Gluten Anger and Anxiety: a hissy fit thrown in honor of all those armchair gluten experts

Last night my partner and I went out for dinner. And I ended up eating two slices of very glutinous pizza by accident. We had ordered the gluten free crust (for an additional 4 bucks) but I guess it was too loud or something to hear/remember that.

A few bites into the second slice (I'd wolfed the first down because I was viciously hungry) I noticed that it was very sticky and doughy in my mouth, in a way that most GF stuff never is. My chest was also beginning to feel a bit tight. I'd been struggling with some hunger-related anxiety before we'd ordered food and just assumed I was being paranoid and feeling the tail end of my anxiety in my chest. But when the bill came there was no extra charge for a wheat free crust, and from my side glances at the pizza on other guests' plates I knew that I'd been served the regular crust.

When my partner informed the waitperson of the mistake she said the discomfort I feel after eating wheat must be psychosomatic. She said this instead of apologizing. She recommended herbal tea and a change of perspective.

Now I do have a level of empathy for this waiter. I work a customer service job too. I know it's tough to find the the right thing to say and how easy it is to say something offensive or inappropriate when you're trying express concern or get on a customer's wave length. Mistakes are inevitable. Sometimes customers walk away from my register with weirded out looks on their faces. And most of the time I blame them for their not getting me. So I get it.

But fuck. I am angry at her.

I spent last night feeling like I'd wolfed down a handful of Grow Monsters, my chest tight and joints aching.


I haven't been able to take a shit today. And I only made it through my work day by balancing a cocktail of ibuprofen, imodium, and diet pepsi. I'm thankful I only ate two (small) slices. It could have been worse.

Sure I may be an anecdote in a sea of data that throws question on the whole concept of "gluten sensitivity/intolerance", but it's not like my definition and treatment of what is going on in my own body is the same thing as denying climate change or evolution. 

Gut science is extremely complex. Believe me. I had to dip just a toe in for a while and whoa are those depths ever huge and terrifying! Out of necessity I spent several months studying the digestive tract. I learned a fews things and the least of which was that it would take me years to even scratch the surface.

Some people think they have enough information to dismiss the reality of my health issues and shelve them as beneath their concerns. They do this because reading a pop-sci article on the internet apparently makes them an expert on my body.

And also something being "psychosomatic" or "all in your head" most assuredly doesn't makes the pain and discomfort any less real. When you say "it's just psychosomatic." What I hear is "Well you're not really hurting, so um can yo just get over that already. Stop being an idiot/wuss."

I'm willing to concede that my gluten sensitivity might be caused by something in my head (though why I'd deprive myself of tasty beers I'll never know). But you know what is also in people's heads?Their emotional and mental issues and that stuff is all too fucking real.

Now imagine that wall is on top of your stomach.
(image source)

It affects those afflicted deeply in a very real way.

But let's chuck that (perfectly good) analogy for a second and assume I am lying about how much gluten hurts me and that the sensitivity I feel is psychosomatic.

Doing nothing to soothe/address that "made up" pain and just telling me to "get over it" is as useless as telling yourself not to sweat, get teary, and reach for a glass of water because that pepper you just ate isn't really hurting you, it's just that your brain that thinks it is. (This is actually how capsaicin works people).

If someone ate a habanero pepper and asked you to get them some milk to calm their supposedly blazing palate, you wouldn't lecture them about how there's nothing wrong with their mouth. You wouldn't tell them "it's all in your head." You'd get them a fucking glass of milk.

So pretty please, all you sanctimonious fucks who read about some science on the internet please shut the fuck up, and learn yourself some stuff about FODMAPs. Because avoiding that shit is what I have to deal with every day. WHICH INCLUDES AVOIDING GLUTEN.

And no I was not born this way. I caught a parasite two years ago and it completely fucked up my ability to deal with most of the things that contain FODMAPS. Last year I went on an intensive four month elimination diet in order to find our what foods agitated my system. It was long and hard. If it's in my head, then my subconscious commitment to this beer-depriving bit is incredibly strong.

And yes. I am an anecdote but that doesn't me my experience isn't true and my pain is not real.


PS: There's some sort of parallel between the anger I have surrounding the doubts people express about my diet and the doubts people express gender. Perhaps I'll get to that on another day.

