This is a story of enlightenment, dedication, and giving up. Hold onto your swivel chairs, people, this is going to get pretty intense.

Step #1: Enlightenment

So in my apartment building, we have a small workout room in the basement that has an elliptical machine, two bikes, a set of weights, and two treadmills, one of which is eternally out of service. After my workout on Monday, I was stretching and watching commercials on the workout room TV, when a commercial for yoghurt bars came on. I was like, “Cool, cool”, because I don’t have any particularly strong emotions for or against yoghurt bars. But the other person in the room – an elderly gentleman who works out every MWF at noon like clockwork, did not feel the same way.

“Those will kill you,” he said. To which I, of course, replied, “What do you mean?” Thus followed a thirty minute speech on the evils of gluten and wheat. According to him, humans were never meant to eat processed wheat, and not only does it make you unhealthy, it actually eats away at your internal organs over the years. He quoted several reputable sources, and told me to read a book called Wheat Belly. I then recalled my doctor mentioning that I might want to give up gluten, so I was understandably terrified by his anti-gluten/wheat lecture.

Thus, I vowed to never eat wheat or gluten again.

Step #2: Dedication

I’ve toyed with giving up gluten in the past, but I never last more than a couple of weeks. And let me clarify – I’m talking giving up gluten for health reasons, not because I’m a hipster who feels that gluten is uncool or whatever. I have a lot of trouble digesting food, so I’ve tried cutting out many different foodstuffs in my two decades of existence. These diet restrictions rarely last, however. It’s really hard to avoid things like gluten or dairy, especially as most of North American cuisine seems to revolve around them.

Anyway, on Monday, I gave up gluten. I had rice instead of pasta, avoided cookies and cake, etc. I immediately developed a huge craving for pizza, although I re-discovered the fact that Pizza Pizza makes gluten-free dough. It was going really well, although I wasn’t feeling noticeably better. However, my life coach/mother advised me that these things take time.

Things were looking up.

Step #3: Giving Up

This morning, mother returned home from a breakfast outing with leftovers – namely, a bacon, egg, and cheese crepe from Cora’s. She brought it home for me, and when I said, “But I’m not supposed to eat gluten,” she said, “You know, you don’t have to quit cold turkey. Give yourself a break.”

Her siren song was all I needed. I immediately scarfed down the crepe like nobody’s business. And man was it tasty. Actually, it had swiss cheese, which I really don’t like, but I was able to ignore that due to the sweet, sweet taste of the crepe.

Thus concludes my epic tale

So basically, I tried to make a major life change, stuck with it for four days, and then caved under the pressure of some well-meant but probably detrimental words from my mother, and a tantalizing crepe.

As the inventors of the crepe would say: “Le sigh.”

Has anyone else tried to cut out a type of food from their diet? Did you succeed? My next step is clearly to get away from my mother, who is apparently attempting to convert me to the dark side (ruled by Darth Glutinous, and his tattooed apprentice Darth Wheatus). My second strategy will be to actually research the whole wheat/gluten thing, and make an informed choice myself, instead of being scared into action by a random guy at the gym.

It occurs to me that, as this is supposedly a writing blog, I should probably relate this whole misadventure to writing. Let’s see … okay, got it! If we pretend that my diet = my writing, gluten = writer’s block, and the crepe = inspiration, we create the following moral:

She who wishes to unblock the digestive tracks of creativity must seek inspiration in the tasty, tasty innards of a savoury crepe.

That made no sense. Maybe I should just call it a day.

Unrelated image:

Source: http://imgur.com/6Gy0M

Unrelated video:

This one requires some explanation. As you know, I’ve been playing the new WoW expansion. They’ve added a new race – the Pandaren – and like all new races, the Pandaren get unique dances. The male panda dance is the Party Rock shuffle, but I didn’t recognize the female panda dance. So I looked it up. Apparently the dance is from a viral youtube hit called “Caramelldansen”, released by a Swedish band back in 2001.

To quote Wikipedia:

It is also a popular Internet meme that began in the second half of 2006 in the Internet community 4chan.

The meme started as a fifteen frame Flash animation loop showing Mai and Mii, characters of the Japanesevisual novelPopotan doing a hip swing dance with their hands over their heads to imitate rabbit ears, and the chorus of the sped up version of the song “Caramelldansen” sung by Malin and Katia from Swedish music group Caramell. The sped up version of the song is now known as “Caramelldansen (SpeedyCake Remix)”.

I therefore present to you, for your viewing pleasure, the original Caramelldansen: