Читать книгу The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox: The effortless health and weight-loss solution - Dr Davis William - Страница 8
ОглавлениеYOUR 10-DAY COUNTDOWN to a new life that is dramatically different starts now.
Sit down, grab a handle, and strap yourself in: You are going for the ride of your life. It will be a roller coaster of emotional and physical turbulence, with a few yelps, nausea, and moments of panic along the way that will land you in a place you likely have not been before—a world of health, single-digit clothes sizes, feeling wonderful, and being the recipient of jealous looks from the perplexed and frustrated grain-eaters around you, as well as of appreciative looks from your partner. This is your ticket to that world.
It may sound like an overused, over-the-top prediction to say that the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox experience will be life changing, but I assure you it will. It will be as life changing as surviving the throes of adolescence minus the acne and social bumbling, as life changing as having children without the diapers and sleepless nights. I predict that the changes will be so dramatic you will wonder how you managed to endure life before you discovered these answers to your health and weight struggles.
You may come to view your life as pre-detox and post-detox. Those of you who start the process with a health problem or five can typically expect dramatic improvements in health and the way you feel. Even within the first week, joint pains in the fingers and wrists, acid reflux, facial redness and rash, and bowel urgency can disappear, while over the second week and onward energy improves, the belly shrinks visibly, and pain in larger joints like knees and hips can begin to recede. It’s not uncommon for health to improve in such a broad front that it’s hard to keep up with reducing or eliminating prescription medications. People with high blood pressure or diabetes, in particular, commonly witness marked reductions in blood pressure and blood sugar within days, making it necessary to whittle down medications rapidly (to be discussed).
You may find it helpful to record your experience with this detox, as well as your long-term Wheat Belly journey. Maintaining a journal that chronicles the health and life changes that you undergo can help in the future, when you may start telling yourself things like “My life before Wheat Belly really wasn’t that bad,” or as memories of your grain-filled tribulations recede (as memories often do), or as friends try to persuade you to go back to the grain dark side. Refer back to your recorded descriptions of the changes you endured, the withdrawal effects, the health transformations you enjoyed, and the improvements in the way you feel, and you will be reminded that you did indeed undergo some dramatic changes and that going back is a really bad idea. Even better, consider also snapping some “before” selfies or find some recent photos of yourself that you can hold up against the “after” pictures. I predict that this graphic record of the changes you are going to experience will astound you with their stark contrast. Include close-up photos of your face, as these will especially highlight the changes you’ll experience.
Even people who start this process just to lose a few pounds, but feel pretty good at the start, report that they feel even better after the initial detox, noting that issues they’d come to accept as part of life, such as rashes, foot pain, or mental fog, have disappeared. People will say, “I didn’t realize that I really didn’t feel that great, but now I feel better than I have in 20 years.” In addition to feeling 20 years younger, many actually look 20 years younger.
But I won’t kid you: For many people, things may get worse before they get better. The first several days of your detox may be tumultuous, filled with emotional ups and downs and unpleasant experiences. You will see this reflected in the experiences of our detox panelists, including Jennifer, who endured a week of incapacitating fatigue and headaches before she began to emerge. An occasional person will experience transient worsening of chronic joint pain or migraine headaches. It will almost certainly disrupt the routine of your life: You may sleep longer; the dishes and dirty laundry may pile up; the family may be annoyed at your apparent malaise.
Much of this is due to stopping the flow of the unique, only partially digestible proteins in grains (gliadin in wheat, secalin in rye, hordein in barley, zein in corn) that yield the opiates that drive appetite. Yes: Law-abiding, PTA-card-holding mothers and fathers, housewives, teachers, and businesspeople who consume grains are opiate addicts. Casts a whole new light on breakfast cereals with names like Krave, doesn’t it? By stopping the flow of grains in your daily diet, you halt the flow of opiates, and an opiate-withdrawal syndrome can result. Unfortunately, for the people who do experience it, there is no way to avoid this phenomenon. There are ways to make the process less unpleasant that we will discuss, but if you are destined to have it, you must go through this process in order to free yourself from the mind-gripping and appetite-magnifying effects of grain-derived opiates. View it as a necessary step to return to health, much as a drug addict must stop injecting or snorting a drug and endure the withdrawal process before life can start anew.
It will be important to recognize withdrawal for what it is and not mistake it for something else. You especially don’t want to think, “Gee, my body must be telling me that I need grains.” There is no intrinsic need for anything in grains, and there is no deficiency created by removing them, but there is everything to gain by removing them and enduring this withdrawal process.
Of the 10 detox volunteer panelists, by the way, all 10 got to the finish, now sobered by the experience of the withdrawal process, understanding that wheat and grains had been having such a profound effect on their bodies that the process of reversing it was necessary to reclaim control over their lives.
SUSANNE, 51, jewelry designer, Georgia
“My symptoms were joint pain, and they did get worse before they got better. I was very fatigued the first few days, but just took naps and headed to bed early. Drinking more water was a huge help, as well.
“The hardest part about giving up grains is realizing they are everywhere, hidden in everything we eat. Knowing what to look for if you stray from single-ingredient foods is sooo key. It is a new learning curve but very empowering.”
The only reason to delay starting your 10-day transformation would be to choose a time without an impending period of high-pressure work or school deadlines or other stressful situations in order to better endure the withdrawal process. It will be especially difficult if, for instance, you have to work 16-hour days for an upcoming deadline while enduring the emotional roller coaster, mental fogginess, nausea, and fatigue of grain withdrawal. It’s not much worse than having a bad case of the flu without the nasal stuffiness, except that you are in charge of when you are going to endure it. You might also delay it if you have a major travel obligation coming, such as a family vacation, as it will be best to have your kitchen available to you during this period. Short of these potential disruptive factors in your near future, however, you should brace yourself and just get started now.
