As a full-time graduate student and teaching assistant with Celiac Disease, eating can be a challenge. I don’t have hours a day, or sometimes even a week, to devote to making sure my meals are gluten-free, nutritious, and conducive to losing the weight I gained while ill for years. Usually, I wind up simply going for what’s gluten-free, and not worrying about anything else. As a result, my diet is poor, I never lose any weight, my immune system ends up being compromised, and I eventually find myself ill.
Before being diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I had a bit of success with weight loss, using Weight Watchers. Once I became gluten free, Weight Watchers became more difficult, because I couldn’t buy nearly as many pre-prepared foods, meaning I had to do a lot more cooking. Not only that, but because I often had to edit the recipes to make gluten-free substitutions, I found I had to completely re-figure the points values for everything. This takes an incredible amount of time and energy. The goal of this blog is to help motivate myself to actually make my GF diet work for me WITH my Weight Watchers lifestyle, in the midst of an insane academic schedule.
In this blog, I will do a number of things:
1. Share recipes, explaining what I did to make them GF, and their Points Plus values.
2. Share tips for preparing large amounts of GF food at once, storing them for later consumption, and how to plan a GF Weight Watchers friendly menu.
3. Share where I got my ingredients and menu items.
4. Share my favorite pre-prepared GF foods and their Points Plus values.
5. Share tips for traveling with a GF diet, whether I’m staying with friends or family (where I can prepare my own food), or am on an academic trip, staying in hotels with no access to a kitchen.
I hope this blog will be helpful to people whose busy lifestyles make it difficult to combine a GF diet with a weight loss/maintenance program. I hope my readers find this a helpful resource in living their lives, gluten-free and healthy!
Before I post my first meal entry, I want to explain a little about the Weight Watchers program, as that is the system of weight loss I have found to be the best for me. I am a member of the online Weight Watchers program. Based on my height and weight, the site gives me a good weight range, and from that, I pick my ultimate goal weight. I am given a daily points plus allowance, based on my current weight and activity level. In addition, I get a number of weekly points I can use for special occasions or splurges.
The point of Weight Watchers is to help its followers get to and remain at an ideal weight, while not depriving themselves. When a person constantly deprives him/herself of “comfort” foods, at some point, the person usually ends up binging on those foods, eventually finding him/herself in a place where he or she needs to start the weight loss program all over again. With the Weight Watchers program, a person is able to eat the foods he or she likes, while finding a way to moderate eating foods which causes him or her to gain weight.
My posts will include Weight Watchers points plus values, however, in order for Weight Watchers to actually work, each person who wishes to use that system should look into joining Weight Watchers. This will allow the individual to discover the exact program which suits him or her: the number of points, specific weight loss goals, and activity goals. Because it is not possible to follow the Weight Watchers program without actually figuring out individual points allowances, etc., I will also, as much as possible, include basic nutritional information, such as calories, grams of fat, and carbs in each serving.
I do, however, encourage my readers who are looking to lose weight, to check out http://www.weightwatchers.com. As a side note, Weight Watchers is not paying me to endorse them- they don’t even know I’m beginning this blog! It is simply the method I have found to be the most effective. It is possible to follow the program on a gluten-free diet, but it is certainly much harder than it is for someone not having to avoid gluten. On many occasions, I have found myself wishing they had more gluten-free recipes and options available. As I have not found this, I decided to create it myself.
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