Citruskiss, thank you for this list! The only restaurant on the list in my town in Wendy's, and I do like their chili and side salads. Next week we're driving from MN to Helena MT. I'm printing your list and taking it with me. I'm pretty sure they have a Chipotle there, I know they have Chili's, and every decent sized town has an Outback.

One more option (a fun, cheap option) - try Bufalo Wild Wings if there's one on your vacation. They don't have a gluten free menu or anything, but I told them I was allergic to wheat. I ask them to toss my traditional wings in the sauce in a clean bowl, since they also sometimes toss their 'boneless' (ie. breaded) wings in the same sauce bowls. Also - I believe their fries are in separate fryers as well - ie. they aren't doing their fries in the same fryers as their onion rings and such. Double check on this one though - because I don't generally eat fries. I get traditional 'hot' or 'mild' wings. I don't feel weird or deprived either. Usually everyone at the table's getting wings of some kind. It's a cheap dinner out, for a 'sit down' kind of place, instead of a fast food place. Yeah - it's still pretty much fast food, but it's nice to have table service.

Just to chime in here, gluten is found in several grains: Rye, barley, wheat and generally oats. It's not *in* oats per se but two things happen with oats. First of all, it's usually badly contaminated with gluten. They're grown, stored and shipped together often. Secondly there's a protein in oats, avenin, that most gluten sensitive people react to.

If you want to eliminate gluten then there's a couple of very common things you'll have to watch out for: Soy sauce (which will include other things with soy sauce in them like Hoison sauce, oyster sauce and others), beer (usually made with malt form barley), and anything including the word malt. Soy sauce you can replace with wheat-free Tamari. There are gluten free beers out there now, Redbridge is one inexpensive option.

Anyway, just wanted to point out that gluten is not just a wheat thing. It's also in spelt and some other grains closely related to wheat.

There's a lot more info on: http://celiac.com

Thanks for that good info Nancy!!

For me personally, getting off wheat was my goal. I don't seem to have any food intolerances and am more focused on what foods I find that trigger an addictive response in me...as in can't get enough. wheat is one of those for me...I don't have issues with the 1-2 Wasas rye that I eat daily.

There is a source online that guarantees "gluten free oats"....just google that if you want to find it.

Yes, all those sauces can be very deceiving when we don't read the ingredients lists.

Hmmmm.... oats, huh? Darn. When I cut out wheat I feel better, but not all the way better, if you know what I mean. Still some nagging symptoms and an occasional episode of IBS. I wonder if oats, which I sometimes have for breakfast, could cause this. The 2 things I crave the most are wheat and dairy, and both cause problems for me. Why is it you crave the very things you shouldn't have? I never crave a bowl of rice, but if I get anywhere near a hearty loaf of sourdough bread I'm in serious trouble. I think the addiction goes hand in hand with allergies. Also the fact that you don't get a reaction every time you eat it makes it hard to diagnose. I think a true celiac gets a dramatic reaction every time they eat gluten, but with an intolerance or allergy the symptoms are inconsistent and vague. I am anxious to get my copy of The Gluten Connection. I hope it answers a lot of my questions. In the meantime, thanks Nancy, for the celiac website.

A lot of people with gluten issues also have issues with dairy. I'm definitely one of those! I'd get diarrhea with gluten, constipation with dairy. It was truly strange when I had both symptoms at the same time!

I think a lot of people also crave the things that they're intolerant of. Could be the exomorphins they create are rather addictive.

Luckily I don't seem to have any major issues with wheat and/or gluten, except for monster - and I mean monster! - cravings.
Phase 1 of SB felt so liberating, I found it easier to just go cold turkey rather than trying to control myself/my craving.
I think I'll be researching the issue and possibly get a hold of the book, but for the time being I'm experimenting a little. So far I've tried a small serving of rye bread once a day, at different times and with different associations, and it doesn't seem to cause problems.
The bread I'm using is not made of flour, it's the German one where you can actually see the grains.

Not everyone with Celiac has the "typical" symptoms when they accidentally get hold of gluten. I have the dermatological form of CD, and I start to itch like crazy whenever I have gluten. I also start to get really cranky and fidgety - I have NEVER had GI issues! Our daughter (who was the first one in our family to be diagnosed) has NO discernible symptoms - she has a true "silent" case of Celiac Disease.

If it hadn't been for her pediatrician running a routine CD screen on all of his patients who have Down syndrome, we never would have known that she had CD. Our whole family has been on a gluten-free diet for the past 15 months, and we have never felt better. I have lost almost 40 pounds, and the ONLY change that I have made to my diet is to eliminate gluten! I still eat all of the other carbs (although I don't crave them nearly as much), and I eat full-fat foods. I have NEVER felt deprived on this "diet", and since I do have a confirmed case of CD, I will be staying on it for life. However, it has been so easy - after the 1st couple of weeks getting used to it - that it will not be a hardship at all.

There are restaurant guides available through many of the Celiac websites (and Amazon has them as well), there are LOTS of good cookbooks and recipe sites on the Internet, and most major cities have Celiac support groups. You don't have to have CD to join; it is believed that Celiac Disease is just the tip of the gluten sensitivity "iceberg". What most people don't realize is that 39% of the US population carries one of the two genes currently associated with Celiac Disease - many of those people may have gluten sensitivity and not know it.

