My Story
My Story
WHAT MAKES ME, ME...
Flashbacks and flashforward
My gluten-free journey began in 2007 after a quick stop for a fast-food hamburger changed my life forever.
Unlike other food stories you might have heard, I should begin by clarifying that it wasn’t the hamburger but rather the series of medical events that followed my eating it that impacted me, my identity, and every area, belief, and thought I’ve ever given to myself in my personal and professional life.
Those events changed my beliefs about eating to promote one’s health, the foods we eat, and how eating can affect our bodies and personal health. I began to give much more thought to feeling good, honoring my unique body and what it longs for to support long-term health, and even being a patient in the healthcare system.
It set me on a new course in life to learn all I could to regain my optimal health by eating healthy whole foods, nourishing my body and soul with healthy daily routines, sleep, and exercise, and applying this same information in a one-on-one individualized program to help guide others in regaining their optimal health, too.
These events set me on a new holistic life path in support of helping not only myself but also others. To guide people to heal themselves by exploring themselves deeper to understand the “WHY” behind their symptoms and the sometimes cluttered messages they receive from their bodies.
I’ve remained true to that mission ever since.
So, if you want to restore your health, body, and overall life, I invite you to get curious. You’ll discover how using healthy eating strategies focusing on fresh whole foods while making transformational habit changes within yourself can achieve and sustain your optimal health. Check out this page to explore more about the Amazing, Glorious Journey opportunity and how it can impact your health and future. It’s an exciting time!
I hope to become a resource for you as you embark on your path to fulfilling your personal gluten-free, Amazing, Glorious Journey story. If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with me. I’m ready to support you in your gluten-free and gut health journey however possible. Please email me here.
Cook and Foodie
I love delicious food. Real food.
The kitchen has been my happy place for my entire life, followed by the close second of the dining room table where I’ve shared my culinary triumphs and failures over the years.
Looking back, I can’t remember when food wasn’t part of the best memories or the saddest days of my life. It’s a crazy fact. But from celebrations to mourning those who’ve passed, food has always been an intimate part of daily life and how we’ve lived it.
Throughout my life, I’ve loved to cook, bake, and have fun creating food. I’ve cooked my favorite foods of my childhood for over half a century, followed by a handful of regional dishes I’ve picked up over years of traveling around the United States. My food world mainly focuses on renditions of traditional recipes from the Midwest based on wild-caught and farm-raised fish and meats, root vegetables, fruits, and other fare grown in Zone 5 gardens. I love using fresh herbs and spices grown seasonally in pots or a sunny windowsill during winter months, and canning, preserving, and fermenting foods have always been a way of life. When purchasing ingredients, I lean towards those readily found in Midwestern Farmers Markets and local grocery stores.
In 2011, I was diagnosed with celiac disease. That day forever impacted my relationship with food, but contrary to what some might think, it was not in a bad or wrong way. It was the opposite. That day, I celebrated finally, knowing everything I could eat, and I felt relieved being sure of what was making me sick. The diagnosis changed my life. That glorious day changed how I thought about food, how I felt when eating it, where I ate it, how to prepare it, and how to replace all the ingredients that would nourish my body. I even began questioning the products I use on my body and throughout my home.
I learned there was no greater wisdom for myself than what I intuitively knew to be true. This taught me how to trust myself, armor myself and my body with the intuitive knowledge that God had placed within me, and nourish and strengthen my life in ways I never dreamed possible.
After years of learning to live gluten-free, I knew I wanted to help others with similar journeys and issues with their health. So, I began my blog and hosting local, gluten-free workshops in 2017, drawing on what I’d learned through a lifetime of gut and intestinal troubles, misdiagnosed health challenges, and the unexplained symptoms that had overwhelmed me for years that all things that eventually were found to be caused by gluten and wheat.
The struggles I have encountered in becoming gluten-free have inspired me to share what I know to help others on their journey to become healthier with food, life, and living each day to its fullest.
My writing is about the journey of becoming gluten-free and the aha moments discovered in the kitchen, in everyday life, during travels, and when navigating daily life. It’s about the thousands of epiphanies we uncover in honoring our unique bodies. I share a culinary exchange adapted from food traditions, history, and vintage-era recipes, where gluten-free cooking offers an updated approach for preparing yesterday’s comfort and traditional foods in a new style where eating healthy meets feel-good and where feel-good meets freedom.
