27 Things You're Used To If You Have Coeliac Disease and/or Food Allergies

1. Having to explain what you can and can’t eat to literally everyone.

2. Hanging out with a group of friends and having to watch them eat pizza.

3. Or Chinese food.

4. Or basically anything that tastes good that you can’t eat.

5. And you have to provide your own snacks whilst you watch everyone else eat the good stuff.

6. Being the party pooper that can’t have a piece of birthday cake.

7. At least there’s wine.

8. Having to bring your own everything to a family gathering whilst trying your best not to offend your relatives and their best pasta bake.

9. Going out to restaurants and grilling the poor waiter about the ‘safe foods’ on the menu.

10. Then lecturing them on how you need it prepared with as little chance of cross-contamination as possible.

11. Yet they still serve your gluten-free meal with bread.

12. Also knowing that when said waiter finishes their shift, they WILL be plotting your death.

13. Getting majorly aggravated when restaurants change a recipe and you can no longer eat it as a result.

14. Or when your number of choices on a menu goes down quicker than a shot of tequila.

15. Shopping at Whole Foods and watching people buy boxes of brownies because they’re gluten-free and therefore will make for perfect weight loss food.

16. Having people sneer at you thinking that you are also one of those people.

17. Having the occasional ‘why me?’ meltdown, wondering how bread could play you like that.

18. Walking past a Krispy Kreme stand and thinking about how you really didn’t appreciate the time you had together and that you shouldn’t take donuts for granted.

19. Paying twice the price for basic food stuffs.

20. And having to pay double for parking because it takes so much longer to shop because of inspecting every list of ingredients.

21. When withdrawal gets too much and you're convinced that the food is trying to seduce you.

22. So you try to justify suffering for 24 hours.

23. All in the name of a greasy, cheesy, gluten-y, allergen-filled chimichanga.

24. Binge drinking corn-distilled vodka because you’re totally responsible and committed to a gluten-free life.

25. And then the next day, having to stick with just a greasy hash brown from the Drive-Thru when a double sausage and egg McMuffin is the only thing that can truly save you.

26. That feeling of genuine excitement when you look at the ingredients and find out something that you’ve always loved is [insert allergen here]-free.

27. And then having all dreams dashed by the dreaded label: ‘may contain traces of’.

8 Free From Freezer Favourites

Generally speaking, I love cooking fresh foods and make everything from scratch, but we all need freezer food. Freezer food is amazing because all we have to do is throw it in the oven and eat it, and works perfectly in the following scenarios:

• you've finished work late and you're stomach is contemplating eating itself
• you feel like reliving your favourite primary school-style dinners
• hangover from hell
• similarly, suffering from non-self-inflicted illnesses and needing feeding
• you just can't be arsed

Since I was diagnosed (we're gearing up to Month #3 people!) I've turned to frozen food for all of the above on several occasions, so I feel ya. Just to make things easy for you, here are a few frozen gluten-free/dairy-free/egg-free gems that have been approved by my taste buds:

1. Tesco FreeFrom Thick Pork Sausages

Generally, I'm dubious of anything that moves me out of my food comfort zone. I've been a Richmond sausages girl from the word go, so moving onto another brand (even more so, gluten-free) did make me a bit dubious at first. Why I bothered to worry I don't know, theses are literally incredible. They taste exactly like normal Lincolnshire sausages! They churn out a bit more fat than I generally like, but other than that I don't have a bad word to say about them.

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2. Sainsbury's Freefrom Cod Fish Fingers

Fish fingers was one of those foods that I ate probably once every few years - maybe even every five - and I always had good memories of fish fingers at school. I'd fancied them for a while just before I was diagnosed, and when I found these in Sainsbury's I thought why not kick the craving and try them out. Just like the sausages, you could blindfold me and I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between those and normal ones. Now I've always got a box in my freezer.

3. Georgia's Choice Mexican Bean Bakes

I've never actually been one for bean burgers, despite the fact that I pretty much love all vegetables, beans inclusive. When I saw these it was actually the fact that it was a Mexican-style bake that I picked these up, and I'm so pleased I did. They're packed full of so many vegetables and goodness, and they have just the right amount of chilli kick. I bought mine in Sainsbury's but I know quite a few big supermarkets do stock them.

