“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”
by Hippocrates

Diet  that Changed My Life

T.L. Kole

It’s been more than 5 years since I decided to change my diet to gluten-free. I must say that it was painful at the beginning, and I even used to dream of French baguette from Panera Bread with whipped butter, which I used to eat sometimes while watching my favorite show or a movie, or my favorite Youtube podcasts.

Well, even before my experiment with a gluten-free diet, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed when someone mentioned to me that they’re trying a gluten-free diet. Of course, I would smile and act interested, but I always caught myself thinking that all these people are just so obsessed with dieting that it’s getting absurd.

Nevertheless, my stomach pain got worse. In the mornings, I would wake up feeling nauseous, and on most days, I felt bloated and noticed how round my abdomen looked through a shirt. The symptoms didn’t happen every day, but as long as I can remember over the past 7 years, they remained stable. Now looking back I realized why I had such a low energy level on most days and why I didn’t find the food delicious as other people, why I had some mood swings like deciding to attend something with my sisters only change my mind the next morning after waking up nauseous, bloated with sharp stomach pain.

Another major annoyance was always reoccurring white mouth sores on my gums. I had them almost every week. Of course, I knew all these symptoms weren’t typical, but all my attempts to find a solution to my altered well-being weren’t successful. All the doctors assured me my symptoms related to stress and prescribed more pills, which I after checking side effects in Drug Book for Nurses, I decided not to take after all. I mean, who needs more flatulence (passing gas) as a side effect?

The doctors said I have to stop stressing. I listened to them and thought that I am not a type-A personality and don’t have reasons to be more stressed than most people. Then I began to realize that my life slowly turned into a less enjoyable experience. At least once a year, I had episodes of most explosive diarrhea at the most inconvenient moments and places, and that made me re-evaluate my desire to travel and go places.

Then my stomach made gurgling sounds, and they got louder and louder. I tried to manage my symptoms by taking a spoon of coconut oil, and that helped. Taking probiotics, and that helped. Taking raw quail eggs on an empty stomach, and that seemed to help as well.

Periodically I still went to family doctors and gastroenterologists. After another blood work, my gastroenterologist told me that I don’t have celiac disease, but at this point in my life, I would probably benefit from diet right now tried in Australia. All I had to do was to stop eating apples, pears, plums, and oh, here is the list, he told me.

Every time I left all my doctors, I couldn’t help feeling like I just wasted my time and money, and the diets I tried didn’t bring the desired effect. One time I opened up to my co-worker, also RN, and I told her that my stomach problems were really affecting my lifestyle, and I just don’t know what to do about it. She said, “Why don’t you see my GI specialist. She’s pretty good.”

This time my GI doctor was a lady ( must say that all my previous GI doctors were males.) She reviewed my lab results, listened to my concerns and list of symptoms, and told me that though I don’t have an allergy to gluten, I might still have a sensitivity to gluten, and all my symptoms could be caused by that. She told me to try a gluten-free diet, and if stomach pain doesn’t go away in two months to come and see her again.

And again, I tried a new diet. At first, it seemed scary because most prevalent in my diet foods contained gluten, and I had to learn a whole new approach to making my meals. Immediately I noticed that my mouth sores disappeared and didn’t come back. And each morning, I woke up feeling energetic without nausea and bloating.

Around that same time, we decided to get pregnant with our second child, and even though it was a considerable risk (I’ll share about my first traumatic pregnancy and delivery later), I became immediately pregnant. I enjoyed my beautiful pregnancy without suffering from morning sickness, and my stomach pain no longer bothered me.

Sometimes I got seduced by cakes and other pastry, especially when we had guests over, and every time I found myself waking up nauseous the next morning with a terrible headache, feeling flank pain, and overall being depressed.

After I delivered my baby girl, I mostly fed her expressed breastmilk (about this I will share in my next post.) I remember when my mom came and baked a very delicious cake. She made it for my younger sister, who requested her to bake that cake. I thought I would be strong and not get tempted to try. After a few hours, I fell apart and ate two slices of cake. The cake was indeed very delicious. However, the next time I pumped instead of pumping 4 ounces from each breast, I pumped only 40 milliliters total from both. That moment I felt like I just committed a crime against my baby. Luckily for me, I had enough milk stored in my fridge, which I ended up feeding my baby with, but we all know that nothing beats the fresh milk.

That got me thinking, and I remembered when I was seven months pregnant with my baby, I attended my brother’s wedding. There I couldn’t resist and ate a bunch of cakes and pastries all containing gluten. Shortly after that, I felt kind of sick, and I thought I was recovering from the toxic effects of gluten on my body. At that time, I ended up seeing my Ob doctor. During a routine ultrasound, my doctor told me that she’s alarmed by the drop in my amniotic fluid to the borderline critical level of 6. She said that she thinks it’s related to dehydration and sent me home to force fluids and then come back the next morning. I kept drinking fluids, and thank God my amniotic fluids level went up to 9, and my doctor felt it was close to 13.

I learned that whenever I eat food containing gluten, it causes an inflammatory response in my body, and I get dehydrated. It took me 2 days to hydrate myself with fluids to finally get to that level to produce 4 ounces of breast milk. And since that time, I stopped eating gluten-containing food at all.

I realized that food is fuel to our bodies. Sometimes we give ourselves horrible fuel. Yes, it moves us from place A to place B, and especially we love how it tastes in our mouths, on our taste buds. And we don’t realize that we give ourselves the wrong fuel that affects our lifestyle, our health, our well-being, and the quality of our life.

Lastly, I couldn’t help but mention I recently ate gluten-free cake, a chocolate cake, which I bought from Stater Bros. by a brand called Inspired by Happiness, which is a really delicious cake and currently became my favorite. It doesn’t taste like regular gluten-free food.

Even those who are not on a gluten-free diet, I would recommend to try it.

Copyright © 2026 Taia Books. All Rights Reserved