Body experiment: Total wheat elimination
So I haven't been using this journal much at all, despite the best of intentions to get back to it. I've been using it mostly for private list-making and note-keeping, but even that has been pretty lackluster. But I've made some major changes to my diet that I feel I oughtta share. Not really sure why. Just in case someone else happens to find it interesting or helpful.
It's behind a cut since I know these things can be triggering (or just plain boring) for many people.
These days I have quite a few friends with food allergies, and not the usual suspects, either. Two are allergic to gluten, one to soy, one to cinnamon, another to citric acid, of all things (And one of them is allergic to both sulfates and sulfites, which effectively means he's allergic to the local source of municipal water). My friend with the citric acid allergy has a niece who turned out to be allergic to gluten, soy, and dairy. All of them have to read food labels religiously.
So I hear a great deal about these people's constant struggles with food. Two weeks ago, I brought invited a new friend to my knitting group because he was recently diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia and diet change is one of the issues he's struggling with. The two women who are gluten intolerant are both regulars at the group, and they ended up talking extensively about their own diets, and brought up the new book Wheat Belly.
Now, I'd always heard quite a bit about the alleged miraculous changes that happen to your body when you eliminate wheat from your diet, but I never felt inclined to try it, not being allergic to either wheat or gluten. But one thing that really got my attention during this discussion was the thing about people who eat healthy (or healthier) diets and put in at least moderate levels of exercise, who still can't ditch the weight, only to find that they experience a complete turnaround when they go off all wheat products.
That fits me, frankly. I exercise in some form at least five days a week. Most days, I take my dog out for at least an hour, him running while I walk along behind, my pace usually averaging at about 3.0 miles-per-hour, with periodic bouts of higher intensity walking and occasional brief bursts of jogging. In addition to this, several days a week I go to the YMCA and do both a half-hour on the treadmill and a full-body muscle training workout. On days when my time and the weather allows, I take Jasper (the dog, obviously) out again, though more for his benefit than mine. I'm conscious enough of the dangers of overdoing it, so I don't, but I do get a LOT of physical activity in every day.
I'm also pretty careful with my diet most days. I eat as much fresh, whole foods as I can afford, which is not easy in the slightest. I keep my larder stocked with things like eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, with apples and bananas (when I can afford them!) to supplement or change it up. I keep my freezer stocked with chicken breasts. When budget allows I throw in fish filets or a cut of beef. I buy several cans of tuna when its on sale, and fresh salad greens, again when money permits. Yogurt and cheese are my primary ways of adding flavor. Trying to make all this shit stretch as far as possible does a helluva job of enforcing portion control...I can turn a single chicken breast into three meals, four if I have to. When I do eat processed foods, I buy the higher-end stuff, such as you'd find in the organic and/or gluten-free section, and I read labels meticulously to watch for things like HFCS, MSG, aspartame, etc, and I've gotten good at turning a box or pouch of something that lists being enough for eight servings, into twelve. I drink a boatload of water, and follow the rules about controlling hunger by eating a lot of fiber and protein, and eating small, frequent meals throughout the day to avoid the trap of letting my body fall into starvation mode and clinging to every calorie. One of the more aggravating aspects of the whole routine is having to just deal with being hungry between meals, even though I eat frequently, I'm constantly so hungry that a lot of my mental energy is focused on waiting for my next mealtime. In short, I'd become a master at reducing calories without making my body think it was in the midst of a famine, and I kept my exercise levels quite high. But through it all, the goddamn weight hasn't budged more than between five-ten pounds, that constantly come and go, meaningless given that I'm over a hundred pounds obese.
So, two Tuesdays back, I was intrigued by what I was hearing about going off wheat, so I bought Wheat Belly that night and tore into it right away. The following morning, I resolved to give it a try and went through my fridge and pantry, taking out anything and everything that either contained wheat or a common gluten-free wheat alternative. (Dr. Davis of the book recommends avoiding most gluten-free flours because of their tendency to spike blood sugar: the book seems to be more concerned with total, or near-total, elimination of grains, as opposed to just wheat). I also decided to take it a step higher and avoid any foods listed as being produced in a facility that processes wheat products on the same equipment. My immediate concern was that this was going to require an even greater investment of time, money, and effort for buying and preparing fresh, whole food.