But don’t delay unnecessarily. Much as you do not want to delay the delivery of a baby at the 9-month mark of pregnancy or the bellyache of an urgent bowel movement triggered by the intestinal irritants of wheat and grains, so you shouldn’t allow another moment to pass before you consider beginning your journey.
THE THREE STEPS OF GRAIN DETOX
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox begins with the concept that the foods we are told (over and over and over again) should dominate our diet—grains—need to be completely removed in all their varied forms. This is the first big step in taking back control over weight and health. It means removing the appetite-stimulating effects of cookies and bagels, the autoimmune disease–triggering effects of multigrain bread, the behavior-distortion and learning impairment of animal crackers, and the gastrointestinal disruption of breakfast cereals. It may sound drastic, some even say impossible. Others say it will lead to nutrient deficiencies, difficulty navigating social situations, getting kicked out of the country club, friends no longer talking to you, having to take confession with your priest, even malnutrition and disabling deficiencies. None of this is true.
Once you are aware of a few basic ground rules in your newly empowered grain-free life, I predict that you will find this lifestyle entirely manageable, liberating, delicious, and healthy. Yes, there will be efforts that take some getting used to, such as asking waitstaff at restaurants about ingredients in dishes you order, but such efforts are minimal and easily accomplished. And this is what you must do in order to gain extraordinary control over appetite and health.
To make the transition to grain-free living a digestible process for you, even if your life is hectic and crammed with other responsibilities, I’ve broken it down into three bite-size, grain-free, sugar-free pieces. The three steps to getting started on this lifestyle are:
1. Eliminate all grains.
2. Eat real, single-ingredient foods.
3. Manage carbohydrates.
It’s that simple. Yes, there are additional steps to take to regain body-wide health, and we’ll discuss them later in the book. But the effort to convert from an unwitting, helpless, inflamed, weight-accumulating, disease-causing, grain-filled diet to a health-empowering, performance-enhancing, feel-great-again, grain-free diet is just that easy.
When we revert to eating foods that we are adapted to consume (since grains were added only a moment in time ago, speaking anthropologically), there are no concerns about saturated fat or fiber, there is nothing sugared-up, nobody needs to count calories, and there are certainly no products made from grains. We leave behind worries about portion size or overeating. We return to foods that allowed humans to survive and thrive for more than 99 percent of our time on Earth, when being overweight and the diseases of civilization (such as diabetes, hypertension, and autoimmune diseases) were unknown, before we mistakenly turned to grains in desperation as a source of calories when nothing better was available; we used grains then as food to provide sustenance, grow, and reproduce without knowing their enormous long-term health-disrupting impact.
Re-creating such a new, yet really old, pre-grain diet means making allowances for the modern choices we are presented, since we will not be spearing wild boar or digging in the dirt for wild roots. We therefore need to learn how to navigate their closest modern counterparts in places like supermarkets.
We begin with the indispensable, unavoidable, and absolutely necessary first step.
STEP 1: Eliminate All Grains
We start by eliminating the unexpected and surprising source of so many problems: no, not your nitpicky mother-in-law or your spouse’s excessive sports TV–watching habits, but grains. It is not uncommon for people to obtain more than half of their daily calories from grains. Eliminating them represents a major disruption of shopping, eating, and cooking habits. But I know of nothing—extreme exercise, prescription drugs, nutritional supplements, cleansing enemas, meditation, a year in a monastery—that can match the benefits of removing these disrupters of health.
Grain elimination is by far the most important step in the detox, because the next few steps will follow this crucial first step naturally. By banishing grains, you eliminate the appetite-stimulating effects of grain-derived opiates, effects that encourage consumption of junk carbohydrates. You will also eliminate gastrointestinal toxins in grains that alter your sense of taste. Minus these effects, your appetite will be reduced, you will spend far less time being hungry (if you are hungry at all), and your sense of taste will be reawakened. You will actually find former goodies no longer good, even sickeningly sweet, and you will enjoy healthy foods more. You will discover, for instance, that Brussels sprouts and blueberries have dimensions of flavor you never experienced before. The physiological changes that you undergo in Step 1 make the two subsequent steps of your detox easier.
Let me be absolutely clear on this: Eliminate all grains. I don’t mean cut back. I don’t mean every day except Friday. I don’t mean only at home, while drifting back to grain-consuming ways at restaurants or friends’ homes. Even a little compromise can completely block your success, halt the detoxification process, sustain the opiate addictive and appetite-stimulating effects, and continue to cultivate inflammation. So when I say “eliminate all grains,” I mean 100 percent without compromise, no matter where you are, what other people say, or what day of the week it is.
This first step is unavoidable. You cannot succeed in this lifestyle without this critical first step and going the full distance with it, else none of the other steps will follow or achieve the effects you desire. So let’s talk about how you can accomplish this all-important first step and banish all grains from your life.
Start with a Grain-Free Kitchen
I recommend starting this lifestyle by creating a grain-free kitchen: Establish a grain-free zone that includes your refrigerator, pantry, and cabinet shelves purged of all foods made with grains. Grocery stores, fast-food joints, and schools may be stocked top to bottom with them, but your personal kitchen will be a grain-free safe zone, a haven for healthy eating.
