The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox: The effortless health and weight-loss solution
Dr William Davis
For the first time ever, Dr. Davis presents a simple “10-Day Grain Detox Plan - all the advice and a superb selection of recipes.Dr. Davis provides a simple “10-Day Grain Detox Plan.” With carefully designed meal plans and delicious recipes, you’ll have everything you need to fully eliminate wheat and related grains from your diet in just ten days. Readers will be guided through the complete detox experience and provided with instructions on how reduce or eliminate wheat-withdrawal symptoms. This plan is for people who follow Wheat Belly but may have fallen off the wagon, or for newcomers who need a quick jumpstart to weight loss. The author will conduct a test panel and follow people on their Grain Detox journey. There will be inspiring and informative case studies.
COPYRIGHT (#u1d076722-facb-5e35-8c17-e21d9699b2b5)
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An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk) This edition published by Thorsons 2016 FIRST EDITION © William Davis 2016 Cover photograph © Shutterstock.com Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016 A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library William Davis asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books. Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/green) Source ISBN: 9780008146771 Ebook Edition © January 2016 ISBN: 9780008146788 Version: 2015-12-08
To all the readers who have come to understand that health begins with personal effort, not with doctors, drugs, or the “health care” system.
CONTENTS
COVER (#u97b9a90c-3868-5939-bc48-5d325d345feb)
TITLE PAGE (#uf149ec89-21a0-5ee4-a2f5-ae74445e0d39)
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION (#u8fdd8803-bccd-53d0-9d60-d2a2c1603601)
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 1: You’ve Been Rolled, Tossed, and Baked
CHAPTER 2: Your 10 Days Start NOW
CHAPTER 3: Overcome the Addiction: Successfully Surviving Detoxification and Withdrawal
CHAPTER 4: A Sucker Punch to the Wheat Belly
CHAPTER 5: Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox: Eat Your Way Back to Health with This 10-Day Menu Plan
CHAPTER 6: Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox Secret Sauce: Fat Blasters, Snacks, and Healthy Waters
CHAPTER 7: The Wheat Belly Family Detox: Secret Weapons to Convert Your Family to This Lifestyle
CHAPTER 8: Beyond the Grains: Additional Important Health Situations You Should Know About
CHAPTER 9: After the Detox: Grain-Free and Reborn
APPENDIX A: WHEAT BELLY DETOX SHOPPING LIST
APPENDIX B: ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
LIST OF SEARCHABLE TERMS
RECIPE INDEX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER (#litres_trial_promo)
INTRODUCTION (#u1d076722-facb-5e35-8c17-e21d9699b2b5)
WHAT IF I could provide you with a miraculous pill that caused dramatic weight loss without limiting calories or requiring exercise? What if this pill reduced appetite, shrunk belly fat, dropped your dress size into the single digits, and accomplished all this while sparing you from a Biggest Loser sobfest? What if that same pill freed you from acid reflux, heartburn, bowel urgency, and diarrhea, but also improved mood, increased energy, deepened sleep, and reduced or eliminated joint pain? What if this pill also reversed skin conditions such as seborrhea, eczema, psoriasis, acne, and dandruff and earned you compliments on the smoothness of your skin? What if chronic sinus congestion, sinus infections, and asthma were brought to a halt and you were freed from the repeated need for antibiotics and inhalers? What if that same little pill, taken every day, reversed serious inflammatory conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and ulcerative colitis, while causing your teenage children to put down their cell phones, be respectful, bathe without asking every day, and pick up their own clothes?
Okay, forget the part about teenagers. But what if this single pill could also replace cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs, diabetes drugs, anti-inflammatory drugs, antidepressants, and acid reflux drugs while reducing cholesterol values, blood sugars, and inflammation—packing the power of dozens of prescription medications into one pill but with none of the side effects? And what if this same powerful pill not only made you feel better than you have in years but also had the potential to achieve a physical makeover that made you look 10, even 20, years younger without Botox, filler injections, or marriage to Kanye West, without unwanted health consequences but still the unmitigated envy at your 20-, 30-, or 40-year high school reunion?
And, unlike a fistful of daily pills costing hundreds of dollars every month, often adding up to more than your grocery bill, this one pill is inexpensive, even yielding cost savings—money you can put toward a new wardrobe.
Does such a miraculous pill exist that accomplishes this entire list of health and weight benefits at virtually no cost?
