Gluten Free Diet Diary (for Asperger Syndrome), November 14, 2007
This is a record of how my Gluten Free diet is going.
At the end of my last post I related how I’d resolved to be more determined than ever to stick to my GF Diet and get gluten out of my body. At this stage I was still eating 2 slices of bread a day and decided to go totally gluten free as soon as possible. (I have been reducing gluten in my diet very gradually to avoid withdrawal symptoms). I therefore went down to 1 slice per day.
Not long after this I was in a pub and noticed how relaxed and unself-conscious I was. This cheered me up no end and I began to feel euphoric again for a time.
I think I’m also beginning to realise that I’m not the centre of the universe. That’s what you think when you’re Autistic, that must be why I always felt so incredibly self-conscious and uncomfortable in public. For example, when you hear someone laughing that awful sniggering, ridiculing laugh, so beloved of neuro-Typicals, I always used to think they were laughing at me. Now I realise that they aren’t laughing at me; once recently this happened and I noticed an obese young man crossing the road and realised that he was the target of the sneering cackles from the uneducated morons standing a few yards from me; previously I would have assumed they were laughing at me, because of my unfashionable clothing or hair style or whatever, and I would have suffered yet another battering to my self-esteem. Now this doesn’t need to happen any more and I can get on with building up my self-esteem.
Also I seem to be getting more decisive. For example, I’m going out and buying a few things I’ve been thinking about buying for ages. I’ve also uploaded some photographs on to an image sharing web site. Again I’ve been thinking about doing this for ages.
It seems to me when you’ve got Aspergers every decision seems so big and important that you take for ever deciding. I always I have a whole number of projects and things to do on the back burner which I usually get around to doing but it takes an eternity, So this is something else which my diet is changing.
Also I like to paint pictures and I usually find this a tremendous struggle: getting started, getting in the mood, and actually doing the painting. Now all of a sudden I can paint with ease and enjoy it. Maybe it’s to do with increased decisiveness, painting is all about decisions: what area of the painting to work on next, what brush to use, what colours to mix, what effect to create, deciding if what I’ve done is good enough or needs going over, etc..Usually it takes me months to finish a painting, now I’ll be able to do one in a few weeks.
I find this amazing, the whole chemistry of my brain is changing.
Yet another thing I’ve noticed: I’m still tired a lot of the time but when I yawn it’s as if I’m only feeling about a quarter as tired as I used to do.
My body, arms legs, muscles feels a lot looser. The other day I was squatting down to look at the bottom shelf in a shop and when I stood up instead of feeling my usual muscles aches and strains I felt nothing, just an incredibly looseness in my body!! Also when I move around, doing anything, I move faster, probably because my body is so less rigid. I didn’t realise how stiff my body was till now.
(A physiotherapist once told me I had the stiffest body she’d ever seen! Stiff bodily movement is of course another symptom of Aspergers.)
At the start of November, 2007, I went totally Gluten Free (apart from traces of gluten in processed food).
Another aspect of my improved functioning is that I am no longer so worried about problems in my family. There are a lot of physical and mental health problems going on in my family, they’re all related to Asperger Syndrome, or more specifically to my siblings’ refusal to recognize their Aspergers and try to deal with it – a common problem to say the least. Anyway I now seem to be able to separate myself off from their troubles and not worry so much about what’s going to happen, or feel so negative about what may happen to them and how it will impact on me.
To be continued
