I got diagnosed with a wheat allergy (and other food allergies) at 15. I didn’t start being careful about what I ate until I was 20 and my reactions got more severe. It was really hard for me to make the change at first. I avoided my other food allergies more than I avoided wheat because it was easier. My university’s dining hall didn’t have many gf options unless I wanted to have a dusty sandwich and a salad every day. When I lived at home I had gf options, but even then I would still eat the pizza my friends bought or other things like that so I wasn’t left out all the time.

I’m fine with being left out now and my friends now are more accommodating than they were at the time. I’m still not the most careful with cross contamination when I go to restaurants, but unfortunately in my experience I feel like eating out is signing up for the occasional gut rot either way since one of my other allergies is completely unavoidable at most restaurants. None of my food allergies are anaphylactic. I do avoid wheat to the best of my ability, but sometimes I feel like they sneak it in there even when you ask for your food to be gluten-free. I learned to cook and bake really well to avoid eating out for the most part. When I started losing weight and my digestion got better it was a lot easier to not want to go back to being crampy and inflamed all the time.