Gluten-free cooking is just food reimagined and prepared a bit differently to eliminate gluten—food for all food lovers gathered at the same table.
Certifications - Gluten-Free Practitioner, Health and Lifestyle Coach, and Gut Microbiome Specialist
After going gluten-free in 2007 and finally being diagnosed with celiac disease in 2011, I’ve taken everything I’ve learned in my over fifteen years of adapting to eating, traveling, and learning to live gluten-free through trial-and-error, in-depth studying about how to eat, living and enjoying life gluten-free to now share my experiences.
Today, I hope to inspire others with been-there-done-that-in-the-trenches knowledge - with occasional tough love (mixed in here and there) but mainly support for my clients and followers with easy-to-implement diet and lifestyle changes to transform their habits and lives.
Returning to School
In 2018, I returned to school to become certified as a health and lifestyle coach trained in TCM (Transformational Coaching Method) at the Health Coach Institute. In early 2019, I began my private practice.
Since then, in 2021, I acquired certification specializing in gut microbiome health, and in 2022, I gained certification as a Certified Gluten-Free Practitioner.
My coaching programs work strategically and effectively through step-by-step processes uniquely tailored to meet each individual’s needs via a variety of discovery sessions, programs, and workshops on topics such as:
• What is Gluten, and Could I Be Gluten-Sensitive?
• Gluten-Free Weight Loss Resistance
• Feeling Great by Becoming Fabulously Gluten-Free
• Implementing the Gluten-Free Lifestyle
• Double Your Energy Being Gluten-Free
• Gluten-Free Total Body Image
Contact me, or schedule a complimentary Amazing Glorious Journey call to begin exploring in detail.
Writing and Creativity
I’ve been a writer and storyteller my whole life. As a curious and imaginative kid, storytelling started quite innocently as a way to gain attention from family by turning what I thought was a ho-hum childhood into an exciting adventure.
My storytelling advanced from telling tall tales as a way to bring attention to the people and things I cared about during my teenage years —a way to tell stories and teach others about exciting people, causes, places, and things in the world and a way to capture and hold on to the best parts of my life.
Writing resides at the top of my list of the biggest blessings in my life. It's carried me through happy and sad times, It's allowed me to be able to express myself even when shyness has overcome me. In my career I've been blessed to write for, and be published in several children’s, consumer, and trade magazines, penned numerous amounts of published and unpublished poetry, prose, and short stories. And, these days my writing is allowing me to share my lifelong passion with cooking and food...
Kymberley -
My Professional Career
During my professional career, I’ve had the opportunity to write various articles, copy, sales, and fundraising materials. I’ve designed logos, advertising, and promotional pieces, illustrated a book, worked as an editor, public relations, and marketing professional, managed events, and even owned and published a regional magazine. Later, my career took me to the roles of director of development and marketing, national sales and marketing director, newspaper reporter, and nonprofit executive director. I’ve been a writer and storyteller at the core of all this.
I’m probably best known for my years as editor and publisher of The Country Gazette Magazine (1992 – 2000) and for my time as the executive director of the Fond du Lac County Historical Society (2015 – 2017).
Occasionally, in addition to working on my solo blogging career with GfreeDeliciously and Health and Lifestyle Coaching, when my schedule allows, I take on special projects, providing a variety of brand services and do consulting and speaking focusing on living a gluten-free lifestyle, entrepreneurship, blogging and writing as a career, communications, marketing, and nonprofit management. Besides that, my efforts are focused on family and helping out occasionally at the Wisconsin Writers Association.
Are You interested in working with me? Download my Services Sheet:
At Home
My husband Mark and I share our rural home in the heart of Wisconsin in an area known as “The Holyland” with a lifetime collection of books and other “rocks” that make life complete. We love visiting interesting places across America and learning about the food, the people, the culture, and the local history. Our favorite things are eating great food, dark chocolate, weekend coffee, lazy summer days, music, and time with our grandchildren.
We enjoy our favorite times here, being just the two of us, sharing summertime and holidays with visiting family and close friends, and memorable visits spent with our extraordinary grandchildren and god-grandchildren, equally remarkable—two grown children, goddaughter, and each of their spouses.
