Читать книгу The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox: The effortless health and weight-loss solution - Dr Davis William - Страница 7
ОглавлениеYOU’VE BEEN ROLLED, TOSSED, AND BAKED
“Follow a balanced diet low in fat.”
“You need whole grains for B vitamins and fiber.”
“It’s unhealthy to eliminate an entire food group.”
“Everything in moderation.”
THIS SHOULD ALL sound familiar to you because these nutritional mantras have been repeated over and over by dietitians, doctors, and the media. And, like many such pieces of conventional “wisdom,” there is a germ of truth in each of them—but just a germ and nothing more. Following such advice not only does not help you control weight or obtain health, it also destroys your grasp over weight and health. It can be as ineffective as believing that total health is restored by taking a prescription drug, subjecting yourself to a 4-week program of “cleansing” enemas, or concealing bulges under a new set of Spanx. Modern misguided dietary advice has made plus-size aisles the busiest place in clothing stores, huffing and puffing commonplace when climbing a single flight of stairs, and type 2 diabetes a double-digit growth industry.
Don’t feel bad if you fell for it, choosing lean cuts and trimming the fat off meat, reaching for low-fat yogurt, and opting for whole grain breads, muffins, and bagels. Many beliefs, once accepted as gospel, have fallen by the wayside over the years, kicked to the curb by new discoveries, new science, and new understanding. It wasn’t all that long ago that you would have been burned at the stake for believing that the earth revolved around the sun, been prosecuted for voicing the wrong political views during the McCarthy-era purges, or cheered for Milli Vanilli’s “Girl You Know It’s True” win at the Grammy Awards. Human history is filled with such campaigns of misinformation. But only in the recent past has misinformation permeated nutritional advice on such a grand scale.
HALF-BAKED
When you lose control over your health and weight because you ate “healthy” whole grains, doctors—stumped by why you feel so awful despite doing everything “right”—prescribe drugs with effects that create the “need” for even more prescription drugs. This is the modern downward health spiral that most people find themselves trapped in today. Once you understand this absurd and self-defeating situation, you are empowered to change it. And you can begin to powerfully reverse this situation over the next 10 days, the number of days it takes your husband to stop procrastinating over fixing a leaky kitchen faucet. This detox process yields a head-to-toe body and health makeover, reprogramming your body at so many levels, both internal and external. Your body and health will undergo a transformation that may even have friends and family not believing it’s you.
With the bad science and politics that drove the “cut your cholesterol, fat, and saturated fat” agenda of the latter half of the 20th century, the bonfire was lit even brighter by over-the-top profit opportunities for Big Food. The low-fat message gained a huge following. In its wake now lies the result: obesity, diabetes, arthritis, dementia, and other health disasters on a scale never before witnessed in the history of mankind. It’s an unprecedented man-made social and health apocalypse that makes reports of tornadoes and radiation spills seem like small-scale annoyances, even banal, with nearly two billion overweight or obese people worldwide (including nearly 50 million children under age 5) and more than half of Americans with diabetes or prediabetes. The low-fat message, because it eliminated a source of satiating calories from fat, caused everyone to resort to more carbohydrates, particularly the carbohydrate source that most nutritional authorities felt to be the healthiest: whole grains, such as whole wheat, oats, and rye.
But, like the message to cut fat and saturated fat—now debunked by more recent studies showing that fat and saturated fat have nothing to do with cardiovascular disease—so the “eat more healthy whole grains” message was also based on flawed science and misinterpretations. The purported health benefits of whole grains were based on epidemiological studies (i.e., studies of health in large populations) demonstrating that if white flour products are replaced with whole grains, there is less diabetes, less weight gain, less heart disease, and less colon cancer in the population observed. That is indeed true and not in question. Careers and entire university departments of nutrition have been built on this premise. But the next question should have been: What is the effect of removing grains, white and whole, altogether? We cannot answer that question with the same “replace one with the other” epidemiological studies; we have to look elsewhere. Such grain-eliminating studies have indeed already been performed.