Now we get to the results having spend every day since (let me check the calendar...)Wednesday, the 27th of February, with zero wheat in my system:
Friday morning, two full days in to being wheat-free, I woke up feeling more rested than I have in quite a while. I didn't have to fight to get out of bed, I didn't wander about in a brain fog for an hour waiting for my usual morning grogginess to wear off. I HAVEN'T NEEDED OR WANTED CAFFEINE AS A JUMPSTART.
Relatedly, the same time I took myself off wheat, I decided it was a good time to eliminate soda. I've done this before, though it never lasted more than a few weeks, so I'm accustomed to the migraines associated with soda withdrawal that tend to last for about three days in my case. But this time? I didn't experience any discomfort at all, much less a migraine. I do NOT know if there's a correlation between this and going wheat-free, but this is the first time I've ever kicked the soda habit without attendant withdrawal effects, and I have no other explanation available.
I spent a fair bit of money I couldn't really afford in stocking my freezer with frozen vegetables (because right now there's no bloody way I could do this with fresh!) and several cartons of eggs, some acceptable wheat-free flours, and some other odds-n-ends. But the tradeoff has been that I haven't been eating nearly as much. My portion control is still in place, but just two or three days in to this experiment, I noticed that after I eat breakfast, I DON'T find myself still feeling hungry or watching the clock for the next mealtime. I've been generally eating about three times a day, with maybe one snack that may come before lunch or supper, depending entirely on my mood.
Not only do I sleep better at night and not have to struggle to get started in the morning, I haven't experienced that irritating mid-day slump. I was good at winning the battle, but my daily routine of getting out, either with the dog or getting myself to the Y, was usually met with fatigue-induced reluctance. This is also no longer an issue. But it isn't that I'm suddenly bursting with heretofore unknown levels of energy, just that I don't have any daytime fatigue. This is a HUGE bonus for me, because it's always been frustrating, and depression-fueling, for me to make plans for myself that constantly get interrupted by motivation-sapping lethargy. I can actually get shit done now!
Something that I hadn't paid attention to until the other day, is my constant knee pain. I have an actual injury, so I know that eating wheat didn't CAUSE the pain. But the pain has been more or less a constant reality for the past several years: some days are worse than others, and most days its easily tolerated, but its always present. Except, not for the past week. Got that? I HAVEN'T HAD ANY KNEE PAIN FOR A WEEK YO.
One thing about this diet is that being not just wheat free, but grain-free/gluten-free, forces a person to buy and prepare fresh, whole foods, and to meticulously read labels to find the few processed food that is still an option. So a wheat-free person isn't just not eating wheat, but suddenly eating better proteins, fewer simple carbs, and getting a better intake of vitamins and nutrients (assuming they do the wheat-free thing properly, of course). So it's possible that there's more to the story than just that wheat elimination is a miraculous cure-all. But I've done the more fresh, whole food/less processed junk enough, without these noticeable changes in my energy, sleep, and joint pain, that I can't ignore it. Nor can I ignore the dozens upon dozens of personal stories I've read from people who eliminated wheat from their diet and found that an entire host of health problems, from asthma to arthritis pain to acid reflux, vanished practically overnight.
One-and-a-half weeks into this, I'm sold. I've read quite a few accounts of people who, testing NEGATIVE for wheat or gluten allergies, performed self-experiments: after being wheat-free for several weeks or months and noticing the total evaporation of a myriad of health problems, they decided to eat some wheat, usually a sandwich or bagel or some other wheat-based dessert. All of them reported the sudden onset of intense gastrointestinal distress, migraine, joint pain, individually or in combination, that took a day or more to clear up. I notice that a lot of these people note that they lived with chronic health problems that they attributed to age or some other cause than wheat, but that were manageable enough with drugs, or mild enough to simply be lived with. This strongly suggests to me that even for people who don't have a full-blown allergy to wheat, it is simply not a food that the human body is evolved to eat, so the body may make certain adjustments to it, but not completely. Rather like my own experience with McDonald's style fast food: for the first twenty-five years of my life, with my parents I ate fast food several nights a week. I usually had a stomachache afterward, but I always figured it was the result of eating too much, or just the result of eating beef in general. Then I went off the fast food for a month, and then suddenly reintroduced it back into my diet, only to be violently sick for two days. Wheat seems to have the same effect: people who are used to it have bodies adjusted enough to manage it, but just enough that it's easy to dismiss the problems that do occur as just a fact of life, not a case of dietary poisoning.
