Grisly Gluten. :(

So yesterday Alex and I went to the museum with a friend of mine and her adorable daughter, then met up with an other girlfriend and her adorable daughter (must have more babies immediately, they were that cute). For lunch, we hit up Sauce which is a delicious little restaurant serving Italian fare, and I was eager to get my grub on for a yummy cheat meal.

If you read this blog with any regularity you know that I have been trying to stay away from them. I did Paleo for a couple of weeks and then switched to Primal because wine and parmesan. Wine and parmesan. Mmm. But in order to keep myself sane I let myself have a cheat meal about once a week. Twice if you count that piece of Chompies everything toast I had the other day.

Now here is the difference between that piece of toast and my bread roll, thin crust pizza slice, bites of Alex's mac and cheese experience at Sauce: Pain. Horrible, crampy, something died in your gut kind of pain. Hurrah, I'm gluten intolerant! 

I didn't even go all out like I had intended, thanks to my friends who ordered salads (God, ladies, way to keep me reined in). I had intentions of a big bowl of pasta, or maybe my very own pizza, or maybe a PANIIIIIIINI. But THANK GOD for the salad I ordered because had I eaten any more than I did, I think I would have died right there outside the store on the sidewalk.

I'm not going to get into any sort of gross detail, but it was remarkable, how fast and how long the inflammation lasted. It sort of blew my mind, to be honest and even Todd was taken aback by the severity of the reaction. He didn't even think I should have worked out last night (I did, and I owned it), because it had KO'd me so thoroughly.

Anyways, I don't know what to think about this. Last Sunday for the cheat meal we made a big mess of pasta and yep, I had stomach pains after. But nothing so severe as yesterday. The pain lasted SIX HOURS. Oh my God. Ugh. Fucking gluten, man. What the hell.

One thing I'm glad for though is that the withdrawals during my first couple of weeks of going Paleo are gone. I don't really think about it anymore unless I'm planning a cheat meal (and now that will forever be different), and I'm more than happy to load up a leaf of butter lettuce with anything from scrambled eggs with cheddar and ham or guacamole and leftover steak. It's no big deal.

But now this pain, this reaction my body is having to a food I used to eat all the time, is making me question whether I should be feeding Alexandra this stuff anymore. Now, I know that there are a lot of studies out there saying this rampant, widespread villainizing of gluten is overblown and unnecessary. But my reaction, my body's loud protest, was very real, and before I had never thought I even had a problem. If I had any discomfort, I don't remember it. Nothing stands out. But now that I've gotten my body off the stuff, ouch.

So, yeah. I tried a few weeks ago to give her a trail mix instead of her go-to favorite of Cheerios mixed with goldfish crackers and she was like WHAT IS THIS BASIC ASS SHIT and refused to eat it. But I think I may keep trying, perhaps with a less shmancy mix than the previous one (sun-dried cranberries are lost on a toddler I guess).  All I know is, the pain I felt was my body telling me something about the food I ate, and it wasn't a happy message.

Of course, tomorrow we're supposed to have Italian with friends and already I'm sort of thinking about how delicious lasagna is. I heard once that humans are the only animals that will return to a food that treated them unkindly, and I guess I am not only a human but the president of humans as well. Mmm, lasagna.