What happens when we remove grains? Clinical studies have shown:
Weight loss (not less weight gain)
Reduction in overall calorie intake
Drops in blood sugar and hemoglobin A1c (a long-term measure of blood sugar)—many people with diabetes are cured
Reduction of blood pressure
Increased likelihood of remission of rheumatoid arthritis
Reversal of neurological conditions such as cerebellar ataxia, some forms of seizures, and peripheral neuropathy
Reversal of multiple forms of skin rash
Reductions in paranoia and hallucinations in people with schizophrenia
Improved attention span and behavior in children with attention deficit disorder and autistic spectrum disorder
Relief from the bowel urgency and disruption of irritable bowel syndrome
That’s just a sample of the evidence that already exists in the scientific and clinical literature. This is not conjecture or claims based on a few anecdotes. It is based on a rational, scientific examination of the evidence, coupled with the experiences of millions of people who have come to understand the power of this lifestyle change. When a wheat- and grain-free lifestyle is put to work in real life, the benefits documented in clinical studies can be seen in action with unexpected and dramatic reversal of numerous health conditions.
Such a collection of changes is rare to impossible when weight loss is achieved through a painful few weeks of calorie counting, liposuction, or kickboxing or other strenuous exercise. If this were just a weight-loss program or just a program to shrink your waist, well, that would be sort of interesting in a reality TV sort of way, complete with emotional outbursts and breakdowns. But it would not be accompanied by the sorts of body and health transformations we are seeking. In this detoxification process, we are going to go further than just losing weight; we are going to work to restore health from head to toe. Weight loss, feeling better, and looking younger are simply reflections of the dramatic improvements in health you are going to experience.
In particular, you are likely to experience a powerful reversal of inflammation throughout your body. The reversal of redness, swelling, pain, and hormonal signal disruption that we may experience variously as seborrhea, rheumatoid arthritis, acid reflux, leg swelling, or irrational anger all reflect the receding wave of inflammation previously caused by grains.
These are changes that I observe in people every day with the health strategies detailed in the Wheat Belly books. In this easy-to-consume, bite-size book, you will read about such changes from our detox panelists, even in the brief 10-day timeline of this program. I predict that many of you, like our volunteer panelists, will receive compliments from family and friends after these initial 10 days on how different you look: thinner, yes, but it’s not uncommon for your appearance to begin to change, especially that of the face with less eye puffiness, less facial edema, and relief from the redness of the cheeks and seborrhea along the nose (what I call the signature rashes of wheat and related grains), as well as developing better defined facial contours, reduced waist size, smaller hips, reduced cellulite on the thighs, loss of edema in the ankles, even smaller feet—no kidding. I bet you’ll even smile more readily, given how much better you feel inside.
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox program begins with the elimination of wheat and grains, the essential first step that gets the detoxification process under way. But this detox involves additional strategies for full benefit. These strategies are necessary because they undo many of the unhealthy effects that grains have exerted on your body and that have accumulated over the years, such as abnormal rises in insulin levels and altered composition of bowel flora (the microorganisms that inhabit your intestinal tract). Many of the drugs that your doctor prescribed to treat the destructive health effects of wheat and grain consumption will also need to be reduced or discarded. Remove the initial cause, correct the varied consequences, and the majority of drugs are no longer needed and health can finally reassert itself. Without grains, life is indeed good.
These sorts of benefits have nothing to do with celiac disease, the autoimmune destruction of the small intestine from gluten in wheat, rye, and barley experienced by 1 percent of the population. While this detox program could be undertaken by someone with celiac disease, it is primarily aimed at people without the disease, meaning the other 99 percent of the population. These benefits also have little to do with being “gluten-free,” a misleading concept that has the potential to ruin health and weight in other ways, which we’ll discuss throughout the book.
You will learn also that not only will you not become deficient in nutrients, but that nutrient levels increase with wheat and grain elimination—explaining why, for example, many people experience reversal of iron deficiency anemia and vitamin B12 deficiency with this approach. I also take the mystery out of fiber and show why the conventional notion of a high-fiber diet is largely a fiction of marketing, little different than sprinkling sawdust on your food. There are better ways to achieve bowel and overall health than gnawing on twigs.
