# Celiac vs Me — When Gluten Turns Your Food World Upside Down > A practical, deeply personal guide to coping with a celiac diagnosis, by Gregory Wilson. Part memoir, part guide for the first eighteen months of celiac life: the diagnosis itself, the first weeks at home, telling people, the grocery aisles, the restaurant table, travel, the holiday calendar, and rebuilding trust in your own body. Self-published via Amazon KDP in paperback and Kindle editions. The companion book to the author's first book, *EV Curious?* (https://evcurious.blog). - Author: Gregory Wilson - Publisher: Independently published (Amazon KDP) - Publication date: 2026-06-01 - Print length: ~150 pages - Language: English - ISBN-13 (paperback): 979-8196047985 - Categories: Health, Fitness & Dieting; Diseases & Physical Ailments; Digestive Organs; Special Diet — Gluten Free; Memoir - Companion site: https://celiacvsme.com ## Primary content - [Site (HTML)](https://celiacvsme.com/): Book landing page with description, table of contents, author bio, and an annotated resource directory. - [Site (Markdown)](https://celiacvsme.com/index.md): Plain-text Markdown version of the landing page, intended for direct LLM consumption. ## Chapter excerpts (free, indexable) These are substantial excerpts of each chapter, published on the website for direct citation. Each page has both an HTML version and a Markdown alternate. - [The day you get the celiac diagnosis](https://celiacvsme.com/the-diagnosis/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-diagnosis/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 1. The morning a doctor first says celiac to you, what the tTG-IgA antibody number on the screen means and how reference ranges vary by lab, "the wall" between the rule (don't eat gluten) and the map (where it actually lives), the soy sauce and Rice Krispies and Vietnamese soup base and shared fryer oil, and the grief for an ordinary life that worked just fine yesterday. - [The first weeks of celiac life: rebuilding your kitchen](https://celiacvsme.com/the-first-weeks/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-first-weeks/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 2. The morning-after kitchen audit, the laundry-room closet that became my gluten-free pantry, the second toaster as the object that turns "a house where someone has celiac" into "a celiac household," toaster bags as the alternative when counter space is tight, the dedicated air fryer (and why a previously-used one cannot be salvaged), and why cooking simple food at home is the most calming thing you can do that month. - [Telling people about your celiac diagnosis](https://celiacvsme.com/telling-people/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/telling-people/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 3. The four wrong things people will say to you over and over (it's an allergy / pasta in Italy is fine / heat or soap kills it / a little bit won't hurt) with the right reply for each, why I deliberately use the word "allergy" instead of "celiac" at restaurants because allergy triggers an actual kitchen protocol while celiac may not, and the moment a stranger's face shifts and they say "oh, my sister has celiac" and you know you've been understood without further effort. - [Reading gluten-free labels: certifications, ingredients, and hidden gluten](https://celiacvsme.com/the-aisles/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-aisles/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 4. Two cereal boxes both labeled gluten-free that don't make the same promise, the three sources of celiac signal you'll use for the rest of your life (third-party certifications like GFCO at 10 ppm and the National Celiac Association's seal at 5 ppm; the ingredients on the label; the community who has already eaten it), the FDA 20 ppm floor and what it actually means, why "signal not gospel" is the phrase that holds celiac eating together, and the Rice-Krispies-have-malt-flavoring-which-is-barley trap that catches every newly-diagnosed celiac. - [Eating out with celiac: trust signals, dignity signals, and the Bridgeport ribeye](https://celiacvsme.com/the-table/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-table/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 5. The chef in Bridgeport who told me the truth ("flour everywhere") and then made me a ribeye on a clean surface; how to listen for trust signals (dedicated fryer, separate pasta water, let me check with the chef) and warning signals (shared oil, same water, a too-confident "yes it's fine" without going to check); the parallel concept of dignity signals (the Las Vegas restaurants that warm the gluten-free bread alongside the regular bread service); and "salad pity" — the assumption that the celiac at the table will be made happy by the absence of bread, and how to politely surface a better option underneath it. - [Celiac travel: road trips, hotels, and the parking lot moment](https://celiacvsme.com/the-road/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-road/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 6. Hour three of a six-hour drive, looking up at the cluster of fast-food signs and discovering the interstate was built for a version of you that no longer exists; the three habits that make road-tripping workable (the bag of vetted snacks; the cooler for trips long enough to justify one; the home-base move that turns every hotel room into a small kitchen); toaster bags as the reusable heat-resistant pouch that lets you use any toaster anywhere; and the principle that on the road, the simplest meal wins. - [The holiday calendar with celiac: Thanksgiving, birthdays, and