Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox (13 page)

DON'T
SWEAT THE FIBER

People often fear that, minus grains, they will lack fiber and wage a constant battle to keep their bowels functioning and face a future of constipation, pushing, and hemorrhoids. Not true, provided you follow this smarter way of obtaining fiber, while taking measures to feed bowel flora.

Bran breakfast cereal, now out of your repertoire, is a sad excuse for achieving bowel health and belongs with laxatives and stool softeners in the trash. The belief that grains must be among our sources of fiber is a recent notion at odds with human nutritional habits from the past several million years. Fiber can be readily obtained from legumes, tubers, vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds, allowing for superior bowel health without constipation, hemorrhoids, or colon cancer. Healthy fiber, as well as prebiotic or resistant fibers, can be reliably obtained in adequate quantities without grains.

Much of the fiber provided by grains is of the indigestible cellulose form, the same found in wood. Cellulose and related fibers are indigestible by both humans and bowel flora, thereby passing through, yielding “bulk” that has been mistaken for bowel health. Nonetheless, plentiful beneficial cellulose-type fibers can be obtained from nuts and seeds. For example:

Vegetables, mushrooms, fruit, coconut, and cocoa are other important sources of fiber, a mixture of digestible and indigestible
fiber
forms. Other foods that figure prominently in the Wheat Belly lifestyle are substantial sources of fiber. For example, 1 cup of cooked spinach provides 4.3 g total fiber, two stalks of broccoli provide 11.8 g, 10 spears of asparagus provide 3 g, ¼ cup coconut flour provides 9 g, one avocado provides 13.5 g, and five large strawberries provide 5 g. If ideal daily intake of fiber is estimated to be 25 to 40 g or more per day, obtaining this value is no problem if you include some nuts and seeds in your diet, coconut and cocoa, some sources of prebiotic fibers (ideally 20 g per day), and vegetables and fruits. Adding some ground golden flaxseeds or chia seeds can boost fiber intake even further: ½ cup flaxseeds adds 23 g of total fiber; ¼ cup chia seeds, 15 g fiber.

Provided your diet is rich in these foods as well as in sources of prebiotic fibers—and not in candy bars, chewing gum, and soft drinks—obtaining healthy quantities of all forms of fiber is virtually effortless, no pushing required.

A WHEAT BELLY KNOCKOUT

You are now well on your way to not just detoxifying your body from wheat and grains, but also throwing an upper cut to the chin for all the unhealthy distortions left after a lifetime of eating “healthy whole grains.” Only after you've knocked out all the destructiveness of wheat and grains from your life and started the healing process from the health pummeling you've endured can you raise your arms in triumph.

In the next chapter, we get down to business and craft your new lifestyle with a fast-paced, day-by-day 10-Day Menu Plan—completely new to the Wheat Belly program—that incorporates the strategies for health we've covered so far. You and your family will be eating your way to astounding levels of health.

CHAPTER

5

WHEAT BELLY 10-DAY GRAIN DETOX

Eat Your Way Back to Health with This 10-Day Menu Plan

You won't find any odd-tasting green juices in this detoxification process, no program of repeated enemas to “cleanse” the colon, no magical properties ascribed to teas, mysterious pills, or incantations. You will find a logical, systematic, grain-free process
to
enjoy foods without health or weight downsides. In the interests of getting started quickly and putting the pedal to the floor to accelerate your success, I introduce this rapid-fire process exclusively here in this book; it was not provided in any previous Wheat Belly book. You will therefore find quick-to-prepare, straightforward breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and snacks that all adhere to the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox principles discussed, all aimed at getting you detoxified from the health damage previously incurred from grains in as short a time as possible. Some of these recipes are not just recipes for healthy, tasty food, but play a crucial role in the health transformation of the detox process. I will show you how to weave in a daily Wheat Belly Detox Shake, for example, that helps your gastrointestinal tract heal by providing prebiotic fibers needed by bowel flora. I've tried to cover every eventuality—short of making the meals for you and doing the dishes.

I also wanted this menu to introduce you to some of the wonderful wheat- and grain-free dishes we enjoy while living this lifestyle to help you and your family recognize that the
Wheat
Belly lifestyle does
not
involve deprivation, but is a rich, varied, and delicious way to live that even includes familiar favorites like pizza—a dish featured on Day 1 of your Menu Plan. The recipes will introduce you, for example, to wheat-free cooking and baking methods that will show you how to make fragrant flatbreads, to create rich sauces by using safe thickeners such as coconut flour, to get comfortable with the use of safe sweeteners, and to whip up dishes like “potato” salad or breakfast skillets without being tripped up by problem ingredients like cooked potatoes. Aside from the
Wheat Belly Detox Shakes
, all of the recipes in the Menu Plan and in the subsequent Secret Sauce and Secret Weapons chapters are appropriate for the rest of the family. You can therefore make these dishes for you to enjoy on your own, or you can share them with everyone else.