Start by removing all obvious sources of wheat flour such as bread, rolls, doughnuts, pasta, cookies, cake, pretzels, crackers, pancake mix, breakfast cereals, bread crumbs, and bagels. Toss out all the coupons you’ve set aside to save a few dollars on delivery pizza or bakery items. Then remove all bottled, canned, packaged, and frozen processed foods with wheat among the ingredients. Check the labels for wheat in all its various forms, some of which are obvious and others that are not so obvious, with names such as modified food starch, panko, seitan, and bran. (See Appendix B for a list of hidden grain sources and names.)
Tackle barley-containing foods next. This includes any food with malt listed on the label, as well as barley itself. (Beer and some other alcoholic beverages have grain issues, but we will discuss this in Appendix B.) Any foods made with rye, such as rye breads and rye crackers, should all go, too.
Now remove all obvious sources of corn, such as corn on the cob, canned corn, corn chips, tacos, and grits, as well as processed packaged foods made with obvious and not-so-obvious corn ingredients such as hydrolyzed cornflour and polenta (also listed in Appendix B).
Other grains, such as oats, rice, millet, sorghum, amaranth, and teff, are usually listed by their real names; purge the kitchen of these foods.
Why are grains found in so many processed foods? Sometimes they are there for legitimate reasons, such as to improve texture and taste or to thicken. But grains are also a way to bulk up a product inexpensively, causing you to believe that a frozen pizza is a bargain. In other words, grains are cheap filler. It is a way to feed people cheaply with plates piled high and appetites satisfied—at least for a few minutes, until they are hungry again. Note that fast-food restaurants are monuments to the use of cheap filler, so it is very difficult (impossible in some outlets) to navigate a meal free of them in such places.
But I believe that grains are present in nearly all processed foods for reasons beyond cheap filler. The dirty little secret is that grains increase food consumption by yielding opiates that increase appetite, adding an average of 400 more calories per person, per day, every day (averaging the food intake of everybody: adults, infants, and children). It’s not uncommon for grains to provoke consumption of 1,000 or more additional calories per day in an adult. Top off processed foods with high-fructose corn syrup, a highly processed derivative of corn, with its low-cost, intense sweetness, and you increase the expectation of sweetness and further amp up appetite in the consuming public, further increasing our desire for other sweet, processed foods. (Grain-free people, by the way, find the taste and sweetness of high-fructose corn syrup overwhelming, something you will lose all desire for, another reflection of sharpened taste.) As a consumer of “healthy whole grains,” you were doomed from the start, but now you know.
Just as there is no way to make a cigarette healthy, there is no way to salvage any of the grain products you had in your pantry or refrigerator. Toss them in the trash, give them to charity, use them for compost or cat litter, but get rid of them. This removes the temptation to “just have one cracker” or think that “just one bite won’t hurt” or try to avoid waste. We will discuss why it is so important to not allow this to happen and avoid the reactivation of appetite and addictive behavior, as well as triggering reexposure reactions that involve bloating, diarrhea, joint pain, and other annoying, even painful, effects. Making the break abruptly and cleanly is very important for success. If you are unable to completely purge your kitchen of grain products because, say, a spouse or other family member refuses to go along with your lifestyle change, make it clear that you are going to have food set aside to suit your new eating choices. (In Chapter 7, we will discuss how to quietly and cleverly convert such people over to your way of living. It can be done.)
There is no need for a panic attack, worrying that you will never have a pizza, muffin, or piece of cheesecake again. You will, though we will re-create them using truly healthy ingredients that will not cause weight gain or reverse the health benefits you’ve worked to achieve. (You will be introduced to these in the 10-Day Menu Plan in Chapter 5.)
Start Your Grain-Free Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox
Clear your kitchen of all obvious wheat and grain sources
Wheat-based products: bread, rolls, breakfast cereals, pasta, orzo, bagels, muffins, pancakes and pancake mixes, waffles, doughnuts, pretzels, cookies, crackers
Bulgur and triticale (both related to wheat)
Barley products: barley, barley breads, soups with barley, vinegars with barley malt
Rye products: rye bread, pumpernickel bread, crackers
All corn products: corn, cornflour, cornmeal products (chips, tacos, tortillas), grits, polenta, sauces or gravies thickened with cornflour, corn syrup, high-fructose corn syrup, breakfast cereals
Rice products: white rice, brown rice, wild rice, rice cakes, breakfast cereals
Oat products: oatmeal, oat bran, oat cereals
Amaranth
Teff
Millet
Sorghum
Then eliminate hidden sources by reading labels
Eliminate hidden sources of grains by avoiding the processed foods that fill the inner aisles of the grocery store. Almost all of these are thickened, flavored, or textured with grain products, or grains are added as cheap filler and/or appetite stimulants.
Living without grains means avoiding foods that you never thought contained grains, such as seasoning mixes bulked up with cornflour, canned and dry soup mixes with wheat flour, soy sauce, frozen dinners with wheat-containing gravy and muffins, and all breakfast cereals, hot and cold. (You will find lists of the hidden aliases for wheat and corn, in particular, that can be found in so many processed foods in Appendix B.)
This does not mean you will never have a crunchy breakfast “cereal” again or a salad topped with delicious dressing. You will learn to either make your own versions with no unhealthy grains to booby-trap your lifestyle or to identify the brands that have no grains or other unhealthy ingredients added.
Go Grain-Free Shopping
You have purged your kitchen of grain-containing foods and need to restock with new, healthy, grain-free alternatives. Go to the supermarket or the stores where you shop for meat, vegetables, and other foods. (Some of our detox panelists observed that they needed to shop at more than one store in their neighborhood to find all the starting ingredients.) One observation you are sure to make as you remove all grains from your life and carefully examine labels is, “This is impossible. Grains are in everything!”