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox therefore requires not only changes in lifestyle but also changes in your thinking about food and nutrition. Replacing your size 24, meant-to-conceal dress with a sleek, size 8 dress designed to show off your slender new body will go hand in hand with changes in the way you view food, replacing the health- and weight-destroying fictions with advice that actually works.
Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox Put to the Test
In March 2015, my American publisher and I invited a group of volunteers to Rodale’s Manhattan offices to undergo an initiation to the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox program. I had posted a request for volunteers on the Wheat Belly Facebook page and received an outpouring of offers to participate. All panelists shared an interest in getting started on the detox program and obtaining results as quickly as possible. While most expressed a desire to lose weight, all hoped to regain control over various health conditions.
The panelists (all female) in our group came from different parts of the country. To get them started on this process, we helped them understand a bit about why this lifestyle works so wonderfully well, but just as with the rapid-fire approach used in this book, we focused mostly on the how: how to identify grain-containing foods, how to go about eliminating them from their lives, and how to successfully navigate the first 10 days of the detox, including how to deal with the uncomfortable and disruptive process of withdrawal to begin a lifetime of health recovery.
We provided them with the very same recipes that you now have in this book, asking them for feedback, which was then factored in, and we improved on some of the recipes. We weighed them and measured their waists, arms, and hips on the first and last days of the detox. We also asked them for their thoughts on how they dealt with this process; the symptoms, aches, and pains they endured; and any health improvements they experienced. They shared their successes, their failures, the ups and downs of the process, the struggles with converting their kitchens to this new wheat- and grain-free lifestyle, and the sometimes reluctant or skeptical looks they got from family members.
I will be sharing many of the panelists’ experiences throughout this book. They all underwent the very same detox program that you are about to begin. All survived and lived to tell their stories.
GRAINS: A HEALTH AND WEIGHT CATASTROPHE
I promised to spare you the science and rationale behind the Wheat Belly concepts. But allow me to sprinkle just a bit of understanding over why this approach works so wonderfully well—so much so that I am sometimes accused of concocting success stories. But I can assure you that no fabrication is necessary because (1) I really don’t have that much imagination, and (2) such jaw-dropping successes occur every day, and we can readily add you to the list. I believe that just a little explanation is in order to assure you that this approach is genuine, based on scientific interpretation, not only anecdote or speculation, and that real results can be anticipated.
I call wheat and grain elimination a “2 + 2 = 11” effect: The total in this lifestyle is greater than the sum of its parts. Some people initially view the Wheat Belly approach as nothing more than cutting calories or cutting carbohydrates. But this is a misconception due to not recognizing all the reasons why wheat and grains disrupt health and why removing them yields larger-than-expected benefits. Removing all the factors in grains responsible for inflammation, for instance, results in a wide array of weight and health benefits.
So let’s do a quick rundown of what is contained in the wheat and grains that make a bran muffin, poppy seed bagel, or tortilla poisonous components of diet. I’ll keep it brief, and then we’ll pick up again with workable strategies to get you going.
GRAINS YIELD OPIATES. Not figuratively, but quite literally, these opiates are not too different from morphine or heroin. Chances are you are not a pill-popping, tourniquet-on-the-bicep, IV drug–injecting, fringe member of society slinking in corners and dealing in the dark, but rather a nice, law-abiding member of society. The gliadin protein of wheat and closely related proteins of other grains (secalin in rye, hordein in barley, zein in corn) yield, upon partial digestion, small peptides that bind to the opiate receptors of the human brain. In people with conditions such as bipolar illness and schizophrenia, they yield effects such as impulsive behavior and paranoia; in children with attention deficit disorder and autism, they cause behavioral outbursts and shorten attention spans; in people prone to bulimia and binge eating disorder, they cause 24-hour-a-day food obsessions. In those prone to depression, they cause dark moods and even suicidal thoughts.
