Reasons You've Gained Weight going Gluten Free Ep. 74

There are a number of reasons that you may have gained weight since going gluten free. I today's episode we will be talking about them to help you understand those reasons.

Learn more about Ultimate Celiac System here
  www.belindawhelan.com/ultimateceliacsystem

 Join my free community and grab your copy of 11 Mistakes People Make Living Gluten Free here www.belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/11mistakes


And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac

If you have a spare moment, please pop over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Thank you!



Music Credit bensound.com 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Hello. And welcome back to this week's episode, where we are talking about some of the reasons that you may have put on weight since your celiac disease diagnosis, and of course going gluten free. So I wanna just quickly send a shout out to Helen who reached out to me to suggest this episode for you guys today. So thank you to Helen. I really hope that this gives you some insight and some answers to what could be going on for you. So there's a number of reasons that people with celiac disease can start to gain weight when they first get a diagnosis. And the most simple and obvious answer is because your body is starting to heal and your body is starting to absorb the nutrients that it wasn't beforehand. So for example, with me, before my diagnosis, I dropped two dress sizes. So I know throughout the world, everyone refers to clothing sizes differently, but I generally sit around a size 12 and I had dropped down to a size eight in clothing, which is very small for my body size, for my height, I should say. And I did look rather underweight. So I was quite happy to gain weight once my body started to heal. So once I got a diagnosis for celiac disease and I started to eat gluten free and I started to eat well, um, my body was obviously healing. And then my body started to find the size. That was the healthy weight for my body. And that's somewhere now between a size 10 and a size 12 in Australian sizing. So that's a, that's a really easy one to pinpoint. And if, if your body isn't what you would think is a healthy state and you feel like it's a little bit more overweight than what you think is a healthy weight. Then it's probably one of the other reasons that we're going to talk about. But if you were, I guess, a little bit on the unhealthy side and you've put on weight from there, then it's probably a good thing. And our bodies generally do that. They will balance out and they will find the right weight that suits our height and our lifestyle. Okay. Now, if it's not that reason for you and you've put on a little bit more weight than you had hoped for, then we'll talk about that as well. Now, many people do actually go on a gluten-free diet, even though they don't have to, which I think is just madness. I don't know why anyone would choose to be on a gluten-free diet when it's it's much easier just to eat well and avoid certain foods when you don't like, if you don't have celiac disease and you've just, you know, you wanna lose weight. I find it really weird that people think that the gluten-free diet will work that way because at the end of the day, gluten-free food, as in packaged food is generally not the healthiest. Okay. So if you've found that you've switched up your diet to include a lot of gluten free packaged foods, you could actually be eating a lot more sugars and fats and carbohydrates things that your body may not have been eating beforehand and your body doesn't know how to break them down as quickly, and you are actually overeating, right? So if you start to look at some of the packaged foods that you are buying, you might discover that they are a lot higher in sugars than what their gluten counterpart maybe was that you were eating beforehand. So I always recommend that we eat less packaged food. And I know that sounds hard for some people, but packaged food is not an it's. It's not something that we should be eating all the time. It's something that we can definitely utilize, and it makes our life easier, but it shouldn't be what makes up the majority of our diet. So we should be eating lots of fresh food, lots of wholesome food that isn't messed with by man. It should be as natural as possible. So if you can focus on those types of foods, so things like, you know, your fruits and vegetables, your natural products that come from the earth, you know, beans, legumes, um, um, meat seeds, all of those types of things, and then have the packaged foods less. You'll find a big difference in the way that your body balances out and the way that your body works for you. Now, I know people hate being told this, but as a health coach, I can't help, but really emphasize that this is a big part of why people put on weight and aren't happy with the way that they look after going gluten free. When they found out they've got celiac disease. Now I'm gonna use my brother as an example. So you may have heard me talk about my older brother before Shane. He has always struggled with trying to put on weight over the years. And always like this is prior to his celiac diagnosis. He had always struggled to build muscle at the gym. He'd always struggled to bulk up. And as soon as he went, gluten free, his body changed dramatically. He was able to bulk up very, very quickly. And his body was absorbing the nutrients that he needed. However, one day he came over and I couldn't help, but say to him, what's going on? What have you been eating? You look completely different. You could see in his face and you could see in his belly. And he had developed a very obvious gut and it looked like a beer gut, but of course he wasn't drinking beer. He doesn't drink alcohol. And he can't, um, obviously have beer because he is got celiac disease. But I just said to him, you know, what's going on? What are you, what are you doing? What's different. And he just said that he was smashing down the gluten-free bread. He was hungry. He didn't know what to eat. He was struggling to find the right foods to incorporate into his diet. So he was just basically living off of gluten free bread. Now, if you look at gluten free bread compared to normal bread, you'd think you have to eat twice as much to be full, right? Because it's so small, isn't it it's so much smaller than your normal bread, but that's actually not the case. When you start to get used to eating gluten free bread, you'll find that it is the equivalent to eating normal bread. You, you only need your normal side, your normal serve to be able to be full and feel like you've eaten enough. So when you compare gluten free bread to gluten bread, you absolutely don't need twice as much. Okay. It it's just one of those things where it will still fill you up the same amount as normal bread, even though it's smaller. And if you compare the nutrition panel on gluten-free bread to gluten bread, you'll be very, very surprised at what you find. So go ahead and do that next