I was half afraid to do this, because a lot of people report intense withdrawal effects--the book says that about thirty percent of people will have an adverse reaction. I had no such thing, which I'm extremely grateful for, because many people report that withdrawal lasts for weeks, with no apparent means of relief that I've been able to find with Google. What I certainly was not expecting was such a rapid turnaround in how I generally feel. People do report that they experience positive results from going wheat free in as short a time period as two days to two weeks. I was hoping to notice something after a week--I never expected that there'd be a tangible change within two days. I have NOT yet noticed any weight loss, but that's due simply to the fact that I haven't weighed myself and I have no intention of doing so until I've been wheat free for a solid 30 days. I haven't yet noticed anything tangible, such as looser clothing, but I'm not concerned about this just yet. Most people do actually report losing weight within the first week, anywhere from three to about ten pounds. Some report frustration in not losing weight even after being wheat free for weeks or months, but it is FAR more common that people report that they start losing weight immediately. I'm eager to get this hundred pounds of obesity off my ass, but I'm refusing to let myself obsess over that, so I'm going to commit myself to focusing on the renewed energy and lack of pain, and let the weight loss come later. I've been able to successfully lose weight before, but only when I went on one of those super restrictive diets, so I expect that the recent problem I've had with the weight not coming down was very much due to how much wheat I was eating--based on what I now know, I fully expect that without it, I'll actually see some results from my high levels of activity, etc.
So yes, I'm sold, I'm so totally sold, without any pressing need to eat a slice of wheat bread in a month to see if I have a violent reaction. I will never eat wheat again.
It's behind a cut since I know these things can be triggering (or just plain boring) for many people.
These days I have quite a few friends with food allergies, and not the usual suspects, either. Two are allergic to gluten, one to soy, one to cinnamon, another to citric acid, of all things (And one of them is allergic to both sulfates and sulfites, which effectively means he's allergic to the local source of municipal water). My friend with the citric acid allergy has a niece who turned out to be allergic to gluten, soy, and dairy. All of them have to read food labels religiously.
So I hear a great deal about these people's constant struggles with food. Two weeks ago, I brought invited a new friend to my knitting group because he was recently diagnosed with hairy cell leukemia and diet change is one of the issues he's struggling with. The two women who are gluten intolerant are both regulars at the group, and they ended up talking extensively about their own diets, and brought up the new book Wheat Belly.
Now, I'd always heard quite a bit about the alleged miraculous changes that happen to your body when you eliminate wheat from your diet, but I never felt inclined to try it, not being allergic to either wheat or gluten. But one thing that really got my attention during this discussion was the thing about people who eat healthy (or healthier) diets and put in at least moderate levels of exercise, who still can't ditch the weight, only to find that they experience a complete turnaround when they go off all wheat products.
That fits me, frankly. I exercise in some form at least five days a week. Most days, I take my dog out for at least an hour, him running while I walk along behind, my pace usually averaging at about 3.0 miles-per-hour, with periodic bouts of higher intensity walking and occasional brief bursts of jogging. In addition to this, several days a week I go to the YMCA and do both a half-hour on the treadmill and a full-body muscle training workout. On days when my time and the weather allows, I take Jasper (the dog, obviously) out again, though more for his benefit than mine. I'm conscious enough of the dangers of overdoing it, so I don't, but I do get a LOT of physical activity in every day.
