The Hormone Reset Diet (25 page)

Unfortunately, gluten is ubiquitous. Look no further than your local café counter, which glistens with moist pastries, mouthwatering muffins, and bready breakfast sandwiches. These treats may seem like a reward for your hard work, but for some of us they are really the booby prize. You’ll find gluten in many prepared products too. It isn’t found only in processed foods but in cosmetics and household products as well.
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Gluten has become the dietary villain of the decade, and the backlash has led to an astounding growth of gluten-free breads, muffins, and desserts—all of which I consider to be gluten-free junk food. In fact, the market for gluten-free foods is a $6.3 billion industry and growing, up 33 percent since 2009.
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Companies are touting their gluten-free products, even when they never had any gluten to begin with! The practice has become so widespread that Trader Joe’s poked fun at it by offering gluten-free greeting cards.

The experts agree that there is a spectrum of problems with gluten ranging from no symptoms at one extreme to full-blown celiac disease at the other extreme. (Celiac disease is an autoimmune reaction to gluten in genetically predisposed individuals whereby ingestion of gluten damages the small intestine.) Many of us may exist in the gray area in between, with mild to moderate and sometimes vague symptoms, including increased appetite and the dreaded “wheat belly,” the increase in fat around your belly (see Wheat Belly: A Balanced Look, page 160).

What I’ve observed over the past two decades is that most people seem to be sensitive to gluten; it’s simply a matter of when this sensitivity rears its ugly head. It’s time to free yourself from the tyranny of gluten. I highly encourage you to choose health by eliminating gluten from your diet. If you have a hunch that you might be sensitive to gluten and you’ve been dismissed or disregarded by your doctor, you aren’t alone. Standard laboratory testing often misses this all too common diagnosis, and it takes an average of ten years to get an accurate one.

Every person fits into one of four categories:

1. You have celiac disease and gluten causes an immune overreaction. You get bloated and gassy. Or maybe you get constipated, develop a rash, or feel anxious, depressed, or just plain tired. Approximately 1 percent of the U.S. population has celiac disease, but many are undiagnosed and many experts believe prevalence is higher.

2. You have nonceliac gluten sensitivity, which is more of an intolerance but shares several properties with celiac disease. Some research says up to 7 percent of the population suffers from it. You eat gluten and feel a reaction in your gut that may range from gurgling to diarrhea or swelling in the intestines. There are symptoms outside the gut too: perhaps you feel asocial and ineffective.
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3. You don’t have either celiac disease or nonceliac gluten sensitivity, but you are one of the growing number of people who benefit from a gluten-free diet,
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probably because you lack the enzymes needed to process wheat properly, as many people do. Your symptoms are mild, but when you eat gluten, you have bloating and weight gain, gas, or other signs of indigestion.

4. You have no reaction to gluten and do fine eating it (as far as you know; sometimes the reaction can be silent). I haven’t met many of these people in the United States, but I met a few in France, where the wheat is more like what my great-grandmother ate.

Which one is your response to gluten? Based on my clinical experience, I imagine you fit into one of the first three categories and need to go gluten free to see what’s true for you.

Gluten problems used to be thought of as an allergy, but now we know that there’s an evolving and broad array of negative immune reactions to the toxic family of gluten proteins found in wheat, rye, barley, and their derivatives.

Because so many people fit along the broad spectrum of adverse reactions to gluten, the World Health Organization has recommended screening the general population. I interpret their advice to mean that you should remove all gluten and notice the benefits, and then challenge yourself by adding gluten back into your food plan, in a process called elimination/provocation. If you’re struggling with weight and bloating, the chances are you’ll get lean and feel more energetic during the elimination phase.

Lose the wheat, lose the weight.

–W
ILLIAM
D
AVIS
, M.D.,
W
HEAT
B
ELLY

“Wheat belly,” a term popularized by Dr. William Davis in his book by the same title, describes the increase in visceral fat that gets
plunked down in your midsection and how it’s linked to gluten consumption.

My opinion is that this theory has some validity. While we don’t yet have solid evidence showing that everyone loses weight when they remove gluten, I believe that many people develop leaky gut, food intolerances, and fat-loss resistance from eating gluten. Gluten is like a “gateway drug” to obesity. Many of my patients struggling with weight try hard to eat healthy food, such as wheat bread. But they don’t realize that the gluten they are eating is actually punching holes in their gut. Further, many women, particularly after age forty, suffer from an intolerance to all grains, and gluten is particularly bad news when it comes to getting lean.

Yet Dr. William Davis’s book, which proposes eliminating wheat/gluten from your diet, is not without controversy. Some people point to the fact that the fiber found in wheat is an essential source of nutrients and promotes growth of beneficial bacteria.
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Others say that people who eliminate wheat and gluten lose weight simply because they are eating less.
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The jury is still out. I like to go by your symptoms. If you stop eating gluten for seventy-two hours and you feel better, this is wonderful information to have.

It seems so harmless. Mornings are hectic, and it’s simple to break out a box of cereal, feed it to the kids, and run out the door. But what is the cost of this convenience? Although it’s an integral part of American culture, cereal isn’t the friend that it might seem; in fact, cereal has been linked to nutrient deficiencies, broken digestion, and autoimmune diseases, and don’t forget they contain opioids, which make them addictive.
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Cereal doesn’t have the protein you need and is often packed with sugar. It makes you more acidic and stressed. I’m not alone in my assessment of this favorite morning meal: a recent study proposed that cereal could be an environmental factor contributing to “diseases of affluence,” like diabetes and obesity, because the human leptin system is not adapted to a cereal-based diet.
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For breakfast, go for something that will help you feel energized throughout the day. Scrambled eggs with spinach, a smoothie with protein powder and greens, or non-GM tofu scrambled with veggies. If you must have sometime akin to cereal, try the recipe for porridge found on page 269.