4. Tesco FreeFrom Onion Rings

I love onion rings. If ever I went out, to a burger place or similar and they had onion rings on their menu, I was getting a side of them and there was no stopping me. These Tesco onion rings are massive, and the coating is lovely. I will say that occasionally there is the odd onion ring that seems to be more ring than onion, but I can't criticise this particular brand alone because we've all been there.

5. Amy's Kitchen Gluten-Free Mexican Beans & Rice Burrito

I love me some Mexican, especially burritos. I found it really hard to find a picture, so if you could all be dolls and imagine this exact product in the same packaging but green, and with gluten-free on it, that would be great. These burritos are packed full of beans and rice, just like it says on the tin, and it's a really nice gap filler if you eat it on its own, or if you make some skin-on fries and a salad makes a great dinner. I couldn't find any supermarket websites that showed they stocked the gluten-free version, but I bought mine at Whole Foods.

6. Georgia's Choice Gluten Free Fish Cakes

Much like the Mexican bean bake, these fish cakes have a perfect crispy coating that doesn't distract from the flavour. The inside of fish cakes can seem a bit sparse sometimes, where you can't even taste the fish, but these Georgia's Choice ones are lovely!

... and obviously I couldn't NOT mention these:

7. Walls Swedish Glace Non Dairy Frozen Dessert in Smooth Vanilla

To be honest, I don't know why they call this 'frozen dessert'. It kind of tells you not to get your hopes up and that there's a chance that it's going to taste more like a vanilla sorbet. Wrong. It is so damn creamy, it's creamier in taste than most actual ice cream. It also comes in a raspberry flavour, but I think that this is an old wives tale or something because I'm yet to find it anywhere *sulks*.

8. Booja Booja Hunky Punky Chocolate Dairy Free Ice Cream

I always loved the infamous Chocolate Fudge Brownie, and I found that Booja Booja chocolate ice cream alternative is basically that without the chunks of chocolate fudge. Bold statement I know, but this is some seriously good ice cream, full of flavour, mega-chocolatey and really enjoyable. Just break up a gluten-free brownie and you've basically got your own Ben & Jerry's, minus the nasty allergy aftermath.

Click the images to shop these products at your local supermarkets.

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Symptomising Coeliac & Friends

When it comes to food allergens, there are apparently over 300 different symptoms that can indicate an intolerance of any one of them. This explains why at first it's so tough to diagnose the little buggers.

Everyone's story is different when it comes to symptoms, so I'll give you a run-through of mine.

Around two years ago, I first went to my GP (then in Southampton where I was at uni) complaining of extreme lethargy, brain fog, migraines, general aching and not feeling 'right'. My mum was diagnosed with under-active thyroid a few years ago, so immediately this was the doctor's concern for me. Blood tests came and went - several times - and nothing flared up on the thyroid front. It was clear that if it wasn't thyroid, my doctors had no real interest in investigating any further and blamed it on all my partying at uni. I wasn't a crazy party girl, so to me this was complete bull, and just an easy way for them to sweep a student patient under the rug for a while. I visited doctors on maybe four occasions for the same problems over and over again. No thyroid, no problem.

When I moved back to London in January, I went and saw my new GP after feeling gradually worse from around November of last year. I also found myself experiencing really strange moodswings, something that I never really suffered from. One day I would be super happy and excited and the next I could have three consecutive days of feeling sad, crying or desperately wanting to for no reason, and just feeling majorly down in the dumps. I explained to my doctor that I was in a pretty hectic job (some days I was working 19/20 hours), but that my tiredness and other symptoms had been something going on for a long time. I didn't even think to mention my mood, as I assumed it was because of the stress from work. After realising that my mum suffered from thyroid, he immediately said that he wanted to check mine out; I told him that I'd been tested several times and that it had been ruled out, but he explained to me that under-active thyroids drop gradually, and just because it appeared 'normal' on tests, didn't mean it wasn't worsening. I was put in for more tests and once again, no thyroid worries. I was however, anaemic.

