Thriving Gluten Free: Navigating Your First Year with Celiac Disease Ep. 180

Discover the essentials of thriving in your first year with celiac disease and transform your lifestyle with expert guidance on living gluten free.

A robust support system can make all the difference in your celiac journey. I chat about the importance of having support from friends, family, and even online communities to become your gluten free advocates. Whether it’s turning unsupportive loved ones into allies or finding like-minded individuals who understand your challenges, support is vital for success.

Connect with me on Instagram at The Healthy Celiac, and explore the free resources linked in the show notes designed to assist you every step of the way.

Your thriving gluten-free life starts now!

Download your FREE 3 Day Gut Reset 

https://belindawhelan.myflodesk.com/3dayreset

Previous Episodes Mentioned

How Does Lactose affect you with Celiac Disease?

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/episodes/13055793-how-does-lactose-affect-you-with-celiac-disease-ep-115

Foods that may Impact Your Celiac Health Journey

https://thehealthyceliacpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1720208/episodes/15222664-foods-that-may-impact-your-celiac-health-journey-ep-163

Find out how Ultimate Celiac System can support your Celiac journey here
  https://belindawhelantraining.com/ultimate-celiac-system

Wish you could get gluten free meals on the table fast that the whole family will love? Check out Meal Plans Made Easy
https://belindawhelantraining.com/gluten-free-meal-plans-made-easy

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

Check out my Daily Health Tracker here
 HEALTH TRACKER | The Healthy Celiac (belindawhelan.com)

And I would love to connect with you on Instagram thehealthyceliac
 
To help more people find the show and share your appreciation of the Podcast, I’d be so grateful if you could please head over to Apple Podcasts and leave me a review. Thank you!
 
 
Music Credit bensound.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:24

Welcome to this week's episode of the show where I am talking about the top things that I recommend you do in your first year of living with celiac disease. Now, when diagnosed with celiac disease, it's obviously very overwhelming, it can feel scary, it can feel daunting, but the best advice that I can give you is to learn the fundamentals of how to live with celiac disease. So the more information that you can learn in your first year, the better it's going to set you up for such a positive life of living with celiac disease. So that's the key thing is to have as much information about celiac disease as possible. Thing is to have as much information about celiac disease as possible. The second thing that I would say is to 100% be cutting out gluten. That goes without saying, but just need to reiterate it. And when I say 100%, I'm talking about making sure you're not getting any cross contact, not having any cheat days, and making sure that you're educated on where gluten is actually lurking in your diet, where it could be lurking in your diet, Knowing how to look for gluten, knowing how to read labels, knowing how to ask for safe gluten-free food when eating out, when going to friends' places, and things like that that is a key in your healing journey. The next one is to focus on healing your body, and you can do this fast or you can do it slow, and I recommend you do it fast because the quicker you can heal your body, the better you are going to feel. You're going to feel better quicker and you're going to absorb the nutrients that your body needs from your diet and obviously, when you feel better, it just has an amazing flow on effect. So by healing your body, you can do that in a number of ways. I have a free gut health reset which you can grab. I will pop a link to that below so that you can get started on that. It gives you some really simple ways of healing your gut by diet and different factors that I've included in that. So grab yourself a copy of that and that will help you in getting started. Then I would also recommend that you figure out the best way to eat for you and your lifestyle, because it doesn't have to just be a gluten-free diet. It can be focusing on a new way of eating, whether that's eating better, eating more whole foods, eliminating other foods out of your diet that may be gluten-free but not necessarily good for your health and your healing. So by delving deeper into that and learning more about that can help you on that journey.

