Struggling with following gluten & dairy free diet

Nature's Path has good gf cereal for quick mornings - I use either raw pumpkinseed milk (local supplier) or Almond Breeze Vanilla Unsweetened. Be careful with oats if you have severe reaction to gluten as they should be certified clean/GF - they are quite easily contaminated with wheat in processing (same facilities) or even in the field if grown in rotation. I use 1 loaf of bread a month and it is always toasted - O'Dough's Flax bread is a favorite as is Udi's Omega Flax. I was never a sandwich gal anyhow. I like Barilla GF pasta or San Zenone or Tinkyada, but again only once a week or so. I like quinoa (be sure to rinse it really well before cooking or it is bitter from the saponin on the grains) and brown Basmati rice. The only dairy I eat is cheese, preferably hard such as Grana Padano Parmesan, Swiss, or old Cheddar, and yogourts - Greek and regular. I also eat cottage cheese once in a while but try to make it the dry one as that has no whey and is very low in carbs but high in protein. None of these dairy products bother me like milk and ice cream do. I think it is because they are pre-digested by bacteria and are easier for our bodies to assimilate. Do all dairy products bother you or just some - like me? I went dairy free totally as a test for a couple years and felt better, but I was able to add back the cheese & yogourt after I went GF and found the big problem was gluten. Then my GI tract and wheezy lungs weren't quite as touchy about the dairy.
- You are welcome to join us on the Gluten Free board, we aren't a bunch of big posters but there is some helpful info if you read back a bit in the threads.

I'm intolerant to gluten and dairy too, which was hard to hear as I was a huge lover of pasta and cheeses. I'm not a big fan of bread-based products anyway, and the gluten-free range is really bland, so haven't missed those, just pizza but many large pizza companies now offer gluten-free for the occasional treat. I substitute with rice or rice noodles now instead, and also occasionally buy gluten-free pasta, although it isn't as nice as the normal stuff and seeing I've been mostly following a low-carb diet I've cut these out for a while. You do get used to it, especially when you remember how ill these foods make you, it's just not worth it. I do miss my dairy, but have switched to almond or hazelnut milk, lactose-free soft cheese and soya yoghurt, and found these to be just as nice and I feel a lot better for it. I've also started eating more 'clean' meals, such as salad, a piece of meat/fish, sweet potato and/or vegtables. You're right about the additional expense for some items, just got to shop around if you can, and go where the offers are (then stock up the cupboards/freezer when you find them). Good luck.

Hey how about we stop assuming that people need educating on their own food intolerances and actually answer the original question? If you're not GF and DF, go awayyyy.

I went through a similar thing as the OP, I had testing done and it came back with a sensitivity to gluten, yeast and nightshades. Yeast is in just about EVERYTHING that is processed, including all dairy that's been cultured. Even though I've been following a very restrictive diet for years this additional elimination from my diet made me feel like I couldn't eat anything and for several weeks struggled with eating much of anything.

However, on the advice of someone I was talking to I went out and bought several Paleo cook books. I'm not a die hard Paleo person but the recipes are a great way of making food that's tasty and that fits in with the whole no-dairy, no-grain approach. The positive for people like us, is we still can have other grains, like rice and corn. The best GF pasta I found is a 4 grain from Catelli...Hope that helps!

luvmydawgs wrote: »

I think it is absolutely absurd that so many people on this thread think they know more than my doctor! I am not celiac, but I have an autoimmune disease that forces gluten to attack my body and bloat and make me very sick. So unless you are living in someone's body who doesn't tolerate gluten then you should keep you ill-advised dialog to yourself about it being a fad!

As for how I handle it. I just try to eat as clean as I can. I sneak in gluten free chips and Mexican food every once in a while. I have actually learned to love this way of eating...

You must not have the read their whole thing. UNLESS THERE IS A MEDICAL REASON TO DO SO, there is no reason to not eat gluten or dairy. No one is claiming to be a doctor. You have a medical reason to not eat gluten, but there are plenty of people that think gluten is bad or unhealthy when it isn't.

My husband is lactose intolerant so we eat very little dairy. The good thing is that some cheeses actually have no lactose. Cheddar, for one. You have to read the labels but shouldn't have to cut all cheese. I can't offer much in the way of suggestions for gluten free. I love me some bread. Try the skinny taste website, www.skinnytaste.com. I've loved everything from there and she has a ton of gluten and dairy free options.

Jeheer, first, my sympathies if you, like me, need to follow a GFDF diet. If you don't need to, I would choose another nutritional route. BUT, here's my advice for if you DO need to. It echoes what some here have already said, but bear with me.

1. Learn continually (and there is new stuff coming out all the time about Celiac's, for example) about the physiological and possibly neurological response your body is having when you ingest gluten. I worked with my gastroenterologist and a nutritionist, and I never stop reading. End result: It's helped stifle any desire to "cheat", since I now have a much better understanding of the physical consequences. This has nothing whatsoever to do with losing weight!
2. Understand the difference between Casein (the main dairy protein) and Lactose (dairy sugar). Avoiding all dairy is very different than just avoiding lactose. I've found it MUCH harder than avoiding gluten. If you have to be completely dairy free, give it plenty of time and do not cheat. Eventually, the craving will lessen its grip on you (although if you're like me you may always long for gelato ...)
3. Learn the ingredients and the products to avoid, that should go without saying. But conversely learn the ingredients and products you CAN have--and there are lots of them. You may never have even heard of some of them before. For example, I can tolerate ghee (clarified butter - used for eons in Indian cooking) although I can't tolerate butter.
4. Learn the cuisines and restaurants that are more likely to be "GFDF friendly". For example, I've had great luck with Jamaican, Indian, Thai, and Japanese (if I bring my own GF soy sauce) restaurants, and also an app called "Find Me Gluten Free". Call restaurants ahead of time if you have any doubts. There are a lot of people with food intolerances out there, and better restaurants are pretty good at dealing with them. So you can stop dreading being "that guy" at the restaurant A lot of people now complain about all those GF faddists, but their very existence is proving helpful to people like us

So, bottom line, learn learn learn learn and above all be patient. I went through something like the "stages of death" for months and months before I finally started to see that this could be a "culinary adventure". And there's a strange silver lining to it too, since sometimes I still wind up as the person in the middle of lots of other people who are eating lots of great food, while I nurse a cup of black coffee (as at a recent church luncheon). I am losing weight, whether I mean to or not. To paraphrase Scarlett O'Hara, "As God is my witness, I'll never get heavy again!!"

Best of luck to you!

Lottiotta wrote: »

Hey how about we stop assuming that people need educating on their own food intolerances and actually answer the original question? If you're not GF and DF, go awayyyy.

RIGHT!! And SO many posters have NOT read through it and seen that the OP DOES have a medical reason! I really wish people would stop pushing the standard diet crap on those who clearly have a reason NOT to want it or CAN'T have it! If you are not GF, DF, or anything else, you have no reason to even reply to this, other than to offer support in her journey!

jeheer wrote: »

As many people have asked.. I am on a gluten free dairy free diet because I have a severe sensitivity to gluten and then suddenly became lactose intolerant. Any time I eat gluten I get severe stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and severe diarrhea. Lactose has been harder too eliminate as I love dairy probably too much. But I drink almond milk eat lactose free yogurt.

In the absence of celiac disease there seems to be no evidence scientifically that people are sensitive to gluten, but it seems to have made for some pretty good marketing and profit......just throwing this out there for people that may think they have an intolerance and about to spend double for bread and become obsessed with what they put in their mouth.......