Here is the thing. I love pasta. I love wonderful sandwiches - grilled Brie and ham sandwiches with olives and onions. Juicy hamburgers. Even the perfect pancake once in awhile. And Mediterranean mushroom couscous. A hearty turkey barley mushroom soup - so yummy and satisfying. I love these tasty sensations.

When I tested positive - 4 times over 2 years - for Gliadian antibodies (the antibodies your body forms when it is reacting to gluten grains), my very first reaction was "I DON'T THINK SO!" This is just not happening that I am going to eliminate gluten grains from my diet.

(Gluten is found in wheat, rye, barley, triticale, kamut, and spelt. Oats are sometimes included in this group.)

I have been using functional health tests to help me resolve the negative effects that accumulated over the years of my life when I was not so kind to my body.

For instance, there was a period in my late 30s early 40s when I thought I could get away with 2-3 hours of sleep a night! Was that even me?

Then there were the times when I thought I would be OK skipping breakfast and not eating until late afternoon. I can see the brain cells sloughing off now.

Apparently, these kinds of behaviors put a bit of stress on your body - who would have guessed! I know better, now.

The functional health tests are helping me discover these imbalances and direct my attention to creating a healthier and more balanced body functioning. But when it came to eliminating gluten - here was a line that I wasn't going to cross.

I've cleared up many of the stressed physical imbalances in my body, yet I'm still testing positive to gliadian antibodies. So, the time has come - the time is now - to just get on with it and give up the wheat (my beloved pasta) and the barley (good-bye mushroom barley soup that feels so hearty and nourishing) - luckily I don't care that much about the other gluten grains.

Giving up things that are showing themselves to not be so good for you - it's not always that easy. We invest a lot of ourselves in our habits and the way we always have done things.

I heartily endorse the idea that eating should be an emotionally satisfying experience. How boring it would be if we just ate to consume nutrients. Eating should be primarily an emotional and social experience - it should be a healing and nurturing act that we invest with the power to sustain and support us.

When we are eliminating our food allergies/ food sensitivities/ gluten sensitivities/ lactose sensitivities, etc - any of the foods that have been shown to be not helpful for us in the moment - we are also eliminating all the nurturing and power that we have invested in that food. The first thing you do when you learn that some foods are not a good fit for your body at the time - and that a step toward healing is to eliminate these foods for awhile - is to spend a little time "grieving" the loss of those foods.

You are not really grieving the loss of that particular food - but you are grieving the loss of the nurturing that you have invested in that food. Go ahead and feel sad, angry, and upset. But then get over it, eliminate the foods and find other ways - even other foods - to nurture, support, and sustain you.

And if you find that, you "just can't face it". Go and do something else healthy for yourself - knowing full well that perhaps you won't benefit as much as you might if you had eliminated the food that is causing stress in your body right now. It's still better to keep moving along other open paths than to bury yourself in what seems not possible for you in the moment.

Eventually, if you keep your attention on health, wellness, and well being, you will grace yourself with the follow through you want and just do the thing that is in front of you to do.