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