Skip to main content

Wheat Free (Almost): On the Right Track

It's been three and a half weeks since I stopped eating wheat (except on my weekly free day). I haven't changed my exercise routine, just my diet. Keep in mind I that about the only wheat I ate in one day was two slices of bread, maybe a pita too on a rare day. I've substituted fruit, beans, rice and potatoes for wheat. Results:

  • My cravings for junk food have disappeared. I've stopped snacking on caramel corn, chocolate and diet soda on my non-free days. I eat two tiny pieces of chocolate per day, at most.
  • My hair stays clean longer.
  • Certain foods taste better. Coconut chai tea tastes like a candy bar in a cup (yes, I drink it straight) and even sardines taste better.
  • Since I got a scale ten days ago, I've lost two pounds. I even had to tighten the straps on my backpack today.
  • Three happy words: no menstrual pain.
  • I have more energy. If I were a horse, my name would be Secretariat.

My mother, who is diabetic and in a rehabilitation center with a broken leg, agreed two days ago to try a wheat-free diet. Results so far:

  • Her blood sugar the first day was 110--very close to ideal.
  • The second day, it was 130. That day, she ordered white toast because she didn't want the wheat toast. Oops. We had a conversation about what foods are made of wheat. "Well," she said, "most food is just trash, isn't it!"
Just to be clear, most foods that are made of flour contain wheat, even if they aren't named "Wheat Thins" or "Wheaties" or "Whole wheat bread." Even potato bread might have wheat in it. Read the label! All of the following foods are made mostly of wheat unless the list of ingredients says otherwise:

  • Breakfast cereal
  • Crackers
  • Cake
  • Pie crust
  • Rolls
  • Bagels
  • Bread
  • Buns
  • Pastries
  • Pitas
  • Pasta
  • Noodles
  • Doughnuts
  • Tortillas

But what about "healthy whole grains"? Those are what you'd give to Secretariat's friend Bessie the Cow if you wanted to fatten her up. Grains are what I eliminated from my dog Sasha's diet when he had cancer. The results left my veterinarian flabbergasted. More on that in my next post.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Black Friday Deals for Good Health

Here are some great Black Friday deals--all ONLINE--that can benefit your health. I've used most of these products and vendors and recommend them. I'm not an affiliate.  Vitamins iHerb.com is having a 25% off Black Friday and Cyber Monday site-wide sale. Vitacost.com is offering $10 off $50, stackable with a variety of other deals. Tried and True Supplements I use: Doctor's Best magnesium ( peach powder , unflavored powder , and tablets ) Country Life kelp tablets Solgar zinc, 22 mg NOW vitamin D, 5,000 IU NOW astaxanthin, 4 mg Jarrow hyaluronic acid, 120 mg Solaray vitamin C tablets, 485 mg Collagen Powder, Dips, Dressings, Mayo and Sauces Primal Kitchen products--all made without added sugar or Frankenfoods--are on sale. If you remember Mark Sisson from the Mark's Daily Apple blog, Primal Kitchen is his company. PrimalKitchen.com  (25% off this week only) iHerb.com  (25% off) Vitacost.com (20% off) I love their vanilla, peanut butter and chocolate-mint collagen pow...
Post a Comment
Read more

Carrageenan: A Sickening Thickener. Is it a Migraine Menace?

Let me tell you about my ride in an ambulance last night. I woke up at six o'clock from a nap with a mild headache. I ate dinner and took my vitamins, along with a couple of extra magnesium pills. Since magnesium helps my TMJ flare-ups, I thought it might help my headache. Then I went to see my mother. A few hours later, I had a severe headache, sinus pain and nausea. During a brief respite from the pain, I left for home, but less than a mile later, I got out of my car and threw up. A cop, Officer Fisher, pulled up behind me and asked if I was okay. He believed me when he said I hadn't been drinking, but he said I seemed lethargic and he wanted the paramedics to see me. (Later he mentioned that a man he'd recently stopped was having a stroke.) Thinking I had a migraine headache, the paramedics wanted to take me to the hospital. But since I knew that doctors don't know what causes migraine headaches, and I didn't know what effect their medicine would have on m...
15 comments
Read more

1972: Carole King, M*A*S*H and...Food for 2014?

I feel well enough to try Atkins induction again. The palpitations are gone, even without taking potassium. My energy level is back to normal--no more trucking on the treadmill early in the morning  to burn off nervous energy or emergency meat, cheese and mineral water stops after yoga. It's back to lounging around to Chopin and Debussy in the morning and stopping at the wine bar for pleasure. I'm using the original Atkins book: Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution from 1972. While looking in the book for a way to make gelatin (which is allowed on induction, but Jello(TM) and products like it have questionable ingredients), I felt the earth move under my feet : those recipes from 42 years ago look delicious and they're mostly real food. It makes sense, though: the cooks who wrote the recipes probably didn't have had a palette used to low-fat food full of added sugar or a bag of tricks to make low-fat food edible. Anyone who writes a recipe called "Cottage Cheese and...
21 comments
Read more

In Defense of Fast Food

Another modern trend - healthy food should be expensive, not nutrients-dense and preferably exotic, or you would be eating like plebs who live on a dollar McD menu. --Galina L. I don't try to jump over seven-foot hurdles, I look for one-foot hurdles I can step over. --Warren Buffett, pleb who eats at McDonald's Despite all the talk about wild-caught v. farmed, grass-fed v. CAFO and the vilification of fast food, a lot of us plebs benefit simply from carbohydrate restriction. But even though diabetes and obesity are rampant, and carb restriction alone would help millions of people, the impression is out there that you need to eat in a very specific way, far beyond just watching the carbs. Following a low-carb diet is already a high hurdle for many people. If some people want or need to raise the bar for themselves, that's fine with me, but there's no need to turn low-carb into a hurdle that a lot of people can't jump over. Organic produce and grass-fed or p...
17 comments
Read more

MORE Black Friday/Cyber Monday Deals

Maybe you've heard that Black Friday deals are nothing but a come-on this year. There may be some fake deals out there--there always have been. But I saved about $115 on supplements, groceries, vegetable seeds, and...primer.  $42.78 at iHerb.com over $10 at Vitacost $4.70 on Burpee vegetable seeds $45 on a free bottle of Ideal Immunity probiotics  $12.50 on a gallon of Kilz primer at Ace Hardware I posted a link to my previous post at the Inner Circle, and some of the members added links to even more great deals. Thank you, members natural1 and saukriver! ANOVA Sous vides are on sale for up to 60% off . I've never used a sous vide, but some people use them to make yogurt (among other things).  This one by Inkbird is 31% off on Ebay, and it's apparently quieter than the Anova. A small Kitchen Aid food chopper is on sale for $45.  A larger Cuisinart food processor with slicing and shredding blades is on sale for $100 at Macy's and Amazon --the same price I paid for...
Post a Comment
Read more