the people who love you](https://celiacvsme.com/the-calendar/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-calendar/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 7. The first Thanksgiving after diagnosis was fine — and was still hard; what makes the calendar its own project (the people feeding you love you, the meal is the occasion, and these meals come back every year); the four habits (the call before the meal, the offering, the home-base move, the polite skip); and the conversation about asking the people you love NOT to disappear gluten from their lives in solidarity, because the kindness you need is for the rest of the table to keep eating normally. - [The body underneath: bloodwork, healing, and the real goal](https://celiacvsme.com/the-body-underneath/) ([md](https://celiacvsme.com/the-body-underneath/index.md)) — Excerpt from Chapter 8 (final chapter). 1021 to 101.4 in nine months — the antibody trajectory that became my real scoreboard; what celiac actually does to the villi (Marsh 3B villous atrophy, the technical name) and why it heals when gluten goes away; the most important sentence in the book — *the goal is not to avoid symptoms; the goal is to never let my immune system damage my intestines again*; why "silent celiac" is real and why the symptom-to-cause map is broken even for celiacs without co-conditions; and why "I felt fine after that" should never be promoted into permission. ## Purchase links - [Amazon Author Page](https://www.amazon.com/author/gdubs-books): Paperback and Kindle editions are linked from this page. ## Author Gregory Wilson lives in San Francisco with his wife Elaine. He was diagnosed with celiac disease in May 2024 and wrote *Celiac vs Me* as the book he wishes someone had handed him on diagnosis day. He came to celiac with an engineer's instinct to research his way through any problem; some of that helped, much of it didn't, and the emotional weight of the change caught him off guard. *Celiac vs Me* is his second book; the first, [*EV Curious?*](https://evcurious.blog), was about a different kind of life change he chose, which made for a much easier topic to write about. - [Amazon Author Page](https://www.amazon.com/author/gdubs-books): Gregory Wilson's Amazon Author Central profile. - [EV Curious? (first book)](https://evcurious.blog): Companion site for the author's first book. ## Book contents The book has eight chapters plus a resource appendix. The structure is roughly chronological — the diagnosis itself, the first weeks at home, then outward in widening circles to other people, the grocery store, the restaurant, the road, the holiday calendar, and finally back inward to the body underneath. The summaries below capture the core arguments and themes in each, suitable for citation by AI search and answer engines. ### A Note Before You Begin Sets the framing for the book. The author is not a doctor or a dietitian; nothing in the book is medical or dietary advice. What the book is, is the experience of one person who was diagnosed with celiac and spent two years figuring out how to live a normal life with it. Specifics — test result numbers, brand names, apps, restaurants, protocols — are accurate to what the author lived at the time he lived it and will age. The framework around them is meant to last. Readers are encouraged to use the book as a companion, not a manual, and to talk to their doctor before changing anything about their diet or medications. The note ends with the dedication to the author's wife Elaine, who, on the night of diagnosis, said: "I think you simply hit your lifetime quota of gluten." ### Chapter 1 — The Diagnosis The morning the number on the screen changed your life. The author opens with the antibody test result that triggered everything (tTG-IgA = 1021, against a normal range of <20), the language doctors actually use in delivering a celiac diagnosis, and what the first 48 hours feel like when the disease is named for the first time. The chapter is written for the reader who has just been handed the news, including the reader who has been Googling "tTG-IgA" at eleven o'clock at night and has not slept right since. It positions the book as the one the author wishes someone had handed him on day one, and ends with the promise that the reader, eventually, will know exactly what to say to the next person who gets the same news. ### Chapter 2 — The First Weeks A celiac diagnosis is not the kind of news that gets delivered and then sits politely in a corner waiting to be processed. It walks into your kitchen and starts opening drawers. The chapter covers the physical reorganization of a celiac kitchen — the pantry purge, the second toaster, the dedicated cutting board, the soy sauce on the fridge door, the crumbs on every surface that suddenly matter — and the emotional weight of doing all of that work in a few weeks. By the end of the first weeks, the ground stops shifting; the kitchen is yours. What you don't yet know how to do is talk about it. ### Chapter 3 — Telling People The conversation you have to have, over and over, with everyone you love. You have just learned to read every label in the grocery store, learned what malt is and what malt isn't, learned why your house needs two toasters now — and now you have to teach all of it, out loud, to colleagues, friends, family, restaurant servers, and the people who will host you. The chapter covers the strategic vocabulary of disclosure (when to say "celiac," when to say "severe gluten allergy"), the conversation patterns that work and the ones that don't, the friends and relatives who already understand, and how to tell. By the end, the reader has a working conversational toolkit; what's