In people without these conditions, grains “only” trigger appetite in an irresistible, never-satisfied way. (Several of our detox panelists shared their experiences, by the way, of being relieved of this appetite effect that had previously ruled their lives.) Most of us take in 400 or more calories per day from this appetite-increasing effect, sometimes as much as 1,000 or more calories per day. Some people even develop incapacitating and addictive relationships with food due to exposure to gliadin-derived opiates, witnessed in their most extreme form as the food obsessions in people prone to eating disorders.
Yes, wheat and grains, cleverly disguised as a multigrain loaf of bread to make sandwiches or a hot, steamy plate of macaroni and cheese for the kids, are mind-active drugs. Your kids are not oxycodone addicts, but they eat wheat and grains; not all that different.
Stopping wheat and grains thereby yields an opiate-withdrawal syndrome (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2), as well as a marked reduction in appetite. While you’re in the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox, I do not encourage calorie counting or cutting calories; however, if you were to tabulate calories, you would witness a substantial reduction in intake. (The reduction in calorie intake, by the way, is the basis for the Wheat Belly lifestyle usually not costing more money, despite our choice of higher-quality foods. If a family of five, for instance, experiences a reduction in calorie intake of 400 calories per person per day, that yields 2,000 fewer calories to purchase and prepare every day, 60,000 fewer calories per month. It’s almost like not having to feed one person.) We will discuss why, during your first week when the detoxification/withdrawal process gets under way, you may not be the nicest person to be around (something our volunteers experienced firsthand and will share). We will also discuss how you can soften the blow of this effect and perhaps spare yourself from having to make embarrassed apologies to everyone around you at the end.
GRAINS INITIATE INFLAMMATION AND AUTOIMMUNITY. Many people with autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, seborrhea, psoriasis, or one of the other 200 such diseases, regard themselves as unlucky, having been dealt a faulty genetic hand that increases susceptibility to such serious conditions. There is some truth to that belief, but it is important to recognize that we now know that the gliadin protein of wheat, the secalin of rye, the hordein of barley, and the zein protein of corn initiate a series of steps in the human intestine that increase permeability, what some call gut leak. This allows the entry of foreign substances into the bloodstream, such as lipopolysaccharide from bacteria (a highly inflammatory molecule) and the gliadin protein molecule itself.
Gliadin is peculiar in that its structure resembles several human proteins, such as the transglutaminase enzyme in muscle or the synapsin protein in the brain, a peculiarity that allows it to do double duty: initiate intestinal leak, then provoke inflammation. Because of such similarities to human proteins, gliadin’s presence in the human body causes a misdirected immune response against, for example, the cells of the brain containing synapsin, leading to degeneration of the cerebellum and resulting in progressive loss of balance and bladder control (cerebellar ataxia), or transglutaminase in the liver, causing the liver damage of autoimmune hepatitis. Different organs are targeted in different individuals, but much of it begins with the same phenomenon: abnormal intestinal permeability and inflammation from the components of grains passing through the intestines.
WHEAT GERM AGGLUTININ DISRUPTS DIGESTION. Wheat germ agglutinin, or WGA (contained in wheat, rye, barley, and rice), is a potent bowel toxin that is entirely resistant to human digestion. WGA blocks release of bile from the gallbladder and release of pancreatic enzymes from the pancreas, resulting in bile stasis and impaired digestion of food. This results in effects such as bowel urgency, incomplete food digestion, changes in bowel flora, and gallstones. WGA is also directly toxic to the gastrointestinal lining in its journey from mouth to toilet and highly inflammatory even in the small quantities that gain access into the bloodstream. WGA shares some structural similarities to ricin, a potent toxin used in terrorist attacks, only it doesn’t come to you and your family through dirty bombs or contaminated water, but from a hot dog bun or a wrap.
AMYLOPECTIN A RAISES BLOOD SUGAR TO HIGH LEVELS. Even though we’ve been told that grains contain a “complex” carbohydrate, the unique branching structure of the carbohydrate in grains called amylopectin A makes it highly digestible by the enzyme amylase in saliva and the stomach, causing it to raise blood sugar, ounce for ounce, higher than table sugar. High blood sugars provoke high blood insulin; high blood insulin results in storing fat in fat cells, leading to weight gain. To make matters worse, after we consume grains, the resulting high blood sugars are followed by low blood sugars 90 to 120 minutes later, an effect accompanied by mental fogginess, fatigue, food cravings, and irrational lashing out at colleagues at work or school. Grain consumption therefore yields hunger in an uncomfortable and predictable 2-hour cycle, as well as a need for occasional requests for forgiveness.
