Gluten Free??? Me???

Good news- I have finally come down from my post race high. I've had to do a lot of serious thinking about my fitness routine after the 5K- deciding whether I would continue to train for another 5K or even a longer distance or choosing another fitness route definitely plagued my mind for a solid week and although I'm still not completely sure, I think I've finally come to a decision I'm happy with, just not yet quite ready to share just yet as I'm still processing a bit. 

So something that I haven't talked about on the blog is that for the last 7ish months I've been dealing with some pretty severe digestive issues- I'll spare you the details but essentially, seemingly out of nowhere, everything about my digestive process changed. Over the last 7 months I have had almost every possible test you could think of done, been to the ER twice & seen 3 specialist, all without any answers. Zero. Zilch. 

2 weeks ago while feeding into my paranoia (aka: surfing web MD), Celiacs Disease or a sensitivity/intolerance to gluten was suggested as one of the many possible causes of the symptoms I had been experiencing. Honestly, I had no clue what gluten even was- in fact, I mistakenly thought it had something to do with sugar (glucose!) and thought it was more of a "fad diet" type of thing that I kind of just rolled my eyes about every time I heard anyone talk about it not realizing that it's actually an allergy issue. 

There's a lot to the subject but in short, people with an allergy to gluten experience a lot of digestive issues (among others) & one of the best ways to discover if you are allergic to gluten is to remove it from your diet for 4-6 weeks and see if your symptoms go away/get better and then to add it back in and see if you have a reaction. Yesterday marked my 2nd week off gluten & it's still a bit too early to tell what sort of effect it's having but I'm committed to remaining gluten free for at least a month and will happily remain GF if it means my symptoms will go away. 

I can't lie though, I decided to go GF as soon as I discovered that it could be the cause of my issues so it was very abrupt and kind of sent me over the edge for about 48 hours...haha. It was just hard because there was now multiple items in our pantry/fridge that I couldn't eat, I really didn't feel like I had a strong grasp on what I was allowed to eat & I kinda just drove myself crazy with all the research I was doing. I actually had to step away from researching/reading GF blogs as it was stressing me out and overwhelming me more than anything- so I'm keeping it simple. 

Once my amazing husband realized how overwhelmed the process had made me feel, he decided to plan a little day trip for us that weekend! It started out with us getting in the car & him handing me this envelope: 

It was filled with little origami papers w/ different times on it and on the inside contained an address to punch into the GPS but no indication of exactly where we were going- how creative is he!? 

We ended up exploring a bunch of po-dunk towns here in PA (which we love to do!), checking out some cute local stores, art galleries, an amazing BBQ hut & doing a mini-nature walk in the woods: 

In the end, it was exactly what I needed to clear my mind & relax- my goodness do I love that man. 

I'll definitely be sharing more on my GF journey in the coming days as it has definitely been an interesting one but just thought I'd put it out there for now. Just curious, any readers have a gluten sensitivity/intolerance or celiac's disease? I'd love to hear a bit of your story!