No, it does not. If someone told you it did, it would be a blatant instance of “too good to be true.” There is certainly no such magical pill among the thousands of prescription drugs available. Prescription weight-loss drugs that yield billions of dollars per year for the drug industry come with a long list of potential side effects, from diarrhea to damaged heart valves, not to mention the return of the weight when you stop taking the drugs. Anti-inflammatory drugs commonly cause bleeding stomach ulcers, fluid retention, hypertension, and weight gain. Cholesterol-reducing drugs increase risk for diabetes, impair memory, and can cause muscle aches and weakness, making it difficult to even get in or out of a car. Drugs for erectile dysfunction can cause blindness, and in my view an unjustifiable dent in the wallet, and bad TV commercials.
A perfect drug to achieve even one of the benefits listed—let alone the entire list—simply does not exist, despite the extraordinary sums spent to promote them. Likewise, nutritional supplements: As much as I adore nutritional supplements for their power to achieve goals in health, there is no single supplement (nor list of supplements) that can achieve this entire list of benefits. Not even close.
But it does exist, not as a pill, but as a change in lifestyle, a simple collection of health strategies that can achieve all the benefits in the above list. Too good to be true? Hardly.
By far the most powerful factor in this lifestyle that gets the entire process started is to eliminate all foods made of wheat and grains—yes, the foods you were told to eat more of, told should dominate all meals from breakfast and lunch to dinner and snacks. The foods you were told to consume many times per day every day, the widest part of the food pyramid, the largest slice of the food plate, the darling of all conventional dietary advice and agribusiness. These are the foods that most weigh you down and ravage your health, worse than the “friend” who booby-traps your every move.
The worst dietary advice ever conceived tells you to reduce fat, eat more “healthy whole grains,” and eat everything in moderation. Following this advice does not make you thinner and does not reverse health conditions, but only causes them or makes them worse. Removing wheat and grains from your life yields such outsized and unexpected health and weight benefits that it seems impossible, until you witness it day after day and experience it yourself.
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is unlike all other detox programs. It does not involve cleansing your body with various juices or a magical concoction of supplements purported to remove body “toxins,” nor is it a timetable of daily enemas that complicate your meeting schedule. It is a detoxification process from the toxic effects of wheat and grains, a detoxification in the truest sense of the term. But it is not just a matter of not eating wheat and grains or of eating “gluten-free” (as critics often perceive it). Once the toxic effects of wheat and grains have been removed, additional steps are necessary to undo the entire range of ill effects accumulated from their consumption.
This 10-day detox distills all the wisdom of the original Wheat Belly books and the lessons learned by the millions of people who have adopted this approach—incorporating the most insightful, cutting-edge, and effective strategies, and sharing them with you so that you can begin your path to weight and health success in a short 10 days. This lightning-fast approach has never been detailed in any previous Wheat Belly book.
I start with an overview of the program, give you specific how-tos on shopping and restocking your kitchen, and provide a detailed 10-Day Menu Plan. I also provide you with additional recipes to create little snack morsels that can be used to subdue cravings that crop up during your detox, as well as “Secret Weapon” recipes to help deal with family misgivings. I will also discuss the nutritional supplements we add to take your health even higher and help you feel even better—probably the best you’ve felt in a good long time. I will also share many of the comments and experiences provided by a courageous group of Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox panelists who blazed the path for you and engaged in the detox to help illustrate what you can expect. They will tell you why they engaged in this program, what they felt along the way, and the results they experienced even within these 10 days. While they reported some pretty impressive results, I believe they will tell you that the process was not all fun and games, but serious results require some serious methods!
You are going to learn that the grain detoxification process begins with enduring a genuine withdrawal syndrome similar to that experienced with stopping any narcotic. We will discuss this in some detail so that you don’t misinterpret its meaning and tell yourself that you must need wheat and grains to avoid such unpleasant effects. I will also discuss how we can smooth over (though not entirely eliminate) the withdrawal process, making it less difficult to endure. The first few days of the grain detoxification process are therefore crucial. Only after getting this process behind you will it be possible to take steps to reverse the organ damage incurred and begin the process of healing.
The science and rationale behind this powerful approach was discussed at length in the original book, Wheat Belly, and its follow-up, Wheat Belly Total Health. This book, Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox, is designed for both newcomers as well as those of you who have strayed from the Wheat Belly lifestyle but wish to make a comeback. If you are among those who strayed—and you reacquired all the health and weight problems that come with resuming wheat and grain consumption—this book will get you back on track as fast and efficiently as possible without bogging you down with another discussion of the science and rationale.
The 10-Day Menu Plan, never before used in any other Wheat Belly book, provides a detailed day-by-day road map to keep you on course—or get you back on course—with plenty of delicious, easy-to-prepare recipes. They are all consistent with the Wheat Belly lifestyle and tasty enough to be served to your family, whether or not they are engaging in this lifestyle with you.