The anaemia was a big surprise for me. I've always been quite tanned, no matter what time of year, and I just put my slightly paler-than-usual skin tone down to lack of sun and being cooped up in an office all the time. By this time I'd left my job; there were multiple reasons but I found my health deteriorating, and to put it bluntly, I was my number one priority. I went back to the doctors after finishing the course of iron tablets that I was prescribed, and was given an appointment with another doctor - my family doctor, funnily enough - who pointed out a vitamin D deficiency as well. I was sent away with a supplement on top. I decided as vitamin D equals sun, I needed a holiday right?

The infamous 'Gluten Baby'

I went to visit some family in Spain. I laid in the sun every day and slept most of the time. I didn't tan like I usually did, and went a funny grey colour. I hated it because everyone I saw made a comment about how white my skin looked in comparison to normal, and asked if I was okay. At this stage, I started to notice that despite how healthy my diet was (I actually cut out goodies etc in an attempt to see if it made any difference), that I was gaining weight at an alarming rate when I shouldn't have been, and it took longer than usual for bloating to go away after meals and so on. I actually laughed at the fact that a guy once offered me his seat on the tube thinking that I was pregnant. On top of that, everything in the digestive department wasn't so hunky dory and hadn't been for some time; it went from one extreme to the other. I didn't make any connection at the time.

Whilst I was away - I was with my mum - my mum noticed that I was waking up with large bruises across my body and asked what was going on. I told her I'd been getting them for a while but I must've just been accidentally hitting myself whilst I was asleep or just being clumsy without realising. She saw a rash on my feet as well, and I told her I was getting these 'heat rashes' regularly too. I think it was at this stage that she began to worry.

My friend's mum was diagnosed with a couple of food intolerances around that time, one of which was wheat, and as much as I knew what wheat was, I didn't really get it all. I did what all nosey people do, I took to the internet and thought I could maybe offer some food ideas or something for her once I understood a bit more. I ended up being directed to a page about gluten, gluten intolerance and Coeliac disease, where there was a list of symptoms. Out of nearly twenty symptoms, there were only three on that specific list that I didn't end up checking off. It was time to go back to the doctors.

I felt that if I went to my family doctor again he may be able to help a bit more as he knows my family's background. Disclaimer: he didn't, and he was useless. He had no interest in helping me out, and I ended up going back over to Spain to pay for an over-the-counter test in a pharmacy in a little village (that's the NHS for ya, ladies and gentlemen!), and as you know, the rest was history.

In hindsight, it took two years, minimum, for this to be diagnosed. Thinking about it even further back than that, my diagnosis answers a lot of questions that doctors couldn't answer before. For example, last summer I was hospitalised in Spain for an allergic reaction to liquorice (one of its main ingredients being gluten - HELLOOOOOO!), and when I was asked if I had Coeliac then, I said no. But of course, I didn't know at the time. But it just goes to show!

One of the itchy rashes that appeared mid-reaction

It can take years for Coeliac, gluten intolerance or other food allergies to finally be detected, which is why it's super important to keep an eye on your health and if anything doesn't feel right, go to your GP. If your GP says there's nothing wrong, only you know your body; you're entitled to speak to them and tell them what your body is telling you. Here are some of the symptoms that I encountered at different stages before my diagnosis, and some still creep back in if I'm accidentally gluten-ed or eat something that's been cross contaminated:

• Extreme lethargy
• Aches and pains in muscles and joints
• Migraines
• Brain fog and confusion
• Moodswings (uncharacteristic)
• Anaemia
• Vitamin deficiency
• Tooth discolouration (I had a single tooth that confused dentists for discolouring with no explanation)
• Weight gain (although most Coeliac sufferers actually suffer from weight loss)
• Bruises
• Stomach pain
• Constipation
• Diarrhoea
• Extreme bloating (aka Gluten Baby)
• Hair loss
• Rashes
• Extremely dry skin
• Numbness and pins and needles in hands and feet multiple times a day
• Mouth ulcers
• 'Chicken skin' (slightly bumpy and red skin on the backs of the arms)

Remember, these are only just a few of the possible symptoms. Trust your body and if it gives you any of the following on a near daily basis for a prolonged period, make sure you check it out. I promise you, diagnosis is the first step to feeling better again... Finally!