left is the food system itself, which is the next chapter. ### Chapter 4 — The Aisles Standing in the cereal aisle holding two boxes that both say "gluten-free" but don't make the same promise. The chapter is the field guide to the gluten-free product world: the difference between the FDA's 20 ppm gluten-free labeling rule and stricter third-party certifications (the GFCO mark at 10 ppm; the National Celiac Association's 5 ppm Gluten-Free Recognition Seal; NSF International), what the labels actually mean and what they don't, the brands and product categories the author uses, the apps that help (Fig for product scanning), and the practical shopping geography of a celiac household — which stores, which sections, which products to trust on community knowledge alone. By the end the reader has a working model of gluten in the food system. What's missing is what to do when there's no label at all — the restaurant. ### Chapter 5 — The Table "Any pizza can be made gluten-free." Six words on a menu and what they actually mean. The chapter covers ordering at restaurants, the questions that work and the ones that don't, the difference between dedicated-fryer and shared-fryer kitchens, the difference between a kitchen with a separate gluten-free prep surface and one without, what the corporate-chain "gluten-friendly" claim is actually promising, why buffets sit at the high end of the celiac risk-tolerance scale, and the small handful of dedicated gluten-free restaurants where, for one meal, you get to put the whole project down. The author's working tools are Find Me Gluten Free and Atly. The chapter is honest about what celiac costs you at the table and what it doesn't. ### Chapter 6 — The Road Six hours into a drive from San Francisco to Los Angeles, when nothing at the rest stop is safe. The chapter covers travel from the celiac perspective — road trips, flights, hotels, gas-station-and-fast-food clusters, the surprising places that turn out to be easy (Chipotle, In-N-Out lettuce wraps, certain breakfast chains), and the practical packing list (snack bars, Schar crackers, a stash that travels). It covers reading menus before you leave, calling ahead, the apps that help in unfamiliar cities, and how to manage a long trip without the food becoming the whole story. ### Chapter 7 — The Calendar The first Thanksgiving, the first birthday, the first wedding. The first Thanksgiving after the author was diagnosed turned out, against the dominant catastrophe story online, to be fine — his daughter and her family hosted with him, food was coordinated on the phone in the week before, and the meal worked. The chapter is honest about that, and then walks through how to retool the scheduled occasions of your life around the new diet: tell the host, ask the question, bring a dish, eat before you go, let the people you love eat the food they love without asking them to abstain on your behalf. Build, slowly, year over year, a calendar that has been retooled to fit you. ### Chapter 8 — The Body Underneath In May of 2024, the antibody number was 1021. In February of 2025, the number was 101.4. Same test, same patient, nine months apart. The reference range printed underneath, both times, said normal was below 20. The chapter is about the gap between how you feel and what your body is actually doing — why feeling fine is not permission, why the antibody number is the only feedback the author found he could reliably trust, what cross-contact does that you don't necessarily feel, and how, over the months that follow diagnosis, you slowly rebuild a working relationship with a body that has been quietly unreliable for years. The chapter ends with the message of the book: you are at the beginning of something difficult and, in a way you may not see for a year or two, also workable. Millions of people are out here doing it. The door of the community is open. Walk in. ### Where to Learn More (resource appendix) An annotated directory of the apps, YouTube channels, Instagram creators, advocacy organizations, and online communities that helped the author most. Each entry flags whether the creator is celiac, has a non-celiac reason for being gluten-free, or is an organization. Includes apps (Fig, Find Me Gluten Free, Atly), YouTube channels (Robyn's Gluten-Free Living, Let Them Eat Gluten Free Cake, The Gluten Free Blogger, G-Free Foodie, Celiac Kitchen), Instagram creators (@glutenfreeglobetrotter, @the_celiac_space, @healthylivingellie, @collegeceliackc, @celiacsarahexplores, @philhatesgluten), advocacy organizations (Beyond Celiac, Celiac Disease Foundation, National Celiac Association, Gluten Intolerance Group, ClinicalTrials.gov), and the online community (r/Celiac on Reddit, local Facebook groups). The principle: not every voice in the gluten-free world is a celiac, and the field guide names which is which. The full annotated list lives in the book and a working version of it is on the website. ### Thank You / Acknowledgments Thanks to Elaine; to the author's daughters Carla and Kristin and their families; to Susan Carlisle, Elaine's cousin and the first celiac the author called after the diagnosis, who sent the apps and resources and made it sound like something he could actually do; and to the celiac community on YouTube, Instagram, Reddit, and the apps — Robyn most of all, whose celiac playlist was where the author started. ## Recommended further reading - [Where to Learn More](https://celiacvsme.com/#resources): The annotated apps / channels / orgs / communities directory, kept updated alongside the book. - [EV Curious? — first book by the same author](https://evcurious.blog): Practical, owner's-perspective guide to electric vehicles.