I'm also pretty careful with my diet most days. I eat as much fresh, whole foods as I can afford, which is not easy in the slightest. I keep my larder stocked with things like eggs and oatmeal for breakfast, with apples and bananas (when I can afford them!) to supplement or change it up. I keep my freezer stocked with chicken breasts. When budget allows I throw in fish filets or a cut of beef. I buy several cans of tuna when its on sale, and fresh salad greens, again when money permits. Yogurt and cheese are my primary ways of adding flavor. Trying to make all this shit stretch as far as possible does a helluva job of enforcing portion control...I can turn a single chicken breast into three meals, four if I have to. When I do eat processed foods, I buy the higher-end stuff, such as you'd find in the organic and/or gluten-free section, and I read labels meticulously to watch for things like HFCS, MSG, aspartame, etc, and I've gotten good at turning a box or pouch of something that lists being enough for eight servings, into twelve. I drink a boatload of water, and follow the rules about controlling hunger by eating a lot of fiber and protein, and eating small, frequent meals throughout the day to avoid the trap of letting my body fall into starvation mode and clinging to every calorie. One of the more aggravating aspects of the whole routine is having to just deal with being hungry between meals, even though I eat frequently, I'm constantly so hungry that a lot of my mental energy is focused on waiting for my next mealtime. In short, I'd become a master at reducing calories without making my body think it was in the midst of a famine, and I kept my exercise levels quite high. But through it all, the goddamn weight hasn't budged more than between five-ten pounds, that constantly come and go, meaningless given that I'm over a hundred pounds obese.
So, two Tuesdays back, I was intrigued by what I was hearing about going off wheat, so I bought Wheat Belly that night and tore into it right away. The following morning, I resolved to give it a try and went through my fridge and pantry, taking out anything and everything that either contained wheat or a common gluten-free wheat alternative. (Dr. Davis of the book recommends avoiding most gluten-free flours because of their tendency to spike blood sugar: the book seems to be more concerned with total, or near-total, elimination of grains, as opposed to just wheat). I also decided to take it a step higher and avoid any foods listed as being produced in a facility that processes wheat products on the same equipment. My immediate concern was that this was going to require an even greater investment of time, money, and effort for buying and preparing fresh, whole food.
Now we get to the results having spend every day since (let me check the calendar...)Wednesday, the 27th of February, with zero wheat in my system:
Friday morning, two full days in to being wheat-free, I woke up feeling more rested than I have in quite a while. I didn't have to fight to get out of bed, I didn't wander about in a brain fog for an hour waiting for my usual morning grogginess to wear off. I HAVEN'T NEEDED OR WANTED CAFFEINE AS A JUMPSTART.
Relatedly, the same time I took myself off wheat, I decided it was a good time to eliminate soda. I've done this before, though it never lasted more than a few weeks, so I'm accustomed to the migraines associated with soda withdrawal that tend to last for about three days in my case. But this time? I didn't experience any discomfort at all, much less a migraine. I do NOT know if there's a correlation between this and going wheat-free, but this is the first time I've ever kicked the soda habit without attendant withdrawal effects, and I have no other explanation available.
I spent a fair bit of money I couldn't really afford in stocking my freezer with frozen vegetables (because right now there's no bloody way I could do this with fresh!) and several cartons of eggs, some acceptable wheat-free flours, and some other odds-n-ends. But the tradeoff has been that I haven't been eating nearly as much. My portion control is still in place, but just two or three days in to this experiment, I noticed that after I eat breakfast, I DON'T find myself still feeling hungry or watching the clock for the next mealtime. I've been generally eating about three times a day, with maybe one snack that may come before lunch or supper, depending entirely on my mood.
Not only do I sleep better at night and not have to struggle to get started in the morning, I haven't experienced that irritating mid-day slump. I was good at winning the battle, but my daily routine of getting out, either with the dog or getting myself to the Y, was usually met with fatigue-induced reluctance. This is also no longer an issue. But it isn't that I'm suddenly bursting with heretofore unknown levels of energy, just that I don't have any daytime fatigue. This is a HUGE bonus for me, because it's always been frustrating, and depression-fueling, for me to make plans for myself that constantly get interrupted by motivation-sapping lethargy. I can actually get shit done now!