Outside of my work, during spring, summer, or fall, you’ll find me in my vegetable and flower gardens. During the colder months when the days are shorter, evenings are filled with hand-quilting or sewing, relaxing with a historical romance, or indulging in the guilty pleasure of my iPad. I can spend hours reading or researching anything about history, especially culinary and food history (I fully own up to being a certifiable history nut), new and old recipes, gardening, and craft ideas.
Year-round, you will find me spending a lot of time in my dream kitchen whipping up something delicious (my recipes are gluten-free – since I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease in 2011). I’m not a chef, nor do I consider myself a gourmet cook. That said, I think of myself as a good home cook. I’ve always loved getting creative in the kitchen, preparing, serving, and eating delicious meals with family and friends. Meals focusing on fresh ingredients with no preservatives are healthy, nutritious, and wholesome.
In a recent writing exercise for an online class, the first assignment was to list what makes me me. It’s a lot harder to do than you might think. Describing myself, I’d have to say I’m a strong-willed, creative, a big thinker. I’m not only a look-at-the-glass-half-full kind of person but someone who also looks at the glass as refillable. My most frustrating weaknesses are patience, the feeling that I must try to fix everything for the people I love and care about, a deep desire for wanting to make absolutely everything perfectly right, and numbers. I’m not too fond of numbers.
In the end, everything I do—my cooking, coaching, living, loving, writing, and storytelling—is uniquely me in my strengths and weaknesses—these are the constants of what makes me me.
A Personal Message & Terms Of Use
Dear Guest,
Thank you for visiting my website. This website/blog is a personal site that I’ve written and edited. The views on these pages are my own and do not represent any employer.
When you view, access, or otherwise use my website at this Substack, Kymberley Pekrul -
, the following Terms and Conditions of Use apply to you. I, Kymberley A. Pekrul, own the GfreeDeliciously.com and GfreeWellness website domains. Subject to these Terms of Use, I grant you a limited, personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to read and use the websites/blogs for your personal use and not for resale or further distribution. Except for your pre-existing acknowledged rights and this license granted to you, I, the websites/blog owner, retain all rights, titles, and interests in the websites/blogs; this includes all related intellectual property rights. Applicable intellectual property laws, including United States copyright and international agreements, protect websites/blogs.A note about using my content: there is no better way to avoid copyright infringement than to use your creativity and skills to write or post original created content that is yours. In other words, you do not have my permission to take material from my websites or blog and post, reprint, or run it elsewhere as your own.
WHAT YOU CAN DO IS
You can publish a quote of 100 words or less from the original article/blog post with a link to the article/blog post.
If you publish a quote, it must be exact, as it appears on my website, with all links intact.
Pre-approval must be in writing and mutually agreed upon by both parties if you republish more than 100 words from my website. Republishing the entire article is not permitted without the sole permission of the owner of this site.
DISCLOSURE POLICY IN A NUTSHELL – POLICY IS VALID FROM 1 June 2017
I love working with brands when they are a mutual fit. I’m open to representing brands in various ways, including brand ambassadorships, sponsorships, recipe development, sponsored posts, appearances, and more.
The compensation I receive will never influence the content, topics, or posts on this website/blog. I do not accept any form of display advertisement.
The views and opinions expressed on this site are purely mine and mine alone. When I make a claim or appear to be an expert on a particular subject, product, or service area, I will only endorse products or services that I believe, based on personal experience and expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Visitors and subscribers of this website are responsible for checking out and verifying any product claim, statistic, quote, or other representation about a product or service with the manufacturer or provider.
DISCLOSURE TO SUBSCRIBERS/READERS
I sometimes work with brands I love and use but do not work with brands I don’t genuinely trust. I will never accept payment to publish positive feedback about a product or company—that would be unethical! All opinions are my own; maintaining trust with my readers is a top priority.
This website/blog does not contain any content which might present a conflict of interest.
CONTACT ME
For more information about our privacy practices, if you have questions, or if you would like to make a complaint, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me by email or by snail mail using the details provided below:
W1347 Pit Road, Mount Calvary, WI 53057-9508, United States
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