Wheat Belly Detox Shakes begin on Day 3. The Detox Shakes provide an easy way to obtain prebiotic fibers/resistant starches that play an important role in restoring health. Delaying the Detox Shakes until Day 3 gives you time to get a high-potency probiotic started that begins the process of “reseeding” the intestinal tract with healthy bacterial species, which is best started
before
your shakes begin doing their work of nourishing them. Optionally, you can also use the shakes as a means of obtaining your daily dose of iodine and vitamin D.

Coffee and teas fit into this menu plan, as does water with lemon, lime, or other non-sugary flavors. (Also see ideas for herb- and fruit-flavored drinking waters in
Chapter 6
.) Soft drinks, fruit juices, and carbonated beverages (except for the occasional unsweetened seltzer, but not tonic water) do not fit due to excessive sugar content. And be careful with any source of alcohol: Not only do many, especially beer and whiskeys, contain wheat and grain components, but the alcohol itself has the ability to turn off your capacity to lose weight. If you'd like a drink during
this
process, restrict yourself to just one shot of non-grain-sourced liquor (such as grape or potato vodka or rum), one glass of dry wine, or one serving of gluten-free beer (such as Redbridge, Green's, or Bard's) per day. Your Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox is therefore a period of going very lightly with alcoholic beverages. (More detail on detox-safe alcoholic beverages can be found in
Appendix B
.)

Obviously, some grocery shopping will be necessary for the items required in this Menu Plan, as well as a few basic kitchen utensils. They are introduced in this chapter and listed in the Wheat Belly Detox Shopping List found in
Appendix A,
including a day-by-day shopping list to make the shopping process easier.

A few additional “rules” to bear in mind as you proceed through your detox:

•
Put leftovers to use.
You will inevitably have leftovers from recipes prepared from the Menu Plan that can be used for another day's meal. Leftovers work just fine and can take some of the work out of creating new dishes every day. Should you replace your morning Detox Shake with leftovers, however, or with another detox-safe dish of your choosing, just make a shake later in the day or obtain prebiotic fibers from another source.

•
Use caution when traveling.
Doing this full detox is tough if you are traveling, since the meals require home preparation. If you are confident that you can adhere to the Wheat Belly 10-Day Grain Detox principles, however, then travel can indeed be accomplished without impairing your progress. The only allowance will be to bring some form of prebiotic fiber along (for example, inulin or FOS powder), as well as all your detox nutritional supplements. Ideally, however, you spend the 10 days of this initial and crucial process at home and try to prepare most of the recipes provided.

•
Absolutely avoid going off-program.
I've said this before, but I'll say it again: Avoid a wheat/grain “indulgence.” Not only can this indulgence trigger a recurrence of unpleasant symptoms, such as bloating and diarrhea, but it will also cause you to have to start all over again, since appetite will be retriggered and all the other benefits you hoped for will be halted or reversed. From this one simple indulgence, inflammation is retriggered, water retention resumes, and joint pain and skin rashes can recur. If you desire something sweet, consult the Wheat Belly snack recipes in
Chapter 6
—you will enjoy your indulgence with no downside. It's not that tough, and the modest effort required to be meticulously wheat- and grain-free is truly worth it.

WHEAT BELLY DETOX-SAFE FLOURS AND MEALS

The meals or flours we choose for baking and breading must not contain any wheat or other grain, must be low in carbohydrates (to avoid triggering insulin that causes weight gain), and must be otherwise healthy. Choose your meals and flours by these criteria, and you can have, say, pizza, muffins, or scones that don't
trigger
the problems of their grain-based counterparts yet are still delicious.

Anyone with allergies to nut meals, especially almond meal or flour, can find several potential replacement flours in the following list. For example, sesame seeds, ground in your food processor or food chopper, yield a wonderful flour that can be used alone or combined with a small quantity of coconut flour to make any recipe that calls for almond meal or flour. (Just be careful, as some people who are allergic to nuts are also allergic to sesame and other seeds. Look for less expensive bulk sesame seeds, hulled or unhulled, not the small quantities sold in the spice aisle, and choose lighter-colored, not black or brown, varieties. Allergy to lupin flour, sourced from a legume, can also overlap with peanut allergy.) However, note that some adjustment of liquid quantity and cooking time may be required with substitutions. A wooden pick inserted into the baked dish should withdraw dry when the dish is fully cooked.