Something that I hadn't paid attention to until the other day, is my constant knee pain. I have an actual injury, so I know that eating wheat didn't CAUSE the pain. But the pain has been more or less a constant reality for the past several years: some days are worse than others, and most days its easily tolerated, but its always present. Except, not for the past week. Got that? I HAVEN'T HAD ANY KNEE PAIN FOR A WEEK YO.
One thing about this diet is that being not just wheat free, but grain-free/gluten-free, forces a person to buy and prepare fresh, whole foods, and to meticulously read labels to find the few processed food that is still an option. So a wheat-free person isn't just not eating wheat, but suddenly eating better proteins, fewer simple carbs, and getting a better intake of vitamins and nutrients (assuming they do the wheat-free thing properly, of course). So it's possible that there's more to the story than just that wheat elimination is a miraculous cure-all. But I've done the more fresh, whole food/less processed junk enough, without these noticeable changes in my energy, sleep, and joint pain, that I can't ignore it. Nor can I ignore the dozens upon dozens of personal stories I've read from people who eliminated wheat from their diet and found that an entire host of health problems, from asthma to arthritis pain to acid reflux, vanished practically overnight.
One-and-a-half weeks into this, I'm sold. I've read quite a few accounts of people who, testing NEGATIVE for wheat or gluten allergies, performed self-experiments: after being wheat-free for several weeks or months and noticing the total evaporation of a myriad of health problems, they decided to eat some wheat, usually a sandwich or bagel or some other wheat-based dessert. All of them reported the sudden onset of intense gastrointestinal distress, migraine, joint pain, individually or in combination, that took a day or more to clear up. I notice that a lot of these people note that they lived with chronic health problems that they attributed to age or some other cause than wheat, but that were manageable enough with drugs, or mild enough to simply be lived with. This strongly suggests to me that even for people who don't have a full-blown allergy to wheat, it is simply not a food that the human body is evolved to eat, so the body may make certain adjustments to it, but not completely. Rather like my own experience with McDonald's style fast food: for the first twenty-five years of my life, with my parents I ate fast food several nights a week. I usually had a stomachache afterward, but I always figured it was the result of eating too much, or just the result of eating beef in general. Then I went off the fast food for a month, and then suddenly reintroduced it back into my diet, only to be violently sick for two days. Wheat seems to have the same effect: people who are used to it have bodies adjusted enough to manage it, but just enough that it's easy to dismiss the problems that do occur as just a fact of life, not a case of dietary poisoning.
I was half afraid to do this, because a lot of people report intense withdrawal effects--the book says that about thirty percent of people will have an adverse reaction. I had no such thing, which I'm extremely grateful for, because many people report that withdrawal lasts for weeks, with no apparent means of relief that I've been able to find with Google. What I certainly was not expecting was such a rapid turnaround in how I generally feel. People do report that they experience positive results from going wheat free in as short a time period as two days to two weeks. I was hoping to notice something after a week--I never expected that there'd be a tangible change within two days. I have NOT yet noticed any weight loss, but that's due simply to the fact that I haven't weighed myself and I have no intention of doing so until I've been wheat free for a solid 30 days. I haven't yet noticed anything tangible, such as looser clothing, but I'm not concerned about this just yet. Most people do actually report losing weight within the first week, anywhere from three to about ten pounds. Some report frustration in not losing weight even after being wheat free for weeks or months, but it is FAR more common that people report that they start losing weight immediately. I'm eager to get this hundred pounds of obesity off my ass, but I'm refusing to let myself obsess over that, so I'm going to commit myself to focusing on the renewed energy and lack of pain, and let the weight loss come later. I've been able to successfully lose weight before, but only when I went on one of those super restrictive diets, so I expect that the recent problem I've had with the weight not coming down was very much due to how much wheat I was eating--based on what I now know, I fully expect that without it, I'll actually see some results from my high levels of activity, etc.
So yes, I'm sold, I'm so totally sold, without any pressing need to eat a slice of wheat bread in a month to see if I have a violent reaction. I will never eat wheat again.