Going Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free- Now???

Yesterday I posted about our family's decision to go gluten free, dairy free, egg free, nightshade free and coconut free. (GDENCF for short.) This is post 2 in the series.

"It was the best of times; it was the worst of times."
It is the best possible time to transition to a GDENCF diet, it is the worst possible time to transition to GDENCF.
It is a terrific time to transition to GDENCF; it is a terrible time to transition to GDENCF.

It's a terrific time to switch to GDENCF, because we've finally gotten our finances under control and are spending below our means. Our grocery bills are currently much lower than we can afford, and we have a little bit of wiggle room in our grocery budget. We've put aside the extra money that we've had left at the end of each month into a savings account, giving us a bit of a cushion.

Its a terrible time to switch to GDENCF, as we just paid off 3 of our debts that were leaning on us heavily with a good chunk of the money that was in our savings account and have less extra money to fall back on.


It's a terrific time to switch to switch to GDENCF, because we just emptied out a huge part of our stockpile and have nearly no gluten left in our house (aside for a bottle of soy sauce and a bottle of worcesterchire sauce), so there's no food that will just go sitting unused in our house.

It's a terrible time to switch to GDENCF, because our cabinets are nearly empty  and we desperately need to restock and do a bulk shop, which anyhow will cost a lot of money. Spending even more to make it GDENCF is just too hard to fathom at the moment....

Its a terrific time to switch to GDENCF, because we have lots of special GDENCF friendly foods in the house now, like beans and rice. Lots of beans and rice. And when/if we add potatoes or coconut back in, we have lots of that in the house as well.

Its a terrible time to switch to GDENCF because we had lots of extra expenses this past month, and in addition, my husband's work gave him 2 weeks of no work because of "Spring Break", and while he requested that he gets those days to be his official paid vacation days, there's no guarantee that they'll honor his request (they have a bad track record) and we're expecting a very minimal paycheck this month. Not the best time to be increasing our expenses, especially with the fact that we depleted much of our savings to pay off our debts.

It's a terrific time to switch to GDENCF, because at this time of year, there are a whole bunch of allergy friendly items in the store that they're trying to get rid of, leaving them with the lowest prices you can find all year, in addition to some items that won't be available in another few months.

It's a terrible time to switch because as summer is approaching, most of the greens that we typically forage have started to dry up and die, which could further increase our grocery costs.

It's a terrific time to switch, because as the weather gets warmer, more and more tree fruit are ripe, many of which will aid us in our gluten free transition, such as the almond tree (more on this in a future post) that is ready for the first stage of picking, the carob tree which can be used to make a gluten free flour substitute, as well as peaches, pears, nectarines, figs, mulberries, plums, redbud pods, grapes, pomegranate, etc... Much yummy foods available for free very soon, which hopefully will lower our grocery bills.

It's a terrible time to switch because I am still nursing Ike, and that means that I need to be on as strict of an elimination diet as he is, because anything I eat gets passed on to him.

It's a terrific time to switch because I've wanted to wean Ike for a while already, and this might just give me the push to do it.


In short, this is a very scary time to suddenly be switching our method of shopping, food preparation, and cooking to a more expensive way, especially because money is tight for us (Fortunately with good reason! Paying off debt is a good reason to diminish savings!) and will be at least for the next month.
At the same time, there are many reasons now to switch to GDENCF, namely because once I figured out the potential reason for my son's suffering, I feel like I'd be a bad mother to ignore what my research has told me and pushed it off for a "better time".
There's no better time.
There's always a reason not to do something, why now isn't a good time, why later is better. That's called procrastination. And there will never be a perfect time. So why wait? It'll just keep on getting pushed off and pushed off indefinitely.

We're taking the bull by the horns and leaping in to the Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Egg Free, Nightshade Free, and Coconut Free lifestyle.
And hopefully it won't be too difficult, because after all, I do have some tricks to keep this type of diet as low cost as possible.
But more on that tomorrow.

We had a situation that reminds me of this one.... close to a year ago. We had reached an expensive crossroads. We could continue as we were and not go anywhere, and possibly end up in a worse financial predicament, or we could do something seemingly financially unwise, but improve our lives.
We were in a never ending quicksand of expenditure and difficulties in our old apartment with the landlord, and needed to move. We didn't have the money to move, and knew that as long as we stayed in the apartment there, we would never have the money to move, as the landlord sucked out all the money we had. We moved, even though it ended up costing us a lot of money and we needed to borrow money to be able to make that move, but it needed to be done. And needed to be done, the sooner the better. And our finances have been on the upward swing ever since, and our life has been much happier, more peaceful, and much more pleasant.
No regrets.

Have you ever had to make a change that would be costly, but important to do nonetheless? Did you have all sorts of reasons why it wasn't a good time, but also reasons why it was a good time? Which side won out and why? What finally pushed you to make the change?