Indeed, grains—especially wheat and corn—are in salad dressings, seasoning mixes, licorice, frozen dinners, breakfast cereals, canned soups, dried soup mixes, rotisserie chickens, soft drinks, whiskies, beers, prescription drugs, shampoos, conditioners, lipstick, chewing gum, and even the adhesive in envelopes. Wheat and corn are in virtually every processed food on grocery store shelves and in many cosmetics and toiletries, as ubiquitous as (how can I resist?) white on rice. (By the way, steal a look at the contents of other shoppers’ grocery carts and you will be amazed at the number of foods that contain wheat and grains. You’ll be hard-pressed to find foods that don’t contain them.)
It also means bearing some greater up-front grocery costs, since you are restocking much of your kitchen with new foods. Don’t be fooled, though: The increased costs of following the Wheat Belly lifestyle will not continue forever. It’s just part of getting started. Recall that, as you progress in your wheat- and grain-free lifestyle, food and calorie consumption will drop naturally. If your family follows suit, multiply the reduced food intake by the number of family members, and it all adds up (in the experience of most people) to reduced long-term costs or no increase—making no dent in your monthly food budget, despite getting rid of all the foods made with cheap filler and replacing them with higher-quality substitutes.
Of the 60,000 or so processed food products that pack the shelves of the average supermarket, your options will be whittled down to about 1,000, but you should never feel deprived. You will discover that the foods you’ve eliminated are nearly all variations on the same processed food theme: wheat flour, cornflour, sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and food coloring, whether it was breakfast cereal, a pop-in-the-toaster convenience breakfast, frozen waffles, low-calorie frozen dinners, or crackers. They’re all cheap filler in the modern diet, dolled up with the glitz of modern marketing.
Start by not shopping for obvious sources of wheat, corn, and other grains and avoid the bread aisle, the bakery, frozen food freezers, the breakfast cereal aisle, and the internal aisles stocked with packaged foods. Confine your shopping to the produce section, the butcher counter, and the dairy refrigerator; venture into the inner aisles only for spices, nuts and seeds, laundry detergent and other household supplies, and dog or cat food (though you might consider looking for grain-free pet food, as well). You may wish to consult the day-by-day shopping list for the 10-Day Menu Plan in Appendix A to be sure you have the ingredients on hand to create the plan’s recipes.
You are aiming to achieve a diet filled with foods that are least processed. The most confident means of avoiding foods with grains is to choose foods that are naturally grain-free, such as vegetables, eggs, olives, and meats. That points us toward a solution, a policy that helps you easily navigate your new grainless life: Avoid processed foods that bear labels and return to real, unprocessed, naturally grain-free, single-ingredient foods without labels.
STEP 2: Choose Real, Single-Ingredient Foods
An avocado, intact in its skin, can be chosen with confidence, as no food manufacturer added grains to it. Eggs in their shell likewise. In other words, foods left more or less intact and unmodified by a food manufacturer should top your list of foods to choose from that are safe for your empowering grain-free lifestyle. Avocados and whole eggs are real—not fake, multiple-ingredient marketing conceptions of some food manufacturer—and there’s no chance of exposure to grains, added sugars, high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, or other no-no’s.
You will find the majority of real, single-ingredient foods in the produce section, butcher counter, and dairy refrigerator. Depending on the layout of your supermarket, you may have to venture into those hazardous internal aisles for some of your baking supplies, spices, and nuts, but do so while ignoring all the packaged, processed, glitzy, eye-catching products.
Avoiding foods with labels simplifies the task of label reading. Cucumbers, spinach, and pork chops, for example, don’t come with labels (except to display weight and date). Avoiding labels means you’ll be buying foods in their basic, least modified forms. Sure, the pork chops were sliced from a larger piece of the meat from the animal, but they should not have been changed in any other way.
This simple policy of choosing real, single-ingredient foods has served prior Wheat Belly followers well, served our detox panelists well, and will serve you well, particularly as you are learning to navigate this lifestyle at the start.
Choosing real, single-ingredient foods that are nourishing and don’t yield land mines in your Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox means enjoying unlimited quantities of the following:
VEGETABLES. Enjoy all the fresh or frozen veggies you want, except for potatoes (see “Step 3: Manage Carbohydrates”—unless you’re consuming the potatoes raw, as suggested in Chapter 4). Explore the wonderful range of choices: spinach, chard, kale, broccoli, broccolini, collard greens, lettuces, peppers, onions, mushrooms, Brussels sprouts, courgettes, squash, and so on. It may also be time to revisit vegetables you didn’t previously like because of the change in taste perception you will undergo when grain-free. Don’t be surprised if the Brussels sprouts you once despised now become your favorite. Minimize reliance on canned vegetables, especially tomatoes, due to bisphenol A, an endocrine-disrupting chemical, in the can’s lining.
MEATS. Choose from beef, pork, lamb, fish, chicken, turkey, buffalo, ostrich, and wild game. Consider pasture-/grass-fed, free-range, and organic sources whenever possible to minimize exposure to antibiotic residues, hormones, and other contaminants, as well as to do your part in encouraging a return to more humane livestock practices. There is no need to look for lean cuts; look for fatty cuts, often less expensive and full of the fats you need that facilitate success in this lifestyle. And try to overcome the modern aversion to organ meats, such as liver, heart, and tongue, the most nutritious components of all, especially liver and heart. Uncured liver sausage or ground liver added to meat loaf are easy ways to resume organ consumption. Only over the last 50 years have people developed an aversion to organ meats. Get over it: Have some liver. (Just as with humans, if an animal was raised in contaminated circumstances, the meat and organs will be contaminated likewise, so look for pasture-fed, organic sources here, as well.) Save bones in the freezer to make soups and stocks, excellent for joint, hair, and nail health.
