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Whether you are living gluten-free for celiac disease, another autoimmune disease, or non-celiac gluten-sensitivity, this post will feature some gentle wellness goals for gluten-free living.
In case you weren’t aware, gluten-free living is subjected to diet culture constantly and often our goals around gluten-free living face diet culture.
Diet culture tells us food is good or bad, diet culture tells us a smaller body equals a healthy body, and it tells us that we are inherently unhealthy and must take drastic steps to change that.
I’m here to tell you that diet culture is wrong. There are no good or bad foods. Your body size and your body shape say nothing about your health. You don’t have to abide by rigid rules and subscribe to shame in order to achieve wellness.
Your wellness goals for gluten-free living don’t have to subscribe to diet culture.
By choosing these gentle wellness goals, you can improve your overall quality of life when it comes to gluten-free living. So what might these wellness goals look like in practice?
Finding out we have to eliminate gluten from our life can feel overwhelming and actually doing it can be upsetting. Finding and making peace with gluten-free living can drastically change your life for the better.
Not only can it improve your perceived quality of life but also your perceived burden of living gluten-free. Two things that have been proven to be big struggles of gluten-free living.
Imagine what feeling peace within the chaos of living gluten-free would feel like.
Explore what it would look like for you.
Here are some thoughts on what peace with a gluten-free life might it look like to get you started on defining it for yourself:
Dining out can feel overwhelming for someone living gluten-free. They might worry about options, cross-contact, and more. This can make dining out feel impossible. Which is why a wellness goal for someone living gluten-free might involve improving confidence and comfort with dining out safely.
This goal is something that will come with time, planning, and practice. All of which are worth the improved quality of life, decreased feelings of isolation, and reduced treatment burden.
What might dining out safely and confidently look like?
I often see people living gluten-free, people with celiac especially, only feeling comfortable with buying gluten-free certified foods, or food with gluten-free claims.
This is not necessary. In fact, it’s unnecessarily restrictive and can negatively impact quality of life.
Expanding the list of gluten-free food to eat might include:
Self-care is hard and yet it is necessary. It’s also something I think is deeply overlooked when it comes to celiac disease and a gluten-free life.
Just as we need to inhale to exhale, we need to care for ourselves to care for others.
A self-care routine can help anchor and inspire you to self-care practices when you’re struggling.
If you need help developing a self-care routine, I made a Celiac Self-Care Planner to help you do just that.
You might also consider:
Living gluten-free can be stressful and while I can’t promise it will ever be stress-free, with routine, it can be come less stressful.
A gentle wellness goal for people living gluten-free, thus might be to explore their gluten-free lifestyle stressors and set/maintain boundaries accordingly.
Someone might also consider seeking professional help from a therapist with managing an invisible illness as well.
Especially if there’s disordered or eating disorders present.
Often a journey to a celiac diagnosis or to the finding that you need to live gluten-free can foster a broken relationship with food.
The same goes for your body.
It’s important that these relationships are repaired and strengthened for optimal wellness.
You can start this healing process by working with a health professional who specializes in intuitive eating and celiac (hello, that’s me!).
Did these gentle wellness goals for gluten-free living interest you? Not sure you’re ready to commit to 1:1 coaching with me. Then the Celiac Disease Wellness Journal might be for you! I developed it to help people like YOU find peace with gluten-free living. It doesn’t replace 1:1 coaching but it certainly is an affordable option to anyone looking to find peace in the chaos of a gluten-free life.
If you’re interested click the button below to get the journal!