PHYTATES BLOCK NUTRIENT ABSORPTION. Grains are full of phytates, compounds that block absorption of iron, zinc, magnesium, and other nutrients. (This is part of the reason why grains, such as breads, are fortified: to compensate for the nutrient-blocking effects of phytates.) Such deficiencies have implications of their own, including fatigue (if iron deficiency anemia develops), skin rashes and impaired immunity (from zinc deficiency), muscle cramps, disrupted blood sugar control, and bone thinning (from magnesium deficiency). Wheat and grain consumption is the second most common worldwide cause for iron deficiency anemia after blood loss. Given their phytate content, grains are about as nutritious as identity theft is good for your credit score. Grains are anti-nutrients.
That’s a partial list of the components of grains that mess with health; there are more. With the exception of the highly digestible carbohydrate in grains, amylopectin A, you can detect a recurring theme in the problematic proteins of wheat and grains: They are indigestible or, at best, only partially digestible, unlike, say, the fully digestible proteins of an egg or piece of fish. If we recognize that grains—literally the seeds of grasses—were added to the human diet relatively recently in human history and added during a period of desperation (after all, who would intuitively or naturally view grasses as a source of calories?), it means that humans have had insufficient time to adapt. The indigestible or partially digestible proteins harvested from the seeds of grasses therefore exert peculiar effects on us, from mind effects to autoimmunity.
Such toxins come packaged in varied and delightful, enticing ways, such as cupcakes and kids’ breakfast cereals, all gussied up with clever marketing, leading me to call wheat and grains perfect chronic poisons. I promised not to go into these effects any further, since my intention with the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is to help you get on track as fast as possible without getting bogged down in the science and rationale (those are discussed in the original Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health and in Wheat Belly Total Health: The Ultimate Grain-Free Health and Weight-Loss Life Plan). Rest assured that this book is not based on conjecture or anecdote; it is based on real science, solid rationale, and real results. But it is important to understand that the approach outlined here achieves such huge and unexpected results not because we are just cutting back calories or because we have only reduced carbohydrate intake. It works because we are eliminating the dozens of toxic compounds that live in wheat and grains.
NICOLE, 48, flight attendant, Georgia
“If I had to pinpoint the motivation behind my grain-free journey, it would be the night my son ended up in the emergency room at midnight doubled over in pain with a severe stomachache. He had stomachaches before. Not on a daily basis, but periodically he would say his stomach hurt. Sometimes, he would feel like he had to vomit, other times he would sit on the toilet for what seemed like an hour. A lot of times he would miss school. A straight A student and gifted athlete. He had every reason to be angry and frustrated, and to have an ‘I don’t give a dang’ attitude.
“I decided that night in the hospital, when they sent my son home with a painkiller and laxatives, that I was going to try to figure out what was wrong with him. I had him undergo allergy testing, which yielded no allergies. He was tested for celiac, Crohn’s, and gluten intolerance. Nothing. I started documenting his food intake. I started noticing that he ate a lot of processed foods and easy-to-make things like sandwiches, pasta, and microwaved food. He was eating a LOT of grains. I found Dr. Davis on Facebook and immediately bought the first Wheat Belly book. After reading it, there was no doubt in my mind that my son was intolerant to grains.
“Little by little, I changed his diet. No more processed foods, no more pasta. His stomachaches started getting more infrequent, and there was a definite correlation between eating grains and his stomachaches. Sometimes the timing would be unusual, in that he would get a stomachache several days later after eating, say, chocolate chip cookies. But I could definitely see a connection.”
FEED THE INSATIABLE MONSTER
You now know that there is a soup of toxic compounds in wheat and grains. This is true even if they are organic, traditional or heirloom, sprouted, or topped with your extra-special gravy. This is because grains contain such toxic components naturally, only made worse by recent genetic manipulations.
