You will learn also that not only will you not become deficient in nutrients, but that nutrient levels increase with wheat and grain elimination—explaining why, for example, many people experience reversal of iron deficiency anemia and vitamin B12 deficiency with this approach. I also take the mystery out of fiber and show why the conventional notion of a high-fiber diet is largely a fiction of marketing, little different than sprinkling sawdust on your food. There are better ways to achieve bowel and overall health than gnawing on twigs.
The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox therefore requires not only changes in lifestyle but also changes in your thinking about food and nutrition. Replacing your size 24, meant-to-conceal dress with a sleek, size 8 dress designed to show off your slender new body will go hand in hand with changes in the way you view food, replacing the health- and weight-destroying fictions with advice that actually works.
Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox Put to the Test
In March 2015, my American publisher and I invited a group of volunteers to Rodale’s Manhattan offices to undergo an initiation to the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox program. I had posted a request for volunteers on the Wheat Belly Facebook page and received an outpouring of offers to participate. All panelists shared an interest in getting started on the detox program and obtaining results as quickly as possible. While most expressed a desire to lose weight, all hoped to regain control over various health conditions.
The panelists (all female) in our group came from different parts of the country. To get them started on this process, we helped them understand a bit about why this lifestyle works so wonderfully well, but just as with the rapid-fire approach used in this book, we focused mostly on the how: how to identify grain-containing foods, how to go about eliminating them from their lives, and how to successfully navigate the first 10 days of the detox, including how to deal with the uncomfortable and disruptive process of withdrawal to begin a lifetime of health recovery.
We provided them with the very same recipes that you now have in this book, asking them for feedback, which was then factored in, and we improved on some of the recipes. We weighed them and measured their waists, arms, and hips on the first and last days of the detox. We also asked them for their thoughts on how they dealt with this process; the symptoms, aches, and pains they endured; and any health improvements they experienced. They shared their successes, their failures, the ups and downs of the process, the struggles with converting their kitchens to this new wheat- and grain-free lifestyle, and the sometimes reluctant or skeptical looks they got from family members.
I will be sharing many of the panelists’ experiences throughout this book. They all underwent the very same detox program that you are about to begin. All survived and lived to tell their stories.
GRAINS: A HEALTH AND WEIGHT CATASTROPHE
I promised to spare you the science and rationale behind the Wheat Belly concepts. But allow me to sprinkle just a bit of understanding over why this approach works so wonderfully well—so much so that I am sometimes accused of concocting success stories. But I can assure you that no fabrication is necessary because (1) I really don’t have that much imagination, and (2) such jaw-dropping successes occur every day, and we can readily add you to the list. I believe that just a little explanation is in order to assure you that this approach is genuine, based on scientific interpretation, not only anecdote or speculation, and that real results can be anticipated.
I call wheat and grain elimination a “2 + 2 = 11” effect: The total in this lifestyle is greater than the sum of its parts. Some people initially view the Wheat Belly approach as nothing more than cutting calories or cutting carbohydrates. But this is a misconception due to not recognizing all the reasons why wheat and grains disrupt health and why removing them yields larger-than-expected benefits. Removing all the factors in grains responsible for inflammation, for instance, results in a wide array of weight and health benefits.
So let’s do a quick rundown of what is contained in the wheat and grains that make a bran muffin, poppy seed bagel, or tortilla poisonous components of diet. I’ll keep it brief, and then we’ll pick up again with workable strategies to get you going.
GRAINS YIELD OPIATES. Not figuratively, but quite literally, these opiates are not too different from morphine or heroin. Chances are you are not a pill-popping, tourniquet-on-the-bicep, IV drug–injecting, fringe member of society slinking in corners and dealing in the dark, but rather a nice, law-abiding member of society. The gliadin protein of wheat and closely related proteins of other grains (secalin in rye, hordein in barley, zein in corn) yield, upon partial digestion, small peptides that bind to the opiate receptors of the human brain. In people with conditions such as bipolar illness and schizophrenia, they yield effects such as impulsive behavior and paranoia; in children with attention deficit disorder and autism, they cause behavioral outbursts and shorten attention spans; in people prone to bulimia and binge eating disorder, they cause 24-hour-a-day food obsessions. In those prone to depression, they cause dark moods and even suicidal thoughts.
In people without these conditions, grains “only” trigger appetite in an irresistible, never-satisfied way. (Several of our detox panelists shared their experiences, by the way, of being relieved of this appetite effect that had previously ruled their lives.) Most of us take in 400 or more calories per day from this appetite-increasing effect, sometimes as much as 1,000 or more calories per day. Some people even develop incapacitating and addictive relationships with food due to exposure to gliadin-derived opiates, witnessed in their most extreme form as the food obsessions in people prone to eating disorders.
Yes, wheat and grains, cleverly disguised as a multigrain loaf of bread to make sandwiches or a hot, steamy plate of macaroni and cheese for the kids, are mind-active drugs. Your kids are not oxycodone addicts, but they eat wheat and grains; not all that different.
Stopping wheat and grains thereby yields an opiate-withdrawal syndrome (discussed in greater detail in Chapter 2), as well as a marked reduction in appetite. While you’re in the Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox, I do not encourage calorie counting or cutting calories; however, if you were to tabulate calories, you would witness a substantial reduction in intake. (The reduction in calorie intake, by the way, is the basis for the Wheat Belly lifestyle usually not costing more money, despite our choice of higher-quality foods. If a family of five, for instance, experiences a reduction in calorie intake of 400 calories per person per day, that yields 2,000 fewer calories to purchase and prepare every day, 60,000 fewer calories per month. It’s almost like not having to feed one person.) We will discuss why, during your first week when the detoxification/withdrawal process gets under way, you may not be the nicest person to be around (something our volunteers experienced firsthand and will share). We will also discuss how you can soften the blow of this effect and perhaps spare yourself from having to make embarrassed apologies to everyone around you at the end.
GRAINS INITIATE INFLAMMATION AND AUTOIMMUNITY. Many people with autoimmune conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, seborrhea, psoriasis, or one of the other 200 such diseases, regard themselves as unlucky, having been dealt a faulty genetic hand that increases susceptibility to such serious conditions. There is some truth to that belief, but it is important to recognize that we now know that the gliadin protein of wheat, the secalin of rye, the hordein of barley, and the zein protein of corn initiate a series of steps in the human intestine that increase permeability, what some call gut leak. This allows the entry of foreign substances into the bloodstream, such as lipopolysaccharide from bacteria (a highly inflammatory molecule) and the gliadin protein molecule itself.
Gliadin is peculiar in that its structure resembles several human proteins, such as the transglutaminase enzyme in muscle or the synapsin protein in the brain, a peculiarity that allows it to do double duty: initiate intestinal leak, then provoke inflammation. Because of such similarities to human proteins, gliadin’s presence in the human body causes a misdirected immune response against, for example, the cells