nightshade veggies, there can be a long list or there can be just 1 or 2.
Just have a think, how do YOU react throughout the month? Remember it’s not how any of your friends or family do, no one else in my family, sister, mum, dad, seems/seemed to have a wheat intolerance but maybe you do or your kids react to things or your partner or your family do, it’s just different to you, maybe there are some things you could try reducing and just see what happens. N.B. not everyone has intolerances.
Try keeping a food and mood diary, I ask my clients to do that so that I, and they can see if there are certain things in their normal life that could be making a difference to their happiness. The symptoms could come that day or the following day and last 1 or 2 days. How you feel could have a whole new meaning!
If you want to have more of a chat about this, then please do send me an email hello@elaineluck.com and we can arrange a time to chat. It really can change your life, IT DID TO MINE and if I’d know what I know now, in my teens and twenties, my happiness, my confidence, my enjoyment of life could have come way way quicker.
A few days later lol