When it comes to grains, they may increase your risk of thyroid problems such as autoimmunity, according to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, chiropractor and author of
Why Do I Still Have Thyroid Symptoms?
While it’s well established that gluten sensitivity and celiac disease are more common in people with Hashimoto’s disease, Dr.
Kharrazian ups the ante by suggesting that folks with slow thyroid function should go gluten free. The problem may be a case of mistaken identity: the protein in gluten resembles that of thyroid tissue. When gluten crosses the gut barrier, the immune system prepares for attack, and thyroid tissue gets caught in the battle. In one careful study of four hundred patients with autoimmune thyroiditis, 6 percent of them had antibodies in their blood to gliadin, the protein found in gluten.
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What’s the safest bet? Stay off the grains and give your thyroid a break.

If you’ve had symptoms for a while, or even if your grain intolerance has long gone undiagnosed, this reset could be just what you need to jump-start a whole new way of eating that supports, instead of breaks down, your belly’s health. You might feel so good that you stay off grains after the twenty-one days of the Hormone Reset, depending on how much damage grains have inflicted upon you.

Dietary stress from certain foods, such as grains, is a major cause of weight-loss resistance, wreaking internal havoc on your best efforts at long-term fat loss. Removing grains for seventy-two hours helps shed the pounds and provide dramatic improvements in gut, pancreas, brain, and thyroid function, and it resets your insulin levels. This powerful three-day reset could be exactly what you need to give your organs a clean bill of health.

GRAIN FREE RULES: DO THESE EACH DAY

Stock your pantry with enough foods that don’t contain grain to sustain you for at least three days. Fortunately, it’s much easier
than it used to be ten or twenty years ago to find the grain-free foods that you need.

Here’s what to do when going grain free, and remember to continue the rules you’ve already implemented from the previous resets:

1.
Avoid
all
grains, including flour
(even gluten-free). Stay away from the three Ps that cause Americans the most inflammation: pizza, pasta, and pastries. What specifically to avoid:

• Bread, cereal, or other food made with any grains (even gluten-free).

• Wheat, rye, barley, oat, corn, durum, millet, rice, spelt, or any type of grain flours or ingredients and byproducts made from those grains.

• Processed foods containing grains, wheat, gluten derivatives, or thickeners. These foods include hot dogs, luncheon meats, mustard, pickles, ice cream, salad dressings, canned soups, dried soup mixes, nondairy creamers, processed cheeses, cream sauces, beer, spices, and hundreds of other common foods. Study labels to avoid chemicals.

• Gluten-free carbohydrates. Don’t trade gluten-filled refined carbohydrates for gluten-free refined carbohydrates. Studies show that refined carbohydrates, whether they contain gluten or not, increase your production of insulin, which blocks your ability to burn fat. Limit your carbohydrates so you can reduce insulin levels and permit greater fat burning.

• Artificial seasonings and flavors. The food industry keeps these ingredients supersecret, so it’s hard to know sometimes exactly what contains gluten. You
should
be suspicious. Look for ingredients like “seasoning,” “flavoring,” “natural flavoring,” “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” “maltodextrin,” and “modified food starch,” which could be derived from wheat and contain gluten.

2.
Eat one pound of high-fiber vegetables per day.
For women, I recommend three to four cups of leafy greens such as kale,
broccoli, and lettuce. Approximately half should be lightly cooked and half should be raw, as in salads. This will be your main source of slow carbohydrates. They are slow carbs because they don’t raise your insulin level and, as a result, don’t make you store fat.

3.
Limit your net carbs
—that’s total carbohydrates in grams minus fiber in grams—because those are the carbohydrates that raise your insulin levels and make you more likely to store fat. Women who need to lose weight should aim for 20 to 49 net carbs per day (see Net Carbohydrate Thresholds, page 81). The ideal limit on net carbs depends on your genetics and current metabolism; you will be able to add more net carbs after Day 21 (see chapter 11, where I recommend 50 to 99 net carbs per day for maintenance of your weight). You’ll know the best carb threshold for you when you are losing weight (or maintaining your healthy weight) or losing fat and you don’t suffer from carb cravings, plus your energy level is high. Listen to your body. The amount of carbs you can eat is highly variable.

4.
Eat clean proteins,
such as seafood, organic poultry, and eggs—approximately 8 to 12 ounces per day (about 80–110 grams). If they don’t make you bloated and miserable, eat one half-cup per day of fresh or cooked beans.

5.
Eat only limited fresh fruits:
avocado, olives, and coconut. Avoid fruit juices and dried fruits.

SWAPS FOR GRAINS

• Coconut wraps—these yummy alternatives to carb-filled tortillas are made from coconut meat and water.

• Romaine lettuce instead of bread or buns

• Coconut flour

• Baked sweet potatoes

• Kelp noodles

• If you’re looking for a salty, crunchy experience, try roasted seaweed. It’s a rich source of iodine and readily available at local
supermarkets and health food stores. I eat it when the rest of my family is diving into the potato chips or wheat-based crackers.

• Flaxseed and dehydrated vegetable crackers

SAMPLE MENU

Here is a suggested menu for resetting your thyroid, insulin, and leptin by going grain free. For nutritional data, check out the Notes section.
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