EGGS. Eggs are little powerhouses of nutrition and are an important part of a successful grain-free lifestyle. We do not limit eggs, since the alarms over the potential cardiovascular risks of eggs have been confidently debunked. Choose free-range, organic sources whenever possible or, even better, purchase them from a local source. If you are allergic to eggs from chickens, consider goose, duck, ostrich, or quail eggs, if available.
RAW OR DRY-ROASTED NUTS AND SEEDS. Almonds, walnuts, pecans, hazelnuts, pistachios, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, flaxseeds, and chia seeds are all great choices, as are dry-roasted peanuts (though they’re really a low-carbohydrate legume, not a nut). Avoid nuts roasted in unhealthy oils, such as hydrogenated cottonseed or hydrogenated soybean oil, as well as wheat flour, cornflour, maltodextrin, or sugar used to coat them. Should you choose roasted, none of these unhealthy oils or other ingredients should be listed. Cashews are the one nut that should be limited, as they are among the most carbohydrate-rich of nuts; consume lightly and use the carbohydrate management method discussed below.
FATS AND OILS. Choose coconut, palm, extra-virgin olive, extra-light olive, macadamia, avocado, flaxseed, and walnut oils, as well as organic butter and ghee. Don’t be afraid of saving the oils from bacon, beef, and pork. You can also purchase lard and tallow, but make sure they are not hydrogenated. Minimize use of polyunsaturated oils (corn, safflower, mixed vegetable, and sunflower). Avoid hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils completely.
CHEESES. Purchase real cultured cheeses only (not single-slice processed cheese), preferably organic and full fat, not skim or reduced fat. The cheese-making process minimizes the undesirable aspects of dairy (such as whey and unhealthy forms of casein). Be careful with blue cheese, Gorgonzola, and Roquefort, which are occasionally sources of wheat.
BEVERAGES. Drink water (squeeze in some lemon or lime or keep a filled water pitcher in the refrigerator with a few slices of cucumber, kiwifruit, mint leaves, or orange), teas (black, green, or white), infusions (teas brewed from other leaves, herbs, flowers, and fruits), unsweetened almond milk, unsweetened coconut milk (the carton variety from the dairy refrigerator), unsweetened hemp milk, and coffee. Sip the Coconut Electrolyte Replacement Water as is or on ice. Avoid sodas and fruit drinks, even the sugar-free ones as they are typically sweetened with aspartame and have been associated with weight gain and unhealthy changes in bowel flora.
MISCELLANEOUS. Look for guacamole, hummus, pesto, tapenades, olives, and unsweetened condiments, such as mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup without high-fructose corn syrup, and oil-based salad dressings without high-fructose corn syrup, sugar, dextrose, or cornflour.
ALCOHOL. It is best to refrain from alcohol or keep it to a bare minimum (no more than one glass per day) during your detox. If you wish to keep some on hand, though, consider wine (the drier, the better); non-grain vodka (Cîroc, Chopin, others); rum; tequila; brandies and cognacs; and non-grain or gluten-free beers (Redbridge, Green’s, Bard’s, and others). Note that beers, in particular, can have small quantities of grain residues, even if gluten-free, and have potential for excessive carbohydrates, so go very lightly with them; one 12-ounce serving approaches your carbohydrate limit, so never have more than one serving. (There is a more detailed listing of safe alcoholic beverages in Appendix B.)
STEP 3: Manage Carbohydrates
The third step in the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is to manage carbohydrates, even beyond those found in grains, as they are the darlings of the processed food industry—cheap, tasty filler that contributes to dietary helplessness and health distortions. Carbohydrates provoke blood sugar and insulin and slow, even stop, your weight loss and health efforts. Properly managing these foods allows you to squeeze additional benefits from the power of your grain-free nutritional program. It will supercharge weight loss and allow you to gain further control over metabolic disturbances, such as high blood sugars, fatty liver, triglycerides, blood pressure, and needing to shop in plus-size aisles.
We follow this simple rule: Never exceed 15 grams net carbohydrates per meal or per 6-hour (digestive) period. We calculate net carbs by the following simple equation:
NET CARBS = TOTAL CARBS – FIBER
Because most of your foods will not come with labels or nutritional panels, you will need a resource to look up the composition of various foods, such as an inexpensive handbook with tables of the nutritional content of foods. (Find these in the reference section of your local library or bookstore, often for less than $10.) There are also several terrific smartphone apps useful for this purpose. (Search for “nutritional analysis” in your application source.) In addition, there are many Web sites that list nutritional analyses of foods. Look up total carbohydrate and fiber content of the food in question, make the simple calculation, and you have net carbohydrate content.
Nothing matches the power of eliminating grains to reduce inflammation, recover gastrointestinal health, reduce appetite, and drop weight. But banishing all grains while feasting on a bag of potato chips or downing three cans of sugary cola every day can still trip up health and weight. Carbohydrate management helps you sidestep problem sources and compound the benefits begun with grain elimination. And because diabetes and overweight are concerns for so many people at the start of their detox, this step is also necessary to take control of these modern epidemic conditions.
Carb management is easier than it sounds once grains have been eliminated, even for people who begin this process with a sweet tooth. Recall that ridding your life of grain-derived opiates reduces appetite and reawakens taste, including heightening sensitivity to sweetness. The desire for sweet snacks diminishes or disappears, and goodies you formerly thought were irresistible will taste sickeningly sweet. Addiction to milk chocolate, gummy candy, or other junk indulgences will go the way of padded shoulders and harem pants. Good riddance.