The amping up of appetite by wheat and grains, in particular, is worth discussing further for a moment. Gliadin-derived opiates drive appetite in an “I can never get enough to eat” way, as discussed above. The amylopectin A carbohydrate drives blood sugar highs, followed by blood sugar lows that launch a 2-hour cycle of hunger. But there’s more.
WGA is also suspected of blocking leptin, the hormone of satiety charged with signaling your brain with a “stop eating” message when your stomach is full after, say, two trips to the all-you-can-eat buffet. In the presence of WGA, this signaling system is blocked, causing you to eat even after you are full, after you have taken in what you require for sustenance, making the chocolate cake, peach pie, and cheesecake at the end of the buffet irresistible—even when common sense, good judgment, and every other body signal tell you that you’ve had enough.
Making matters worse, high blood insulin provoked by amylopectin A causes belly fat to grow, viewed on the surface as a “muffin top” or “love handles” and seen on imaging tests such as CT scans as deep visceral fat encircling the abdominal organs. This belly fat is inflammatory fat that drives insulin levels up even further. Insulin causes fat storage and prevents mobilization of fat for energy. Eat grains, increase appetite, provoke high insulin, grow belly fat, increase inflammation, provoke even higher blood insulin—around and around it goes, a vicious cycle that ensures weight gain, the entire process initiated by a friendly looking blueberry muffin or bowl of organic oatmeal.
You’ll find these phenomena reflected in the comments of some of our detox panelists, such as Rebecca, Alexandria, and Joan. All of them struggled mightily with incessant, unstoppable, insatiable appetites while eating grains, and all were magnificently relieved of this monster by banishing them.
This is why I call wheat and its closely related grains not just perfect chronic poisons, but also perfect obesogens: foods that are perfectly crafted to make you fat, especially in the abdomen, what I call a wheat belly. If you have struggled to lose weight despite doing everything “right” while including plenty of “healthy whole grains,” you now understand that you were actually following a weight gain program—not too different from a cigarette smoking cessation program that bases its success on smoking more cigarettes. If your waist size expanded, the scale registering higher and higher, while metabolic distortions like high blood sugar and triglycerides accumulated as you blamed yourself for weakness, gluttony, or sloth, well, you succeeded in allowing the perfect obesogens in wheat and grains to do their dirty work.
YVETTE, 50, history professor, New Jersey
“The weight gain was really depressing. I had always been slender. Suddenly, I was a different person. Nothing in my wardrobe fit; my body felt like a stranger to me. I could tell that people were looking at me and wondering what happened. It’s been humiliating and embarrassing. I just didn’t feel like I had the mental energy to tackle a traditional diet such as Weight Watchers. A big part of our social life is sharing meals with our friends, and I like to cook and bake, and I did not want to give that up either. What I really want more than anything is just to get back to a place where I feel comfortable and healthy and confident in my own skin again.”
Understand these simple truths and you will understand why removing wheat and grains completely—without hesitation, without compromise, without a tearful goodbye—finally points you in the right direction, allowing control over weight and health. You were not weak, gluttonous, or slothful; you were feeding the insatiable monster created by eating grains.
We will also discuss why, once you are wheat- and grain-free, it is important to remain that way, or else you can be reexposed to their appetite- and weight-increasing effects. While one cookie or pretzel does not, of course, trigger a 30-pound weight gain by itself, all it takes is just one such indulgence and—bam!—the appetite-igniting effects return in all their lip-smacking, mind-clouding, bowel-agitating glory. I called this the “I ate one cookie and gained 30 pounds” effect in the original Wheat Belly book because I’ve seen it happen many times. Go wheat- and grain-free for, say, 3 months, then have a cookie or inadvertently get exposed to the flour in a sauce or bread crumbs in meat loaf, and your appetite is powerfully triggered, your resolve disintegrates, and your size 10 pants no longer fit. You regain 10, 20, or 30 pounds over a month because you lost control due to reexposure to all the components of grains. You may suffer some depression, mind “fog,” joint pain, and diarrhea on top of it, as well. Some indulgence!
