So since Friday, I've continued to eat wheat-free and sugar-free, and I've also plugged what I've been eating into my Weight Watchers points tracker to make sure I'm not overeating. I have to admit that I had been replacing my wheat-filled snacks with LOTS of nuts. Now I know a few nuts are healthy and they have lots of nutrients and oils that we need, but they should probably be eaten in moderation (which I wasn't doing)!
In the book Wheat Belly, Dr. Davis does say to eat unlimited amounts of nuts, meats, healthy oils, vegetables, etc. and that the average person will consume about 400 fewer calories per day doing this than when he was eating wheat products. I guess I wasn't eating that many wheat products before because I was consuming way more calories! That's why I decided to monitor my portions using Weight Watchers.
I have lost another pound this weekend doing this, and I also haven't felt hungry between meals, which is nice! I haven't had any cravings or hunger pangs. I still feel like snacking in the middle of the afternoon, but I think that's out of habit and not because I actually feel hungry.
Yesterday, it was my turn to bring a snack for church. Since I haven't really practiced any gluten-free baking, I made blueberry muffins and streusel coffee cake with my regular recipes using wheat flour. I didn't eat any, and I was surprised to find that I wasn't even tempted to taste any! (Usually I'm a notorious "sample-while-you-bake" baker!) I even gave the leftover cake to another family to make sure I wouldn't eat any! This is really a big step for me, as I'm a HUGE lover of baking, particularly if it involves brown sugar!
A few people have asked me why I would give up wheat products to lose weight. Here is an explanation from Wheat Belly that explains it:
"Wheat triggers a cycle of insulin-driven satiety and hunger, paralleled by the ups and downs of euphoria and withdrawal, distortions of neurological function, and addictive effectsm all leading to fat deposition. The extremes of blood sugar and insulin are responsible for growth of fat specifically in the visceral organs. Experienced over and over again, visceral fat accumulates, creating a fat liver, two fat kidneys, a fat pancreas, fat large and small intestines, as well as its familiar surface manifestation, a wheat belly." (p. 60)
"Why is wheat so much worse for weight than other foods? The essential phenomenon that sets the growth of the wheat belly in motion is blood sugar (glucose). High blood sugar, in turn, provokes high blood insulin. (Insulin is released by the pancreas in response to high blood sugar: The higher the blood sugar, the more insulin must be released to move the sugar into the body's cells, such as those of the muscle and liver.) When the pancreas' ability to produce insulin in response to blood sugar rises is exceeded, diabetes develops. But you don't have to be diabetic to experience high blood sugar and high insulin: Nondiabetics can easily experience the high blood sugars required to cultivate their very own wheat belly, particularly because foods made from wheat so readily convert to sugar. High blood insulin provokes visceral fat accumulation...
"Nutritionists established the fact that wheat increases blood sugar more profoundly than table sugar thirty years ago. As we've discussed, the glycemic index, or GI, is the nutritionist's measure of how much blood sugar levels increase in the 90 to 120 minutes after a food is consumed. By this measure, whole wheat bread has a GI of 72, while plain table sugar has a GI of 59 (though some labs have gotten results as high as 65). In contrast, kidney beans have a GI of 51, grapefruit comes in at 25, while noncarbohydrate foods such as salmon and walnuts have GIs of essentially zero: Eating these foods has no effect on blood sugar. In fact, with few exceptions, few foods have as high a GI as foods made from wheat." (pp. 62 - 63)
Interesting, isn't it? I never would have thought that so-called "healthy whole grains" would spike blood sugar levels, but they do. This triggers insulin release, which in turn means more visceral fat deposited in the body. And because wheat converts to sugar so quickly, it is quickly digested, resulting in a drop in blood sugar within about two hours of consumption. This usually triggers a craving for more wheat to raise the blood sugar levels again, and the cycle continues. As I mentioned above, I have found that my food cravings have subsided since going off of wheat and sugar, I suppose as a result of more steady blood sugar levels instead of spikes and drops. I'm curious to see what the next few weeks hold as we continue our experiment!
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