Five Stages of Being Glutened

 

The Five Stages of Being Glutened: A Timeline

Published by Ben Haggerty

 

1. Denial (0–5 minutes)

“It can’t be. I was so careful. I checked the label. I asked the waiter three times. I even sniffed it like a bloodhound with dietary trauma.”

 

This is the calm before the gastrointestinal storm. You convince yourself it’s something else — dairy? Nerves? Mercury in retrograde? Anything but gluten. You pretend the gurgle was a fluke. You lie to yourself. It’s adorable.

 

2. Panic (5–30 minutes)

“Oh no. No no no. Is it happening? Is this real? I need a toilet, a priest, and possibly a time machine.”

 

Your stomach starts doing interpretive dance. You begin scanning your surroundings like a meerkat on a caffeine bender, calculating toilet locations, exit routes, and whether you can legally live in the bathroom stall for the next six hours.

 

3. Despair (30 minutes – 3 hours)

“This is it. This is how I die. Tell my story. Burn my jeans.”

 

By now, your body has declared war on your soul. Every regret you’ve ever had, rises with every cramp. You curse the food, the waiter, your own optimism. This is the gluten-pocalypse and you are not the hero of this story — you are the cautionary tale.

 

4. Bargaining (3–12 hours)

“I’ll never eat out again. I’ll grow my own quinoa. I’ll become a raw vegan hermit if you just make this stop.”

 

You spiral through dietary promises no human could possibly keep. You Google things like “how to exorcise wheat from your intestines” and “is charcoal a food group?” You regret everything. Especially that cheerful Instagram post captioned “Coeliac life is cute ✨”. No. No, it’s not.

 

5. Acceptance (12 hours – several days)

“Well. That was horrible. Anyway.”

 

You emerge from the bathroom. You’ve aged. Your hair has thinned. You look like you’ve stared directly into the abyss (because you have, and it was shaped like a crouton). But you’re alive. And now you’ve got a story to tell, a review to write, and possibly a new food intolerance you didn’t order.

 

🎓 Bonus Stage: Content Creation

“Might as well get a blog post out of it.”

 

Because if you don’t laugh, you’ll cry — and also, SEO waits for no one.

 

Final Thoughts:

Being glutened isn’t just a physical ordeal — it’s an emotional rollercoaster powered by wheat-based betrayal. But you survive. Every time. A little angrier. A little wiser. And significantly more suspicious of soup.

 

https://thegftable.co.uk/2025/06/06/the-five-stages-of-being-glutened-a-timeline