One Year Gluten Free

It was one year that I went gluten free at the beginning of June 2012. I would say that the biggest change in doing so is that I crave really healthy foods. I used to be gassy, have stomach cramps all the time, and now I rarely experience those symptoms. Most of the time my joints are feeling better, though I do have to say, this terrible weather we have been having with those vicious storms have not helped in that area at all. So I muscle through those bad days as best I can.

I also find that I am very full after eating foods that are gluten free. I remember eating wheat bread, donuts, muffins, etc...and feeling hungry about two hours later. That does not happen any more. I think the different flours that I use are more nutritious and satisfying than wheat and do not create the addiction that wheat products can. See my post on Gluten Free for 7 days  to read about that.

I do not miss anything with gluten, because I have found comparable to even better substitutes for my favorite foods. Here are some of the foods & ingredients I really like that I keep on hand always:

• This cookbook Simply...Gluten-free Desserts by Carol Kicinski has a great flour recipe that can be used cup-for-cup with any dessert recipe that calls for wheat flour.
• Pacific organic condensed soups
• Swanson's Chicken Broth or other broth soups. Check the labels. Buying these soups in the GF section is way over priced. Just be sure to check the labels.
• Kinnickinnick Foods are terrific. I use their pizza crusts and they are fabulous. It takes a bit of experimenting with different sauces and toppings, but it's worth the trouble.
• Glenny's Snacks has great go-to snacks. I love their breakfast bars.
• Glutino has good breakfast bars and breads, but I think Kinnickinnick has the best breads, but I usually choose to bake my own.
• I use Bob's Red Mill flours when baking bread. The sweet glutinous rice flour (gluten free) is found in the Asian section of most stores, not the gluten free section for some reason.

I cannot say enough about going gluten free. My stomach troubles have gone, my joints feel mostly better, and I eat much more healthy and mindfully than I did before (and I already ate healthy!) If you have any wow recipes or products you've found, please comment. I love to find new foods and I love to experiment. For all the Americans reading this blog, Happy 4th of July! Namaste.

Breath Work

A dear friend of mine made a comment today about a link I had posted on Facebook: Yogic Breathing with Seane Corn. I find the breath to be amazing, as I had written in The Subtleties of the Breath. She had stated that she didn't want to do yoga until she lost her weight. She said, "When I lose most of my weight I'm diving into yoga...it simply wasn't designed for fat people."

My response to her was that yoga is available to everyone. It is all about breath and awareness. When we break down our misconceptions about yoga, it becomes accessible to everyone. I remember when I first started getting The Yoga Journal, and one of the first covers I saw was of a woman doing the crow pose.This pose seemed completely unreachable to me. But years later, as I broke down the pose into its smallest of parts, my mind was able to envision how it was supposed to look. Once I got the image and the "feel" of what it would take to do that posture, it began to become more attainable. I am in no way a crow pose expert, far from it, but when I fly in that pose, if I am not mindful of my breath and aware of where my body is in space, I will do a face plant for sure.

So to put a finer point on it, yoga is breath and awareness of our bodies and minds in space and time. Period. The trouble is, remembering that. Namaste.