What I Eat in a Day for My Celiac Disease
Key takeaways:
Brianna Fornes, 23, was diagnosed with celiac disease a year ago and had to revamp her diet.
She has created her own recipes and found substitutes for her favorite foods.
Protein is key to filling her up, and she has meat with most meals.
Brianna Fornes, 23, of Fort Lee, New Jersey, is rather new to her celiac disease diet. But after a year, she’s figured out how to shop and make her favorite gluten-free foods.
Celiac disease is genetic, and people who carry the genes for it can develop it at any age. Brianna got her diagnosis just a year ago. She was experiencing symptoms including constant bloating and brain fog, she says.
Her brother had been diagnosed with celiac about a year before she was, so she asked her physician to test her and got the same diagnosis.
What happens when people with celiac eat gluten?
When people with celiac eat gluten (which is a protein in wheat, rye, and barley), their body’s immune system starts attacking the small intestine.
The Celiac Disease Foundation says the disease affects about 1 in 100 people worldwide, but only about 30% get properly diagnosed.
Brianna was already a fairly healthy eater, so changing her diet sometimes meant just subbing or eliminating an ingredient. Cream of Wheat, for instance, is out of the question now, but she subbed in the gluten-free alternative: Cream of Rice.
One of her favorite dishes was steak fried in breadcrumbs. But now her fried steak has to stand alone.
“As soon as I changed my diet, a lot of the inflammation went down,” she says.
What a typical day’s menu looks like
Brianna sometimes posts videos on TikTok about what she eats in a day with celiac disease. Here’s what a typical day might look like.
Breakfast
Brianna starts her day with either celery juice, kombucha (a fermented tea), or bone broth.
That’s followed by breakfast, her favorite meal. She’ll usually have avocado toast on gluten-free bread.
She packs in the protein to fill herself up and often makes ground turkey patties and eggs and spinach on the side.
Brianna also has discovered gluten-free waffles in blueberry, chocolate chip, or buttermilk flavors. She works them into her breakfast menu rotation.
Another regular item is brown rice cakes with no-sugar-added peanut butter and blueberries. She tops the creation off with hemp seeds, flaxseed meal, and cinnamon.
Brianna rotates a few other sides into the mix: “Sometimes I’ll throw in cottage cheese as well because that’s good for protein,” she says.
Some days it’s a breakfast smoothie. “That will have coconut yogurt, almond milk, blueberries, banana, spinach, kale, hemp seed, and cinnamon.”
If she needs a snack before or after lunch, it’s usually gluten-free crackers, carrots, or fruit.
Lunch
Among Brianna’s typical lunches is a sweet potato with homemade soup or rice with leftover grilled chicken or steak. Microgreens and avocado on the side round out the plate.
Dinner
For dinner, it’s usually rice or pasta with meatballs, or rice with steak and lots of broccoli.
Brianna says she doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth. But when she does get a dessert craving, her go-tos are gluten-free prepackaged cookie dough or gluten-free cookies.
Throughout the week she drinks lots of tea — spearmint, peppermint, green tea, dandelion, or ginger and turmeric.
Time-saving strategies
Brianna works full time as a content creator and social media strategist. Making gluten-free meals herself can be time-consuming, she says. Prepping ingredients on the weekends, such as hamburger or turkey patties, helps her get ahead. She gets ideas for new meals from dietitians or people with celiac she follows online.
She shops about once a week, and she makes sure she always has a few staple items on hand. Those include gluten-free bread, gluten-free protein bars, and gluten-free crackers and chips.
She eats out only about once a week. But in the last year, she’s learned which nearby restaurants to trust with gluten-free cooking.
Brianna has developed strategies for when she’s away from home with limited eating options. When she heads to a party, for instance, she brings one of her favorite snacks to share, or she eats a meal just before she goes so she can skip the food table altogether.
When she first got her diagnosis and knew she had to change her diet, she says the reality was hard to process. She knew she would miss things like croissants and pastries with her morning coffee.
“Patience is key, because it takes time to feel better and find things that you enjoy,” she says. “It definitely gets better from when you first find out [you have celiac].”
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