It all started with a desperate search for a solution to my severe allergies. Doctors, specialists, shots, antihistamines, nasal sprays… even a move from St. Louis to the pleasant climate of San Diego — nothing worked.
Finally, a gifted clinical nutritionist, Dr. Diana Fatayerji, performed a holistic diagnosis and concluded I had both gluten and dairy sensitivity causing inflammation in my body. I cut out gluten, dairy and sugar from my diet and within one month I experienced significant improvement — no more pills, shots or sprays! Not only that, I lost weight and felt better than I had in years, possibly ever!
Caryn was also suffering from chronic health issues (sudden and significant weight gain, intestinal distress and extreme exhaustion) and no one whose help she sought could figure out why. Dr. Diana recommended the same dietary changes as she had for me and they had the same ‘miraculous’ effect — improved energy, weight loss, and Caryn just felt better.
Now, with all the inflammation out of our systems, we both faced the same challenges— taste and nutrition:
How can we have our food taste so great we’d actually look forward to eating it every day
and,
How do we start out the day – with enough protein in the right balance with fiber, fat and carbs – to get our bodies and minds working at 100%?
Change was hard but we were committed because of how chronically sick we were and how much better we felt right away with the new diet. Still, breakfast was the biggest problem to solve. The gluten free breakfast foods on the market were tasteless and had the consistency of cardboard. None of them had the right balance of protein, carbs, fiber and fat. Shortly after eating them, we felt hungry and ended up with cravings the whole day. We were constantly thinking about food! Caryn has low-level hypoglycemia, so it was even worse for her. She would get shaky, headachy and weak without enough protein or the right balance of nutrients. So I started including sunflower seeds and pumpkin seeds (foods already balanced by nature) into our gluten free pancakes, cereals, oatmeal, waffles and muffins. Voila! Our minds and bodies felt nourished and we felt full longer so our ‘hunger cycles’ weren’t getting out of whack first thing in the morning.
Inspired, I worked for years on improving baking mix formulas for a perfect balance of protein, carbs, fiber and fat. I started sharing my breakfast and snack creations with my family and friends, all of whom said they tasted so good they couldn’t believe they were gluten free and POSITIVELY healthy. Hundreds of hours of development and testing resulted in SunFlour® — mother earth’s perfect flour and the patent-pending base of all our baking mixes. Now we’re excited to share it with you!
Dan Tegel, Ph.D.
CEO, Think.Eat.Live.