We also do not use the misleading fiction of the glycemic index or glycemic load. (See “The Fairy Tale of Glycemic Index”.) Choosing low-glycemic index foods, for instance, will trigger blood sugar and insulin to high levels, cause weight gain, and prevent the health benefits of this lifestyle—virtually no different than high-glycemic index foods. Don’t fall for the health and weight booby-trap of glycemic index.
Your efforts to manage carbohydrates will limit rises in blood sugar. Contrary to conventional advice from most doctors (who typically advise that blood sugars should not exceed 11 mmol/L after a meal, a level associated with astounding levels of weight gain and health impairment), adhering to our 15 g net carb cutoff keeps blood sugars at or below 6 mmol/L at all times, including blood sugar after eating a meal. In other words, we aim to never allow blood sugar to rise over the level present prior to the meal.
If you have diabetes or prediabetes and start with higher-than-normal blood sugars, this approach will prevent additional rises in blood sugar with meals and allow even future fasting blood sugars to drop over time. We therefore work to keep blood sugars at healthy levels when you rise in the morning; before and after breakfast, lunch, and dinner; before bedtime; when you wear open-toed shoes, high heels, or go barefoot; as well as all other times of the day.
By avoiding spikes in blood sugar, insulin release is minimally triggered. Insulin is the root of much dietary and metabolic evil; it is a hormone that causes weight gain and blocks mobilization of stored fat from fat cells. Not triggering insulin allows the opposite to occur: mobilization of fat and weight loss from fat cells. Over time, insulin resistance is reduced, allowing weight loss to progress further. Along with it, inflammation, fatty liver, blood pressure, high triglycerides, inappropriate questions about your baby’s due date, and other distortions all strike a retreat.
It is important that, as part of your carbohydrate management effort, you do not limit fats or oils. In the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox, there are no limits on fat or oil intake, provided you choose your sources wisely. It means you should enjoy the fat on meats, just like your grandparents did. Don’t buy meats lean; buy fatty cuts. Don’t trim the fat off beef, pork, lamb, or poultry; eat it. Eat dark poultry meat, as well as white. In addition:
Save fats from cooking beef, pork, and bacon in a container and refrigerate to use as cooking oil.
Save the bones (or buy them from a butcher) to make soup or stock and don’t skim off the fat when it cools.
Consider enjoying bone marrow.
Don’t limit egg consumption. Have a three-egg omelet, for instance, with lots of extra-virgin olive oil, pesto, or olive oil–soaked sun-dried tomatoes.
Use the oils listed above generously in every dish possible.
The Fairy Tale of Glycemic Index
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is a hard-hitting natural approach for gaining incredible control over weight and health in as short a time as possible. There are no fictions or fairy tales here. But some popular nutritional fairy tales could confuse you or undo the benefits you are trying to achieve. The concept of glycemic index (GI) is one good example: a fictional notion that, if believed like a fairy tale, could have you kissing frogs to make princes.
GI assigns values to foods that describe how high blood sugar climbs over 90 minutes after consuming that food compared to glucose. The GI of a pork chop? Zero: no impact on blood sugar. Three scrambled eggs? Also zero. A plate of kalamata olives and big wedge of feta cheese? Zero again. A zero glycemic index applies to all other meats, fats, oils, most nuts, cheeses, mushrooms, and nonstarchy vegetables. Eat any of these foods and blood sugar won’t budge and insulin will not be provoked beyond a minimal level.
While there is really nothing wrong with the concept of GI or the related concept of glycemic load (GL), which factors in quantity of food, the problem lies in how values for GI and GL are interpreted. Standard practice is to (arbitrarily) break GI levels down into high GI (70 or greater), moderate GI (56 to 69), and low GI (55 or less), while GL is broken down into high GL (20 or greater), moderate GL (11 to 19), and low GL (10 or less).
Can you be a little bit pregnant? Can you have a little nuclear war? The same applies to GI: There should be no “low” or “high” distinguished by such small differences. All GI levels are associated with blood sugars that are too high if weight loss and ideal metabolic health are your goals. Applying the flawed logic of the GI, cornflakes, puffed rice, and pretzels have high GIs (above 70), while whole grain bread, oatmeal, and rice have low GIs, resulting in the conventional advice to includes lots of these low-GI foods in your diet.
A typical nondiabetic person who consumes 125 g (4½ oz) of oats—a low-GI food—in 120 ml (4 fl oz) cup of milk without added sugar will experience a blood sugar level in the neighborhood of 9 mmol/L. This is a high level that provokes the weight-loss blocking effect of insulin, not to mention also triggering (over time) adrenal disruption, cataract formation, damage to joint cartilage, hypertension, heart disease, and neurological deterioration or dementia when provoked repeatedly, as with oatmeal for breakfast every morning. A blood sugar of 10 mmol/L may not be as high as, say, the 10 mmol/L that occurs after consuming a high-GI food, such as a bowl of cornflakes or puffed rice cereal. But it is still high enough to provoke all the destructive effects of high blood sugar.
Low GI would therefore be more accurately labeled as “less-high” GI. Even better, we could just recognize that any GI above zero or low single-digit values should be regarded as high.
The concept of glycemic load that factors in portion size is no better. Under this system, the GL of cornflakes is 23, the GL of oatmeal is 13, and the GL of whole wheat bread is 10, once again lulling you into thinking that foods like oatmeal and whole wheat bread don’t raise blood sugar. But they do. Foods like oats and whole wheat bread don’t have low GLs; they have less high GLs.