time. You're at the shops, or if you've got normal bread at home for another member in your family, just check it out. You'll be very, very surprised the difference in it. So I suggested to my brother that he cut back on the bread and he did, and I gave him some other food suggestions. And from there, he has been able to get his body in a state that he's really happy with. And he looks much, much healthier now than he probably ever has, which is fantastic. So be very wary of what types of foods that you are consuming, just because it's gluten free does not mean it's healthy. Okay. My son and I, we both eat gluten free and we were going somewhere yesterday and my husband had packs snacks for my son and my youngest daughter. Who's three. She gets to eat whatever she wants. She's very lucky. And<laugh>, um, we were talking about Tim Tams. So she had a Tim Tam in her lunch box. And my son asked me if I like Tim Tams and Tim Tams, if you don't know, are a very famous biscuit in Australia or cookie, and they're covered in chocolate. And apparently they're delicious. And I said to my son, I've never actually tried a Timan. So before my diagnosis, I'd never even tried one. It was never on my radar. Okay. I was never reaching for cookies or biscuits beforehand. It just, wasn't something that I, as a person enjoyed, really eating. I probably eat more of them now since going gluten free than before, because it's just one of those things that I can have. But back then, it just, it was never on my radar. Like I said, so you might be eating things that you didn't even eat before, just because you can have them. Right. Does that make sense? So sometimes it can be really exciting when we go to the shops and we go, oh, that's gluten free. Oh, that's gluten free. And we grab it and we put it in our, in our troller, our car and we buy it and take it home. But probably before our diagnosis, we might not have eaten that food. So it's about changing habits and working out what works for you. I'm a little bit comfortable with having a treat every now and again, it doesn't bother me. I'm, I'm very, I guess, self aware of the way that I treat my body and I've been able to learn to not have guilt around food. So that's a whole nother ball game. And another thing that we might talk about on another episode, but when there's guilt attached to food, that also changes the way that our body takes that food on board. So that's, that's another thing that we can dive a little bit deeper into. Now, when you feel better, you tend to eat more as well. I dunno if you've noticed this, but before my diagnosis, I was feeling unwell all the time and I could start to see that it was food. I could start to understand that food was making me feel pretty crappy. So what automatically happens is your brain starts to tell you that you probably shouldn't eat too much because that could be causing issues. So for me, I know that in the lead up to my diagnosis, I was not eating as much as before I felt sick because I was just so scared of what was gonna make me sick. I had no idea what was going on. So once you start to feel better, you are eating more. Aren't you, you're feeling more comfortable about eating regularly because you know that you're eating safe foods and it's gluten free. So you might be over consuming food. And it's just based on that, you feel better. So you might need to start to learn how much food your body really needs to be at its peak performance. Okay. And that's something we'll chat about in a moment as well. And another thing is food habits. So you may have developed very different habits since going gluten free. And that is an area that I guess is a bit of a rabbit hole. That depends on whether you are sneaking food, because you don't want others to see that you are, you know, you've got a stash of gluten free food. So you could be devouring food before other family members are able to find that food, or you don't want them to see you eating this particular food. So there's certain food habits that some people fall into. Um, I had a client years and years ago and she had a habit of, she would walk into her house. I think I might have talked about this. On another episode, she would walk into her house each day from work and she would go straight to her fridge and she would devour cheese. And she didn't understand why she didn't know why she was craving cheese, as soon as she got home from work. But when we sat down and we nutted it all out, it was boredom and loneliness. She was coming home. She was bored after work. She was lonely and this just became a habit. So you may have some new food habits. You may have created some different ways of eating that you may need to look at. Now, I don't know about you, but there's lots to dive into. There's lots to process. When we talk about weight gain. When we talk about weight loss, there's a lot of mental side of things. So there's a lot that goes on in our brains as well. It's not always, it's not always as simple as what we've just talked about here. It can be quite deep and it can be from a lot of issues from your past. It could be from a relationship. It could be from something that's going on at work. There's so many things that can cause the way that we eat and the way that we treat our body. This is what I dive into very deeply with my one on one clients. But at the moment, I'm not working with anyone on one clients. I just don't have the capacity to do that with two young children at home and a teenager. However, I am starting up group coaching again. So if you would like to be in one of my group coaching sessions, then I urge you to reach out to me and get on the wait list for that. I've mentioned this numerous times now, but if you would like to get on the wait list and be the first one to be part of any of those groups, then please let me know. I will be opening this up internationally and having different times for different time zones. So just send me a DM on Instagram. If that's something you'd like to learn more about, or you can send me an email, which is info@belindawheelin.com and I can yeah. Chat with you about it there, but otherwise I hope that these few ideas just help you understand a little bit why you could have put on weight since you a celiac diagnosis and also help you to see that it can be a little bit deeper than what we've chatted about here. And I would love to work with you on that further. It's absolutely my passion to help women with their health to thrive. So absolutely reach out to me if that resonates with you in any way. And we can go further with that and talk how I can support you in

Speaker 2: 15:15

That, that area. So otherwise, thank you so much for listening. And if you are new here, please go back and listen to any of the episodes that I've previously recorded for you and, you know, learn what you can from me. But if you are a regular listener here, thank you so much for popping back in and listening to the show. I appreciate you so much. You guys are amazing. So I will talk with you again next week. Have a wonderful week, take care. I'll see you soon.