The Gluten-Free Weight Loss Challenge

This gluten-free blogger has a confession to make: I'm not gluten-free. Certainly, my husband is and I've been eating gluten-free with him and cooking gluten-free for him. But when he's not around? Why, just today, I had a whole wheat turkey sandwich for lunch. After all, he's the one with the kidney problems, right?

Yes, but I'm the one with the weight problem. Weight that I've struggled to lose for more than a decade now. I eat healthy, at least the current perception of healthy. For the past five years, I've chalked up my inability to lose weight to my inability to maintain an exercise regime.

Is it that, though? While I really suck at maintaining an exercise regime, I'm still a fairly active person. I do the grocery shopping, the cooking, the cleaning. I hike half a mile from my bus stop to my office every day. I go on all-day shopping marathons with my mother. I go on all-day shopping trips with my husband, too. I even have periods where I manage to maintain an exercise regime - sometimes for months at a time. But I never see any results.

Why? It's a question that's plagued me for years. And now I'm wondering if I've finally found the answer. Today, while surfing the web looking for new recipes for this blog, I came across another blog. The author of the blog has been sugar and gluten-free for six years. Like me, she'd always struggled with her weight. The solution for her was to eliminate flour, sugar and white potatoes. I spent the evening reading through her blog, and her eight-part series about finding balance with food.

It has inspired me to try an experiment: eliminate gluten and refined sugars completely for one month. I want to see what will happen. Would you like to experiment with me? Below, I'm listing the rules that I am going to follow for the next month. Weight loss and food are both deeply personal (and intertwined) things, so feel free to change the rules to suit your own life.

No gluten or refined sugars, whatsoever.
Increase my daily water intake by at least three glasses per day.
Increase my weekly workout frequency to three times per week.
On weekends, I won't worry about fat content. Rule #1 still applies, though.
No more than one weigh-in per week.

Do you want to play? The more the merrier! Reply to this thread with your current height and weight, the day you will start, and rules you intend to follow (if different). Yes, I know you don't want to post your weight on the internet. If you really don't want to, you don't have to. But it won't hurt a bit, I promise. If anyone makes fun of you, makes a snide comment or a derogatory remark, just let me know and Auntie Jen will take care of it in her very own, deeply personal way.

I'll even start the ball. Here we go:

Height: 5'4"
Weight: 180 pounds
Starting Date: March 29

And one more time, if you want to read the blog that inspired me to do this, just go here.