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.
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.