This is why I tell you about such effects, so that you understand this can and does happen. Don’t let it happen to you in your quest for grain-free, fully empowered health.
ELIZABETH, 48, sales consultant, New York
“I spent most of my adult life overweight. I exercised regularly and was probably cardiovascularly fit, but I was also anywhere from 40 to 80 pounds overweight. Then in 2010, I got breast cancer at 42. It was like a punch in the gut. I didn’t see it coming. I was very fortunate that my cancer was treatable, and I had surgery to remove my left breast, then I started chemo about 6 weeks later. Chemo was awful. I have no words to describe how horrible it makes you feel. And one of the presents that I was left with after treatment was this chronic joint and muscle pain, mostly in my knees and legs, but also in my hips and upper back.
“I started reading up on grain elimination diets, and the part about wheat consumption triggering autoimmune disease really intrigued me. The more I read, the more I felt that I wanted to try eliminating wheat to see if it could help me manage my pain.
“I used to LOVE going for walks. If I walk now, even just for a few miles, I am in so much pain it’s just not worth it. What motivates me is to just keep improving, to prove to myself that there’s an inner athlete inside of me, a woman who is in control of her destiny and her health, not at the mercy of this chronic muscle and joint pain. If following this lifestyle truly helps diminish some of the chronic pain that I feel, that would mean more than anything to me. That’s my goal: to live life to the fullest, to treat my body with respect by exercising regularly and eating foods that nourish it, and to just feel good and pain-free every day.”
A WHEAT BELLY HEALTH MAKEOVER
Recognize these essential truths about wheat and grains and you will be empowered in ways and to a degree that you thought unattainable. Because of previous failures, you may have come to believe, for instance, that you would never again achieve high school weight, or fit into a size 8 dress or skinny jeans, or have a flat tummy, or not rely on prescription medications, or simply go about your day unimpaired by stiffness and fatigue. Part of the transformation of the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is to start believing again that you can achieve these goals.
My days are packed with hearing the success stories of people who have lost as much as 150 pounds, have dropped from double-digit dress sizes to single digits, are able to stop long lists of prescription drugs, have regained youthful energy, and are earning compliments from friends and family who are convinced they’ve either discovered the Fountain of Youth or undergone expert plastic surgery without the scars. While the weight loss and youth-restoring effects are indeed wonderful, it’s the turnaround in health that is most exciting: No other lifestyle approach has the potential to minimize, even fully reverse, the hundreds of health conditions that the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox can address.
The full benefits of this lifestyle can only get a powerful start during these first 10 days, with longer periods required, of course, to drop 12 dress sizes, lose 100 pounds, or reverse more complex health conditions. But you will more than likely get a powerful sense of the tidal wave of changes that are going to take place. You will see this reflected, too, in the stories of our detox panelists—the ups, the downs, the tsunami of body changes—as they begin their health-restoring and weight-loss journey.
Weight loss can be achieved by cutting calories and portion sizes (though it is a painful process that requires monumental willpower), counting “points,” cutting carbs, and even cutting fat (at least at first). But such weight-loss efforts achieve just that: weight loss, often accompanied by plenty of tears, doubts, cravings, swearing, self-loathing, and temptation. Weight loss can restore limited aspects of health, but it certainly won’t reverse unhealthy bowel flora, or provide relief from joint pain or bowel urgency, or reverse inflammatory, autoimmune, or neurological conditions. Losing weight alone is like applying new cosmetics: You may look a little nicer and present a better face to the world, but your underlying health is not improved by a new eye shadow or shade of lipstick.
Let’s instead view excess weight not as just excess weight, but as a reflection of disrupted health, an outward sign of hormonal and metabolic signals gone haywire. In other words, if you carry excess weight, look at this no differently than, say, high blood sugar, high blood pressure, high triglycerides, an inflammatory condition, or lupus. They are all abnormal health conditions. Losing weight is just losing weight—that is not what you should be achieving. If that were true, starvation would be a perfect health strategy. You should aim to achieve health; weight loss will follow naturally, effortlessly, without counting calories, without limiting portions, without reducing fat. You are going to experience a genuine head-to-toe, inside-and-out body makeover. We will, however, have to talk about carbohydrates, as they have proliferated in modern foods to such an extraordinary degree, thanks to the misguided low-fat message that now determines food manufacturers’ product designs.