Is there a value that better predicts whether there will be a blood sugar rise? Yes: grams of carbohydrates. Specifically, net grams of carbohydrates obtained by subtracting fiber (since fiber, while included in the total carbohydrates value on nutritional panels, is not digested to sugar):
NET CARBOHYDRATES = TOTAL CARBOHYDRATES – FIBER
If you were to test blood sugars with a fingerstick glucose meter 30 to 60 minutes after consuming a food (when peak blood sugar usually occurs, not 2 hours as advised by physicians for diabetic blood sugar control), you would see that it takes most of us 15 g net carbohydrates before blood sugars rise, regardless of whether they are high-, medium-, or low-GI. We have based all Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox dietary choices and recipes on this limit.
Let’s dash another fairy tale commonly offered by the dietary community that can trip up your weight-loss efforts. They often tell us that if a high-GI food is consumed with added proteins, fats, or fiber, the glycemic effect will be reduced. As often occurs in the fictional tales of nutrition, this is an example of something being less bad but not necessarily good. A typical blood sugar after consuming two slices of multigrain bread on an empty stomach might be 10 mmol/L—high enough to provoke insulin, cortisol, insulin resistance, visceral fat accumulation, and inflammation. Consume two slices of multigrain bread with some slices of turkey, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomatoes, and blood sugar will be around 9 mmol/L—better, yes, but still pretty high.
Less bad is not necessarily good. The wolf can wear Grandma’s nightie, but he’s still a big, bad, ugly wolf.
If you are worried about your cholesterol, know that the majority of people will experience a reduction in the LDL (bad) cholesterol with this lifestyle, along with plummeting triglycerides and a rise in healthy HDL. Eating fats and oils normalizes these predictors of cardiovascular risk. (A full discussion of the why behind these changes, and why and how a low-fat diet ruins health and booby-traps cardiovascular risk, can be found in both the original Wheat Belly and in Wheat Belly Total Health.)
REBECCA, 44, sales, Connecticut
“Funny: 8 nights with no binge eating and I forgot that for the past 8 years I have binged before going to bed—my biggest demon. I once read that this lady turned her kitchen faucet on so no one would hear her going in the freezer with a spoon to get ice cream. I couldn’t believe someone else did that! Wow! This was an addiction, and following the guidelines of Dr. Davis worked. For once I didn’t have to pretend to myself that I wasn’t starving. Once I gave him my full trust in the process, I upped my fat intake and that was my saving grace.”
If we are going to increase our intake of fats and oils, it also means avoiding foods labeled “low-fat” or “nonfat.” These terms mean high carbohydrate and high sugar and also serve as buzzwords for grains. Yes, conventional notions of healthy foods with reduced fat have not just wasted our time, but disposed of any control we may have hoped for in weight and health. Have nothing to do with them. If you consume dairy products, for instance, pour the fat-free, 1%, or 2% milk down the drain and go for the full fat or cream. No light coconut milk; we want the thickest, fattiest variety.
We also avoid hydrogenated fats, or trans fats, a common ingredient in processed foods, especially grain-based foods, as they contribute to heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Margarine is the worst, made with vegetable oils hydrogenated to yield a solid stick or tub form. Many processed foods, from cookies to sandwich spreads, contain hydrogenated oils and should be avoided for this and other reasons. Use real organic butter or ghee instead (if you include dairy).
Despite our embrace of fats and oils, you should not interpret this to mean that foods deep-fried in oils are healthy. They are not. But it’s not so much the fat as the high-temperature reactions that occur in deep-fried foods, even healthy foods, especially if polyunsaturated oils like corn are used. Because of the health-impairing effects of the by-products from high-temperature cooking, we avoid or at least minimize any food that is deep-fried.
There are a few additional tips that are useful for managing carbohydrate intake.
ABSOLUTELY AVOID GLUTEN-FREE FOODS MADE WITH CORNFLOUR, RICE FLOUR, TAPIOCA STARCH, OR POTATO FLOUR. These are the four ingredients most commonly used in gluten-free processed foods. They are awful for health and will completely shut down any hope of weight loss, often resulting in outright, sometimes outrageous, weight gain and inflammation. Managing carbohydrates to improve control over metabolism and health means 100 percent avoidance of these terrible products marketed to an unsuspecting public thinking they are eating healthy by avoiding gluten.
Nothing raises blood sugar higher than the gluten-free junk carbohydrates in, say, gluten-free multigrain bread or gluten-free pasta—higher than even table sugar. Blood sugar that results from eating two slices of whole grain gluten-free bread made with potato flour, rice flour, and millet can easily top 10 mmol/L (in those without diabetes) over the first hour after consumption, regardless of the mayonnaise, meat, cheese, or other foods in the sandwich. There are indeed some food producers who have developed gluten-free and grain-free products without junk carb ingredients that do not raise blood sugar and so are safe, but they remain in the minority.
LIMIT FRUIT. Adhere to our carb management cutoff and limit yourself to no more than 15 g net carbohydrates per meal. Choose fruit with the least carbohydrate content and greatest nutritional value. From best to worst, choose from: berries of all varieties, cherries, citrus, apples, nectarines, peaches, and melons. 80 g (3 oz) of blueberries, for example, contains 15 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber = 12 g net carbohydrates. This meets the 15 g or less net carbs limit (but don’t forget to factor in other foods you consume along with the blueberries, as it all adds up).
Minimize (ripe) bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and grapes, and when you eat them, do so only in small quantities, since their sugar content is similar to that of candy. A medium 7-inch banana, for example, contains 27 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber: 27 – 3 = 24 g net carbohydrates. 80 g (3 oz) of (unsweetened) pineapple chunks contains 20 g total carbs and 1 g fiber = 19 g net carbs. Both the full ripe banana and the 80 g (3 oz) of pineapple chunks are too much and enough to turn off all weight loss and actually begin to trigger some weight gain.