Speaker 1: 3:21

The next thing that I would say to do as well is rally your people around you. Find the people in your network who are going to support you on your journey, because out of all the people that I speak to since I've started the healthy celiac and the healthy celiac podcast, the amount of people that I speak to, the ones that have a support system are the ones that are doing the best. The ones that have loved ones, friends, partners, people in their lives that are supporting their journey with celiac disease are the ones that are doing better than the people that I speak to that are struggling. Those people that are struggling have unsupportive parents. They have unsupportive friends. Their partners, their own children who live in their household gluten them accidentally because they're not careful. So it's about really focusing on having that support system to help you on your journey and if those people aren't supporting you, it's about learning ways to actually get them on board with your diagnosis, with your gluten-free diet and your journey with celiac disease, because you, my friend, are stuck with this for the rest of your life, and it's no way to live to be surrounded by people who do not support you and do not advocate for you. So I'm a big, big supporter of that of looking for your tribe, looking for people to be there for you, whether that's people in your environment or people online who can cheer you on and be your support person. So those would be some very easy ways of you know, travelling on this journey with celiac disease in your very first year. So Reach out to me if you want support in any of those areas. Grab my freebie that I mentioned that's in the show notes below and send me a DM over on Instagram if you would like to have a chat further about how I can support you in any of these areas. So my handle is the Healthy Celiac. Or, if you're watching on YouTube, just pop a comment below and I can talk with you there about how I can support you further as well.

Speaker 1: 5:42

I would also recommend getting really, really good at practicing living with celiac disease, and when I say practicing, it's about not avoiding things. Okay, so many people tell me that they avoid eating out. Okay, you don't have to avoid eating out. You just need to know how to do it in a way that is safe for you and having the right questions and the red flags to look out for when dining out. These will help you in keeping safe. So if you can navigate eating out, it's about practicing. You may slip up, you may forget to ask certain questions, but the more you do it in your first year of living with celiac disease, the less frightening it is, the less daunting it is and the easier it becomes. I used to avoid asking the questions. I would put it on my husband. I would make him do it. I'd be so nervous, I'd be so scared that the wait staff were going to roll their eyes at me or that they were going to be, you know, very unimpressed with my requests. But the more that I did it, the more comfortable I became with it and I highly recommend that you jump into it as quick as possible. Like I said, it becomes easier the more that you do it.

Speaker 1: 7:02

The other thing to practice is your communication with people. So what your needs are, whether that's in the workplace, whether that's at home, whatever your needs are in whatever environment you are in at that time, don't assume that people know much about gluten-free or much about celiac disease. When we assume that word literally means you make an ass out of you and me. So we need to never assume that people know what we need. We need to educate them. We need to advise them. We need to educate them. We need to advise them.

Speaker 1: 7:45

People complain all the time that people in their workplace don't look after them. They complain that their family doesn't look after them. And then, when I delve deeper and I ask the questions, those people have not been educated on celiac disease. They have not been educated on gluten-free needs. So how can we living with celiac disease expect those people to know more than us? They simply cannot.

Speaker 1: 8:09

So this is where communication is massive and can make a huge, huge difference to the way that you can navigate these situations, whether that is, you know work events or Christmas with the family. You need to talk to people and explain to them about cross-contact. You know you cannot have something that you know. Let's just say you can't have a meal that perhaps the gluten bun was removed from and then eat it. You can't do that because now it's been covered in gluten crumbs. A lot of people don't understand that it is that extreme. With celiac disease, we cannot have one crumb. So you need to educate those people.

Speaker 1: 8:53

So communication in this situation is critical key. So if you don't know how to communicate with people, again I can support you in that area and give you some tools and some insights on how to do that in a safe and effective way where you're not going to feel uncomfortable, You're not going to feel like you know it's intimidating or embarrassing. You can do it in a way that keeps you safe and protected and those people will then have that education to keep you safe moving forward. And you know you don't run that risk of getting sick and getting glutened. So communication, communication, communication is one of the biggest things that goes a very, very long way, and I love to educate on that topic in particular. So these are some great areas that you can focus on in your first year, and another area that I recommend that you look at as well is could some other foods or categories of foods be causing you issues as well? So I like people to look deeper into their diet, not just focusing on gluten-free, also looking at other things that could be causing you problems.

Speaker 1: 10:05

Many newly diagnosed celiacs do suffer from lactose intolerance. It can be temporary, it can be permanent. So in the beginning you might want to cut out lactose and see how you feel and see if your body will feel better without that in your diet and there's other areas that you know you might find that certain foods are causing you discomfort as well. So I will pop a link below to a couple of episodes that I recommend that you check out as well. That will kind of educate you on some other foods that cause issues for people with celiac disease, but otherwise I hope that that has inspired cause issues for people with celiac disease, but otherwise I hope that that has inspired you to learn more about celiac disease and enjoy your journey over the coming years. Thanks so much for checking out this episode. I'll talk again with you soon.