This Body is a Metaphor: thoughts on weight loss and gender

I lost 15 pounds since I started a restrictive diet experiment six weeks ago. 20 pounds total since this spring. Even though I've been tweeting and speaking publicly about the effects this diet has had on my health overall I haven't talked about my change in weight. Partly because I don't want to be buried under a barrage of accolades.

I don't want to be congratulated on decreasing a number society has so inexplicably tied to my worth as a woman. Even when I tell people about the weight loss in private I make certain to include that the reason I've dropped weight is that the diet I've started for health reasons has me eating less.

I've been consuming an average of 1,500 calories per day. For my size and level of activity this is probably too little. I've also been spending more time alone which for me means a decrease in appetite.

But the thing I'm especially unlikely to talk about is the satisfaction I feel about losing weight, I can't deny that some part of me still buys into the less is better mentality. But the rise warm feeling I have about the small changes in my body is more than just a reflex of learned attractiveness.

I'm pleased because the only parts of me that I've noticed as discernibly smaller are my breasts and my thighs. I'm delighted that my belly has stayed decidedly paunchy. I enjoy having breasts but lately I've been fantasizing about having smaller breasts tighter to my chest. Breast that I could have at least some success at pressing into a straight line.

I've considered buying a binder for this purpose, but the tightest sports bra I own does a pretty good job already. And I worry that a binder wouldn't do any better and that bra. More importantly I worry a binder would kick up my acid reflux even worse than my sports bra does. The heartburn makes me sweat nervously. This makes the sports bra itch. I want to wear button-down and tie without having to disguise awkward lumps with patterns and loose fits.

I like my clothes to touch my body and show off the stability of my barrel chested square torso. I'm scared that if I keep losing weight my belly and waist are going to become more concave.

It's been a year or more since I stopped trying to define my waist. I still have a few fabulous belts for showing off my high waist. Which is sometimes want to put on but mostly not. But the desire exists.

I'm both afraid of and desiring the loss of my belly fat. If the fat stays I know I will enjoy its benefits of balancing out my torso. I will more easily look masculine. But I also know I will miss wearing pretty belts and lose out when the urge to do so strikes and they don't fit anymore.

It hurts me that perceptions of gender aren't flexible enough for my expressions to seem genuine. I didn't mean to write about my gender but writing about my weigh makes me worry that I am not trans or genderqueer enough and that I should just commit to expressing my masculinity exclusively.

But I still like being feminine and I'm angry to tears that the vast majority of people I meet & even know and love won't be able to see me as truth of the delicious fluctuating mix I am.

Changing my diet has changed the way I relate to my body. It's seemingly impossible to think about such changes without triggering thoughts about body gender, perception, and presentation.

The categories of recognition and representation society offers me is an array of compromises, each limiting and inaccurate. My body's given me one such compromise in the form of my digestive health. Finding ways to be both satisfied and nourished on this restrictive diet sometimes serves as a painful reminder of how my identity is impossible to balance and communicate is a way that nourishes me.

I know I can't ever fully know my body with all this stuff in it: food, fluids, the bacteria that is more numerous than even my own collection of cells.

I'm comprised of many things. I often wish I had more body more bodies than I just this one.
The experiences of trans people are often laughed off and oversimplified with a joking or oversimplistic reference to being “trapped in the wrong body”. It's not funny to me. It's actually peculiar to me that so many people are so settled with just the collection of cells that they've got. Have these people never been sick or felt the pressure of an insurmountable ache?

It's not urgent or acutely painful but I feel nostalgic for a body this is as changeable as my mind both consciousness and subconscious. Dysphoria isn't a joke. It only is peculiar, but I'd be willing to bet it's more common than I think humans allow ourselves to realize. It happens to children whose parents call them inside and tell them to stop being to be dinosaurs.

Writing about all this stuff makes me think about the literally transformative power of metaphors. The audacity of assigning identity or meaning to anything is just an illusion. One we can take back at any time we choose.

The task of communicating our being is an impossible and obsessive dive through language, projection, and prediction. Anything shared between humans is a metaphor and it's metaphors all the way down.

This body, these words, they're just a metaphor. I am who I am independent of the meanings I or anyone else decides to make up about them.