An exception to fruit guidelines are avocados, which are high in fats, rich in potassium, wonderfully filling, and low in net carbs (3 g per avocado).
AVOID FRUIT JUICES. As with fruit, be very careful with fruit juices. You’d do best to avoid juices altogether. If you must drink fruit juice (such as pomegranate or cranberry juice for health benefits), drink only real, 100 percent juice (not fruit “drinks” made with high-fructose corn syrup and little juice) and only in minimal quantities (no more than 55–110 ml (2–4 fl oz) per meal), as the sugar content is too high. One 240 ml (8 fl oz) glass of orange juice, which dominates the breakfast habits of many people who think they are consuming something healthy, contains more than 6 teaspoons of sugar, or 26 g net carbs.
LIMIT DAIRY PRODUCTS. Have no more than 1 serving per day of milk, cottage cheese, or unsweetened yogurt (preferably full fat, if you can find it). Remember: Fat is not the problem. We limit dairy because of the lactose sugar content and the peculiar ability of the whey protein to provoke insulin, which can impair weight loss and encourage insulin resistance, not to mention issues such as estrogen content, bovine growth hormone and antibiotic residues, and potential adverse effects of the casein protein.
Organic, full-fat cheese, full-fat cream cheese, and organic butter and ghee are the least problematic forms of dairy. Organic production avoids growth hormone and minimizes antibiotics, and the culturing process to make cheese reduces lactose and whey, as well as the content of dangerous forms of casein. These products can therefore be safely consumed more liberally, provided you don’t have a specific intolerance to one or more dairy components.
LIMIT LEGUMES, COOKED POTATOES, SWEET POTATOES, AND YAMS. Here is where carbohydrate counting can be put to work, keeping intake to no higher than 15 g net carbs per meal. In general, it means eating no more than ¼ of a tea cup of any of these foods per meal. Including some of these foods can be important, however, as they benefit bowel flora, especially raw white potatoes (see the discussion in Chapter 4).
INDULGE IN THE DARKEST CHOCOLATES. Chocolates that are at least 70 percent cocoa, preferably 85 percent or higher, easily fit into your regimen. Count net carbohydrates: the delicious Ghirardelli Intense Dark 86% Cocoa chocolate bar, for instance, contains 15 g total carbs, 5 g fiber (lots of fiber in dark chocolate) = 10 g net carbs in 4 squares (45 g) of chocolate, which is half of the entire 75 g (3 oz) bar, more than enough to satisfy even the most serious chocolate habit. Remember: Wheat and grain elimination amplifies your sense of taste and sweetness so that, even if you previously found dark chocolate to be bitter and not sweet enough, you will now appreciate how delicious it is without the taste distortion of grains. And go ahead: Dip your chocolate into natural peanut butter or almond butter.
BE AWARE OF SAFE VS. UNSAFE SWEETENERS. We have to be picky with our choice of sweeteners, as there are benign sweeteners that we will be using in some of our recipes—cookies, muffins, and pies—and there are destructive sweeteners that impair weight loss and pose other undesirable effects. You need to avoid foods sweetened with the sugar alcohols sorbitol, mannitol, lactitol, or maltitol, as they act much like sugar and cause diarrhea and bloating. Also avoid sucralose, saccharine, and aspartame as there is a theory that they result in unhealthy changes in bowel flora. We will also strictly avoid fructose-containing sweeteners: sucrose (table sugar, which is 50 percent fructose), high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar (90 percent fructose), coconut sugar, and other sugars marketed as “natural.” Some people use honey and maple syrup, as they are natural sources of sugar, but both are high in fructose and should be used sparingly (never more than 1 to 2 teaspoons per serving).
Among the safest sweeteners are pure liquid or powdered stevia; stevia with inulin but not maltodextrin; monk fruit (also known as luo han guo); and two safe naturally occurring sugar alcohols, erythritol and xylitol. (Be careful with xylitol around dogs, as it is toxic to them.) An occasional person will experience triggering of their sweet tooth with these sweeteners, leading to cravings for other sweet foods, but it is uncommon. Inulin is safe and has a light sweetness and even provides benefits to bowel flora.
Important: If You Start with Diabetes . . .
If you are injecting insulin or taking certain diabetes drugs, precautions will be necessary to avoid the potential danger of hypoglycemia (blood sugars lower than 4 mmol/L) and, less commonly, diabetic ketoacidosis, if you have diabetes associated with inadequate pancreatic insulin production. There are also the uninformed objections of many doctors who have come to believe that diabetes is incurable, irreversible, and a diagnosis for life—not true in the majority of cases of type 2 diabetes.
Anyone taking insulin injections in any form will need to reduce the dosage in order to follow this lifestyle without experiencing hypoglycemia. An immediate need to reduce insulin by half is typical. Ideally, this is undertaken with the assistance of a health care provider with experience in helping patients reduce or eliminate their diabetes. This almost always means identifying a new practitioner, as the one who prescribed the insulin for type 2 diabetes in the first place is likely a member of the “diabetes is incurable and irreversible” school, not recognizing that insulin injections are a weight gain drug.
I cannot stress enough that hypoglycemia must be avoided, even if higher blood sugars result temporarily (though ideally kept below 11 mmol/L throughout this process). Other medications, especially oral agents glyburide, glipizide, and glimepiride, can cause dangerous hypoglycemia. For this reason, many people eliminate these oral drugs or reduce doses, even if it means a temporary increase in blood sugars. As blood sugars trend downward, you’ll need to further reduce medications. If, for instance, you have fasting blood sugars of 6 mmol/L or less, it is essential to reduce or eliminate a medication.