PHILIPPA, 40, administrative assistant, Virginia
“The way that I felt at 20 versus 40 years old is dramatically different. If I project out another 20 years to 60 years old, I’m not sure how motivated I’ll be to stick around. The joint pain and exhaustion could be ridiculous by then. I have to figure out how to feel better.
“I don’t want to retire and feel awful. I don’t want to shop in the plus sizes. I don’t want another 10 years of avoiding family pictures because I’m not comfortable in my own skin. I used to be confident and aggressive. Now I clam up because I feel ugly and weak. I want to play tennis and basketball with my 12-year-old instead of being tired. Why does my desk job exhaust me? It’s not normal!
“I HAVE to do this for me.”
While banishing all things wheat and grains sounds like an overwhelming process to some, it is readily accomplished once you understand the rules on how to navigate foods. But it doesn’t end there. Just as an alcoholic who stops drinking two fifths of bourbon a day on Tuesday is not restored to perfect health by Thursday, or even a year later, so it goes with wheat and grains. There are additional steps you must take to heal the wounds incurred from 10, 20, 40, or more years of their consumption. These further steps are necessary to regain health, reprogramming your body by following this new dietary script. Gastrointestinal, immune, and metabolic health, in particular, require special coddling, even during our rapid-fire 10-day timeline.
Some of you may also want to achieve as much weight loss and health in as short a time as possible (while doing it safely, of course). Perhaps you allowed weight to get far out of control while enduring years of prescription drugs for a variety of health struggles, never once suspecting that your high-fiber breakfast cereal or the drug prescribed for high blood pressure or an allergy was among the culprits causing weight gain.
Upon learning that simple food choices are to blame for starting the entire list of health disruptions, you may now be motivated and excited to reverse this disastrous health mess as fast as possible. But let’s be realistic: If you have, say, 150 pounds to lose, it’s not going to happen in 10 days. But the health benefits that get jump-started during these initial 10 days, even if the weight loss amounts to no more than 5 pounds, are going to be crucial in setting the stage for future continued success because, remember, you are trying to reestablish health, not just a healthy weight.
PUT ON YOUR BEST PERFUME, LIGHT SOME CANDLES . . .
All right, enough of trying to get you in the mood. Let’s get down to business.
I’d like to make one last request before some of the most profound changes in your life get under way. The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox process is contrary to prevailing nutritional “wisdom” and will cause you to discard most of the ideas about health and nutrition that you may have held for most of your life. This means that you’d do best by starting with a clean slate, free of decades of misinformation and marketing. I’m asking you to open your mind to the possibility that the worldwide epidemic of obesity is not due to new and widespread extremes of gluttony and laziness, that the boom in diabetes should not be blamed on human weakness, that the explosion in autoimmune diseases should not be blown off as inheriting a bad genetic hand, and that the process of detoxification should not involve ingesting juices with magical properties or tubes inserted in uncomfortable places. Be open to the possibility that real answers lie elsewhere and you will be empowered to enjoy the solution.
In the interest of getting you to your goals as quickly and powerfully as possible, I won’t dwell anymore on the science or ponder how and why this lifestyle achieves so many goals that previously eluded you. In the rest of the book, we will be concerned with the practical steps that get you to your weight and health goals as quickly, effortlessly, and effectively as possible.
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is a hard-hitting, no-nonsense, no-romantic-interlude kind of book, an ultra quick-start to a life-changing way of eating, unfettered by the details of the why (which, should your curiosity be piqued, can be found in the preceding Wheat Belly books). Be prepared to tighten your belt and to rediscover what freely mobile joints and normal bowel habits feel like and what it means to be clearheaded and energetic while enjoying food like you never have before.
