My husband decided the family needed to go on a wheat-free
diet. We don’t have any health issues nor
do we have a lot of extra weight to lose, but after reading the book Wheat
Belly, Erik decided we should give it a try. I admit I am always trying new
ways of eating, but I have never put the children through the same ordeal. I completely understand the health benefits
of eliminating wheat, but all I could think of was the added work in packing
school lunches and dinner. The ideal
time, in my thinking, to have started this new way of eating would have been
best during the summer, but he decided we would start the same week as school
was beginning. This meant no more hot
lunches and saying goodbye to sandwiches.
Before we started, I was concerned about the kids
maintaining their weight. They are all
pretty small, so they don’t have a lot of weight to spare. The first week I was so worried about it that
I supplemented their days with milkshakes after school! I know replacing wheat with sugar is not wise
either.
Emma announced to her friends at lunch the first day, “My
dad has put me on a diet.” Their
response, “You don’t have any weight to lose.”
After that, I explained to my children that they may not want to use the
word “diet” but a “new eating plan”. I
didn’t want their teachers or friends thinking we were starving them to lose
weight. Sophia came home one day and
told me, “My friends think we eat weird things.”
This new way of eating has been challenging at times, but I
have become a little more creative with meal planning. I made black bean brownies and skinny monkey
cookies which the children had for breakfast one week. We have tried kale chips, gazpacho, lettuce
wraps (which the children really like) Italian chicken sausage vegetable pasta
and banana avocado smoothies. Last week
Emma came home and said, “I just want to have a peanut butter and jelly
sandwich!” So this week I made
buttermilk corncakes so the children could have PB&J sandwiches.
I am sure the less I grumble about the extra work this is
causing me, the more the kids will begin to accept these new meal plans. We have been staying wheat-free 80% of the
time for a month now and no one has “died” - as Hannah was positive she would
“die without macaroni and cheese”.
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