Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 delicious wheat-free recipes for effortless weight loss and optimum health. Dr Davis William

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СКАЧАТЬ actual physical addiction, not just intense desire – and withdrawal associated with it, certainly no food that you share with friends and serve your children.

      The addictive property of wheat is a very real phenomenon. Most people intuitively know that when deprived of their opiate of choice, they will begin to experience unpleasant effects within hours. They experience overpowering hunger that leaves them foggy and shaky. They feel the unpleasant low mood of lacking wheat, the desperation that causes you to seek relief, leading you to eat stale crackers from a year-old box, eat your children’s food or snap at the waitress because you’ve been waiting more than 5 minutes for your food. Like all addictions, it recedes with a sigh of relief when the next ‘hit’ of wheat arrives, at least for the next few hours.

      But what if that next hit never comes? What happens when you commit yourself to doing away with all things wheat and trigger wheat withdrawal on purpose?

      It means that many of the short-term phenomena of withdrawal – fatigue, shakiness, low mood, cravings for wheat and sugar – will be sustained and worsen over time. Wheat withdrawal closely resembles withdrawal from other opiates like morphine, Oxycontin and heroin, just less severe. The effect generally lasts from 24 hours to several days, occasionally weeks. But it does not last forever. I’ve witnessed it in men, women (who seem to get wheat withdrawal worse than men), Republicans, Democrats, young, old, even children. When it recedes, it can do so quite dramatically, with many describing a palpable surge in energy and mood and the disappearance of cravings. The drop in energy with wheat elimination is also partly due to the delayed conversion of metabolism from a constant flow of easily burned carbohydrates, like the amylopectin A of wheat, to that of fat oxidation, or the mobilization of fat stores. This conversion is necessary to lose weight, which generally proceeds rapidly and is mostly lost from the abdomen.

      Some disruption of bowel habits is also typical, with some people experiencing loose stools, others constipation. This is most likely the result of the change in bowel flora that results from depriving the bacteria in the intestinal tract of the components of wheat, amylopectin A, gliadin and lectins. (More on this later.)

      Not everyone is subject to wheat withdrawal. The wheat withdrawal syndrome affects around 35 to 40 per cent of people who stop consuming wheat products. Thankfully, while I won’t minimize its severity in some people, it is not as traumatic as withdrawal from, say, heroin. The process of wheat withdrawal, aside from the emotional turmoil and aches, is harmless. Everyone has survived.

      Despite the low mood and emotional turmoil, most people choose simply to grin and bear the process, allowing their bodies to adjust to the loss of this opiate on brain function and the slow activation of fat oxidation. Because the withdrawal process can be disruptive and unpleasant, it is worth not triggering again with a return to wheat and repeated withdrawal, thus my motto: Once wheat free, always wheat free.

      The Wonderful State of Wheatlessness

      Life without wheat is, for so many of us, so utterly different from our former wheat-consuming lives. It’s America after the Revolution, race relations after Martin Luther King, Kirstie Alley after Dancing with the Stars. The transfiguration is that dramatic.

      Wheatlessness means eating to meet your body’s needs, not submitting to the perverse appetite-stimulating effects of wheat gliadin. It means enjoying mental clarity and the capacity for sustained concentration unclouded by the opiate of wheat. It means being slender, happier, with fewer body aches, better bowel health and fewer rashes. It means ridding yourself of the grotesque metabolic distortions that develop in wheat-consuming people and instead enjoying marked improvements in metabolic health reflected by lower blood sugar, reduced measures of inflammation, reduced triglycerides and improvement of an entire host of other health parameters.

      In short, life is transformed when you say goodbye to wheat and join in the Wonderful State of Wheatlessness. Let’s consider each of these effects in greater detail.

      Weight Loss and the Magical Shrinking Wheat Belly

      What happens when you reduce calorie intake – and hunger – by 400 or more calories per day?

      You lose weight. Multiple studies have demonstrated weight loss of 1 stone 12 pounds, on average, in the first 6 months of being wheat free. And that is what I have witnessed over and over again (some people less, others more, but an average of 1 stone 12 pounds during the first 6 months) in people who say goodbye to the appetite-stimulating effects of wheat gliadin. The weight lost exceeds the quantity of wheat calories lost.

      The weight is lost primarily from the abdomen, with typical reductions of 2 to 3 inches in waist circumference within the first 4 weeks of wheatlessness. Although the reasons for such a selective, specific process around the waist are not entirely clear, it is at least partly due to the absence of amylopectin A that had previously been responsible for extravagantly high jumps in blood sugar and insulin that stimulate visceral fat accumulation. I also have to believe that receding inflammatory responses – removal of wheat germ agglutinin, restoration of leptin sensitivity – in visceral fat cells have to play a central role in the exaggerated loss of waist size.

      So, no, you are not overweight because you failed to eat a sufficient quantity of ‘healthy whole grains’. Chances are that you are also not overweight because you are lazy and gluttonous, as many official sources claim. If I were to peek in your family room some day, I doubt I’d catch you lying flat on your back watching Survivor re-runs, snacking on a bag of crisps and drinking Coca-Cola by the litre bottle. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if instead I caught you walking on your treadmill or riding your stationary bike, frantically trying to work off the excess pounds.

      You and many others are overweight because you were given bad advice – advice that actually causes weight gain. Reject that advice, remove the appetite-stimulating effects of wheat gliadin and amylopectin A, and weight loss can finally proceed without effort.

      But, as powerful as wheat elimination is, I can’t say that you will lose all the weight you want if you eliminate all wheat but then eat all the sweets and drink all the fizzy drinks you want, or consume ‘healthier’ equivalents of these insulin-provoking foods. Add to this the fact that the majority of adults are now diabetic or pre-diabetic (you may not even know it), meaning they have abnormal resistance to insulin, have disordered leptin signalling and are unable to properly metabolize carbohydrates. If weight loss and reversal of diabetes/pre-diabetes are on your agenda, then restricting total carbohydrates will accelerate your success (see ‘Can I Eat Quinoa? Carb-counting Basics’).

      Diabetes: Kiss ‘Healthy Whole Grainitis’ Goodbye

      Type 2 diabetes and ‘healthy whole grains’ are so tightly tied to one another that they are nearly one and the same: Eat ‘healthy whole grains’, become diabetic or pre-diabetic. Reject ‘healthy whole grains’, and diabetes and pre-diabetes improve or disappear in the majority. But that, of course, is not what you are told by ‘official’ sources of nutritional advice.

      Type 1 diabetes, incidentally, is also increasingly looking like a disease of wheat consumption. This is not to say that all type 1 diabetes is caused by wheat exposure, but an important minority of children who develop this lifelong condition do so because of wheat exposure if genetically susceptible. Note that children with type 1 diabetes have ten- to twentyfold greater likelihood of developing coeliac disease, and children with coeliac disease have tenfold greater likelihood of type 1 diabetes.

      You’ve likely heard the argument that if whole grains replace white flour products, the likelihood of diabetes is reduced. That is indeed (a little bit) true. The next step – elimination of all things wheat, especially modern wheat – is not talked about. But that is when the real magic happens and appetite СКАЧАТЬ