Gluten Free...

Since reading lots of blogs on other athletes and articles about diet I have learned more about a gluten free lifestyle. I look at it similarly to my decision not to eat fried food. If you don't eat fried food as a guideline then you automatically cut out foods that are, in general, not healthy. I am more likely to get a salad or extra veggie to eat than eating the fried appetizer or chips and salsa. I also am very much a sweets person so I prefer a piece of cake to fried food any day. So this sacrifice was not so hard to make.

Since I am going to take working out more seriously now and put as much of my time into trying to succeed as an athlete I think I am going to jump on the gluten free bandwagon now. It is nice that I don't have to since I don't have celiacs but I think it can only be a good thing. Generally if you eat gluten free then you eat less processed foods. So I think once I start training next Monday I am going to try out this gluten free diet. The below link is to an article about multiple athletes that use this diet:

Gluten Free Athlete

It really reiterates that most of these athletes do not have to have this diet but they choose it. This next article explains there is no proof of better athletic performance with a gluten free diet but there are also no cons of trying this diet:

A Gluten Free Diet

This article also gave a nice list of the staple foods in a gluten free diet

• rice 
• corn
• soy
• potatoes (I have a feeling this will be my favorite, especially sweet potatoes)
• tapioca (I don't know about this one...ha)
• beans
• quinoa
• buckwheat
• flax
• nut flours and uncontaminated oats

There are also the "inherently gluten-free products which include milk, butter, cheese, fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, beans and seeds"  which I already eat a lot of. I do not think I could live on a dairy and egg free diet. That would be way too difficult! This next blog is a marathoner who is gluten free and she posts tons of recipes that sound pretty good:

Gluten Free Recipes 



So next Monday here I come! I do not think my family will be happy about this as it complicates things but I think they will support me none the less! It will just require even more planning on my part....bring it on!