As men­tioned on this site and in the most recent Liv­ing Proof Brew­cast, I spent the month of Novem­ber liv­ing a gluten-free, mostly wheat-free exis­tence. I did not sub­sti­tute GF prod­ucts for nor­mal prod­ucts except in two cir­cum­stance: I occa­sion­ally had a piece of GF bread as toast, and I had GF beer.  I learned the following:

• Cut­ting back on wheat prod­ucts and gluten does not lead to instant weight loss or weight gain in my case. It did lead to a clear­ing out of my sys­tem and over­all I feel bet­ter emo­tion­ally and phys­i­cally low­er­ing my wheat intake.
• Sorghum beer has an inter­est­ing fla­vor, and while I do not con­sider it as good as many of the craft beers I’ve enjoyed, it is refresh­ing and much lighter.  After cut­ting back on nor­mal beer for the month, I found drink­ing too much of it now makes me feel heavy and, for lack of a bet­ter term, cludgey and slow. This could be because sorghum beer is rel­a­tively low in alco­hol, admit­tedly, so my tol­er­ance has likely been low­ered. Either way, I find that I drink craft beers slower and I savor them more now than I did before.
• My crav­ing for sugar (choco­late, candy, etc) is all but gone. I have no desire to load up on candy bars and cook­ies anymore.
• I had pizza after the month was over. I felt like some­one poured lead  into my stom­ach for the next week. I can­not go back to the way I ate before. I feel awful when I do so.

Christo­pher T. Miller

Christo­pher T. Miller is a soft­ware devel­oper by trade and a writer by neces­sity. He is one of the co-founders of Podiobooks.com and is the Over­lord of The Secret Lair. He has not yet been eaten by a grue.