Do You Really Need to Avoid Gluten?

How to tell when cutting out gluten is a disordered-eating behavior

This post is from my previous newsletter, Food Psych Weekly.

Welcome back to Food Psych Weekly, the newsletter where I answer your questions about intuitive eating and the anti-diet approach.

This week’s question is from a reader named Jamie, who writes:

I have just recently started listening to your podcast and I am realizing I most likely have an eating disorder. I thought I was doing it to be healthy, but I think I have IBS and was blaming it on gluten and dairy like you have talked about. My question is this: I have gone the past 10-plus years avoiding gluten [a protein found in wheat, rye, and barley] pretty religiously. Every now and then I try to eat it and it makes me very miserable. I become very bloated, extremely fatigued, and I almost feel like I have the flu without the cold-like symptoms.

How do I get through this? Will this go away? It usually peaks at the third day and I give up and quit gluten again. This has reinforced my beliefs that I need to avoid it. More recently dairy has been doing this to me also. I haven’t been as religious about avoiding dairy as I have gluten but when I do avoid it, I do feel better. Until I don’t...

I’m thinking that stress is what is causing these symptoms?! I don’t know. I’m a little confused about it. This train of thought is so different from what I am used to. I hope I can introduce gluten back into my system without having the negative symptoms I have been experiencing. I heard on one of your podcasts that some people experience a nocebo effect and I am wondering if that is what I am experiencing… except that sometimes I get “accidentally glutened” and still have the same reaction even though I didn’t know I was consuming gluten. This leads me to believe my body is experiencing an actual reaction. Please help! Thanks