Living life Gluten Free

While I'm leaving my blog open to many different "subjects", one that I will be visiting often is my gluten free lifestyle. I say lifestyle because it is so much more than just a diet. I strongly considered a blog focused strictly on this, but decided there is more to me than celiac disease so why limit myself to writing about just that. The condensed version of how I ended up gluten free. . .I spent about 3 years trying to convince my doc that something was wrong with me and basically she just thought I was fat and not living a "healthy" lifestyle (she never said that, but it was implied). After more or less demanding they figure out what was wrong with me, I had some blood drawn and they found I was "gluten intolerant" - yes, it was that easy. An appointment with a gastroenterologist (whom I refer to as the poop doctor) and about 10 gallons of blood later I was diagnosed with celiac disease. My main symptoms were excessive exhaustion, unexplained weight gain (like almost 100lbs), "stomach" issues beyond belief (you DON'T want to know the details), and an overall sense of yucky-ness which is probably medically defined as a form of depression.  It was one those things where I knew something was very wrong with me but just couldn't necessarily define what. After this whole experience, I believe strongly in being your own advocate when it comes to doctors. I really do like and trust my doctor but I may have trusted her a little too much. If I had been a little more demanding with my treatment maybe I wouldn't have spent 3 years feeling like crap, and thinking it was "all in my head". The only reason I'm sharing all that with you is because I know I'm not the only one who has ever been in a situation like that. No matter what it is, you know your body and mind and you know when something is not right. If your doctor won't help then find another and another and another until you find someone who will. So, it has been a little over 6 months since all this went down and I started gluten free and I can honestly say it has changed my life. I am learning that, while the physical effects of celiacs are awful, the mental took a much bigger toll. Right now is a recovery process. I'm working to lose the weight, gain the confidence to start a new career, and simply get back to being me. It's been a pretty enlightening journey thus far so I'd say it's safe to assume I have a lot to look forward to. 

Here we go!

Well, here we go! This is my official first blog post. I know NOTHING of what I am doing, so you may have to bare with me for a while. So why  "One L" you ask? For starters, my name is Alison, spelled with ONE L. I don't care if strangers mess it up, but there are people I've known for years who still spell it Allison and it annoys me. Then I got to thinking, if I am going to bother with a blog I would like to attempt to write something meaningful. I would hate to simply bore the blogging world with stories of my daily life (although I'm told my life is far more entertaining than most), so a few ideas crossed my mind. Sometime between facebook and reading my Shape magazine at work I came up with One Life. I don't know anymore about life than the next schmuck but I do know it's not worth wasting. Whether you believe in heaven/hell (I do) or re-incarnation (I better not come back as a cat - I hate cats) or any of the other theories out there, it still comes down to living this one life, with this one body, and one mind, during this one time period. Why not make the best of that. Not gonna lie, sometimes life sucks. . .sometimes life sucks a lot for a long time, but if all your focused on is the sucking, you miss out on a whole hell of a lotta good. And so here I am. . . .One L. You'll learn more about me as time goes on but here is my first disclaimer: I am NOT politically correct, appropriate, or concerned with pissing you off. I overuse the F word and am bluntly honest with my opinions and ideas. I welcome argument for anything I say that you disagree with but I will not apologize for offending anyone. If you don't like what I am writing, don't read it. Now that we got that out of the way (I promise I'm not as mean as that sounded) . . . .Here We Go!!