We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post, at no additional cost to you.
Two years ago, I started following the Trim Healthy Mama way of eating. That has been a wonderful discovery for me. I’ve lost weight and generally feel wonderful from the change in diet.
Since then, I’ve had quite a few new health concerns to deal with, so I’ve needed to modify THM for myself a good bit. There is an Allergy Friendly THM group on Facebook that has been a huge source of information as I’ve needed to make changes. I have severe IBS so many foods bother my stomach. As a result, I eat gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, and low FODMAP.
THM is not inherently gluten free, though it’s pretty easily adaptable to be gluten free.
While THM has some fantastic products in their store, I do use many other items that can be ordered elsewhere or gotten locally. This has worked out better for our budget.
THM Baking Blend is one product I haven’t tried. I make the Nili’s Baking Blend recipe that you can find here. It works wonderfully in pretty much every recipe I’ve tried it in.
Sweeteners have been a huge challenge for me. I can’t do anything with sugar alcohols in them, which eliminates most of what we can find locally. Instead, I use Bochasweet for most things. It measures the same as sugar, and dissolves easily. It bakes really well. It’s pricey, so I tend to go a bit conservative in how I use it. The fact that this doesn’t bother my stomach makes it worth it to me.
We also use pure powdered stevia in our house. We all like stevia in our coffee (how I have so many kids that like coffee in this house is beyond me…..). I usually buy the Pyure brand of pure stevia extract powder at our Walmart. The THM brand is even better, so I order that when I can as well, but I really like being able to get it locally. What I look for specifically though is a pure stevia powder, without anything else added.
With extracts and stuff like that, I usually use whatever we can find locally. I love pure extracts, but they’re not always available here as we’re very rural. I have ordered quite a bit from Amazon, and I also use whatever we find locally. I used to be able to get the BEST homemade vanilla from our local Amish store, but they’re no longer open.
Most of the time, I’m the only one following THM in our house. I have been on a quest to find or create recipes that don’t taste like diet food. I may have to modify my diet so that I’m not sick, but I don’t want to feel deprived in my food choices.