A really good book is Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic by Dr. Peter Green of the Celiac Disease Center at Columbia University. This was the 1st book that we purchased after our daughter's diagnosis.

Keep on doing what you are doing - if you feel better on a GFD, then by all means, stay on it. You aren't going to do any damage to your body by following a GF regimen - and as you have stated, if anything, you feel much healthier when you eat this way.

Teresa Koch
Fort Worth, Texas

Thanks Teresa!! and Welcome!!

Thank you, Judy! It is truly wonderful to find a forum (other than the Celiac forums, that is) where nobody thinks that I am some sort of nutrition nut when I talk about gluten -

Since our family has never been one of those "health crazy" families, we have appeared almost rabid at times when we tout the myriad benefits of eliminating gluten from one's diet, regardless of their test results. Hey, if I could convince my husband to just TRY the GFD, and then he felt so much better that now HE is the one telling people about it, you know that there is something to "this gluten-free thing"!

Now, if only we could convince the school districts that the reason for all of the kids' health problems comes from strict observance of the much-touted (and just dead wrong, in my opinion) "Food Pyramid"........

Incidentally, I told my husband when I started all of this that the only thing that I was going to eliminate from my diet was gluten, to see what would happen with my weight. I told him that I was "conducting a scientific experiment", and I could only have one variable (pretty clever, huh?). Honestly, I would have LOVED to give up my Cokes and to start exercising (and I have some prime real estate in Louisiana for sale, too......), but I was willing to make that sacrifice in the name of science -

Yeah, he didn't buy it either!

Teresa K.

I hear you....I think that when any of us discovers something that changes our lives, we want to share it with the world.

I've found that, over rtime, I have made changes to the way I eat that I never, ever thought I'd want to do, let alone do!!

Letting go of sugar is key too! As you lose more weight, you just may feel like going for a nice walk as that is exercise too.

Prime real estate in Louisiana? Hardly. Thanks for the book suggestion Teresa. Still haven't received The Gluten Connection yet, but I have read quite a bit on the celiac website. Its a great help. Next week I'll be traveling from MN to MT and back. I'm anxious about eating in restaurants so I'm taking a lot of my own food with me. I know everything will go better if I avoid gluten, so that's my plan. I didn't realize that people with celiac disease sometimes have no visible symptoms. If damage is still occurring on the inside without external symptoms then eventually they could wind up really sick. Good thing you had your daughter tested, Teresa. Look at how its helped your entire family. When I look back at family members I can see that they probably did have gluten sensitivity, they just didn't know it. My symptoms were severe enough that I couldn't ignore it like they did. Besides, I'd rather know about it and change my diet then ignore it anyway.

Actually, I'm not the one who requested the testing - Rebecca has Down syndrome, and her pediatrician has a step-daughter with DS (he also has over 100 DS patients in his practice, because he has a special place in his heart for them). When her mom tested positive for CD, they noticed that Brigid was having many of the same problems, so they had her tested as well.

When Brigid's test results came back positive, her dad went looking to see if he needed to do anything differently for a CD patient with DS, and found out that 1-in-8 people with DS will have CD. Given how underdiagnosed it is in the general population, he decided to add the Celiac Screening Panel to all of his DS patients' bloodwork when they came in for their well-child check-up. (The current recommendation is that all children with DS have a CD screen run when they are 3 years old, but there is no mention of doing it after that unless they have GI symptoms - Rebecca's test results were negative when she was 3, yet she had full-blown CD at the age of 7)

Rebecca's numbers were literally off the chart, and she had NO symptoms whatsoever. We never would have suspected that she had it, but because of her pediatrician, she is well on the road to good health. One year after being on a GFD, her numbers are only 1 point above the cutoff point for "negative" antibody levels, which tells us that her intestines are almost completely healed.

I am always telling people that a kid with Down syndrome saved my life, because if it hadn't been for Brigid and Rebecca's diagnoses, I never would have known that CD was the root cause of all of my vague health problems.

Judy,
I know that is definitely the case - when I started on the GFD, though, there were plenty of people who weren't willing to believe that a GFD by itself would have any effect whatsoever on my weight. I'm just enough of a witch(!) to want to prove them wrong, and I knew that if I also eliminated sugar and started exercising that no one would believe that the GFD had anything to do with it.

I'm still "experimenting" right now (I want to see how far this will take me) - but I have found as time goes on that I am craving sugar less and less, so it may well be that over time I will be giving up most sugar naturally. As far as exercising, I have found that since going on the GFD I am absorbing more of the nutrients that I eat, and that in turn has led to my muscle mass increasing without much work on my part. I am sure that I will find myself doing more "athletic" things as time goes on, as well. I certainly have more energy than ever before!

I've been following this gluten free regimen + south beach diet now for 3-4 weeks and I feel awesome. So much energy. Easy cooking, basically all veggies, fruits and proteins. Nothing white (except for veggies like cauliflower, onions, etc.)
I don't know how many lbs (I don't do the weigh-in thing) but I'm 2 sizes smaller in pants. I FEEL great, healthy, energetic.
I still drink wine! I've been swimming every day and I feel so much better tan before.
Things I love, like Fish Tacos for example, I make without the tortillas. I just adapt all the foods I love and remove gluten/starch.
Easier than you would think!