This hard-hitting how-to has only the most essential tools required to get you started and take you from zero to 60 miles per hour and on the road back to slenderness and health with breathtaking speed. Though I’m leaving out most of the science that validates this approach, suffice it to say that wheat and grains impair health in so many ways that most people never even suspect that the high-fiber cereal in their breakfast bowl every morning created the “muffin top” they’re trying to conceal under baggy tops and multilayered one-piece bathing suits, as well as their knee pain, migraines, and asthma. Most people never suspect that the annoying, itchy, embarrassing rash they’ve endured for the past 10 years; the crippling joint pain in their hands that complicates the simplest tasks like brushing teeth or writing a check; the need to run to the toilet for an uninvited loose bowel movement; or the constant struggle with constipation, anxiety, depression, headaches, and sinus congestion can all be due to “healthy whole grain” bread, bran muffins, or licorice (yes, licorice is a grain-containing food). People are shocked to learn that fatty liver and high blood sugars, the infertility of polycystic ovarian syndrome, and the embarrassment of man breasts and erectile dysfunction are not due to moral weakness, lack of discipline, or lack of access to better health care, but are grain induced.
Grains have posed a host of health problems for as long as humans have consumed them. But it became much more obvious when agribusiness genetically altered the favorite of all conventional “healthy foods,” wheat, creating modern 18-inch-tall semi-dwarf strains for increased yield that replaced the 5-foot-tall “amber waves of grain” we all remember. Its destructive health effects were compounded by conventional dietary advice to eat more of it, while food manufacturers put wheat, corn, and other grains into virtually every processed food on store shelves, taking the “eat more healthy whole grains” message to an absurd extreme.
One of the reasons why it was so difficult for people to draw cause-effect relationships between wheat and grains and this long list of health problems is that most of the effects are delayed and only show themselves over the long term. A stack of waffles eaten on May 1 may not yield, for instance, the swollen joints and pain of rheumatoid arthritis until September 30 or later, so it’s tough to connect the dots. But the dots do indeed connect.
So the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox is not only the nutritional equivalent of a magical pill that can achieve all the above benefits, but also a rejection of the “eat more healthy whole grains” and other dietary advice we hear repeated over and over again. We are going to thumb our noses at the food pyramid and plate, turn a deaf ear to the advice of organizations like the American Diabetes and American Heart Associations, and snicker at the marketing antics of Big Food eager to sell us their cellophane-wrapped, processed foods packed with grains and sugar—all while you get closer and closer to fitting into size 8 jeans, pitching most, if not all, of your prescription drugs into the trash, and feeling the best you have in decades.
Yes, many of the prescription drugs that your doctor advised you to take are really efforts to treat the consequences of eating a diet centered on “healthy whole grains” and the grain-tainted products that fill processed supermarket foods. Being released from these effects does not involve cutting calories, reducing fat, prolonged periods of denial, restraint, or exercise. Get rid of the cause, reverse the effect: The start of this process is really that simple.
Ten days—a week and a half, a third of a month, the time it takes to order and receive a new pair of shoes online—and you can chart a new course for your life and enjoy the wonderful benefits of reprogramming your body along an entirely new design. Once you have gotten through the next 10 days and emerge thinner, faster, stronger, smarter, and healthier for less than the cost of a pair of new shoes, you will wonder what you were thinking over the preceding 30, 40, or 50 years. Your health and your appearance are likely to draw gasps from anyone who witnesses the “after” who lived with your “before.”
So let’s begin!
CHAPTER 1 (#u1d076722-facb-5e35-8c17-e21d9699b2b5)
YOU’VE BEEN ROLLED, TOSSED, AND BAKED (#u1d076722-facb-5e35-8c17-e21d9699b2b5)
“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 B
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 (#ulink_9ac529ed-453d-587a-8d4e-d7ab48f86f72) 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.
CHAPTER 2 (#ulink_5fdbb7dc-f865-5fe5-8630-df862baca2f4)
YOUR 10 DAYS START NOW (#ulink_5fdbb7dc-f865-5fe5-8630-df862baca2f4)
YOUR 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 (#litres_trial_promo).)
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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#ulink_09597ef4-562a-5dca-8ecd-e8b14e578717)”—unless you’re consuming the potatoes raw (#litres_trial_promo), 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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 (#ulink_105884db-1f5f-53c6-a70f-a9f08cbd9538)”.) 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 (#litres_trial_promo) 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.
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