[Spike]

Has anyone here read this book? It's seems interesting to me since I can't seem to get rid of my small gut and I eat quite a lot of bread (no butter)

Book title: Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health

Book description
A renowned cardiologist explains how eliminating wheat from our diets can prevent fat storage, shrink unsightly bulges, and reverse myriad health problems.
Every day, over 200 million Americans consume food products made of wheat. As a result, over 100
million of them experience some form of adverse health effect, ranging from minor rashes and high blood sugar to the unattractive stomach bulges that preventive cardiologist William Davis calls “wheat bellies.” According to Davis, that excess fat has nothing to do with gluttony, sloth, or too much butter: It’s due to the whole grain wraps we eat for lunch.
After witnessing over 2,000 patients regain their health after giving up wheat, Davis reached the disturbing conclusion that wheat is the single largest contributor to the nationwide obesity epidemic—
and its elimination is key to dramatic weight loss and optimal health. In Wheat Belly, Davis exposes the harmful effects of what is actually a product of genetic tinkering and agribusiness being sold to the
American public as “wheat”—and provides readers with a user-friendly, step-by-step plan to navigate a new, wheat-free lifestyle.
Informed by cutting-edge science and nutrition, along with case studies from men and women who
have experienced life-changing transformations in their health after waving goodbye to wheat, Wheat
Belly is an illuminating look at what is truly making Americans sick and an action plan to clear our plates of this seemingly benign ingredient.


I found this book in the book top 100 of Amazon and it's in there for already 340 days so it must be pretty popular. Link = http://www.amazon.com/Wheat-Belly-Lose-W...s_books_20

Anyone tried this diet? Opinions?

[HiFlo]

carbs make you fat. Gary Taubes popularized this, and it works. wheat (bread and pasta), potatoes & sugar are the most common carbs.

[Cruisen_Chubby]

It is because most humans, although not diagnosed, are somewhat resistant to gluten. This leads to an increase in the amount of time it takes to digest said grains.

You can look at this like a bottleneck in production. If process A can complete 5 units in a minute and process B can only complete 4 units per minute, we clearly have a buildup of 1 unit per minute. It's like pushing rope.

This same thing happens when gluten intolerance occurs. It slows down digestion/absorbtion times. So even when you follow up with a different dietary choice, it is forced to wait longer than it regularly should due to the grain (gluten) build up.

This is why fat accumulation is more prevalent in those who eat a diet filled with grains.

Ironically, the food pyramid loves to push the grains on the American public. If I remember right, it was General Mills who came up with the prototype for said pyramid anyways... Hmmm

[kbell]

The problem with most wheat is that its shorter and faster grown than before. It also has a much higher gluten content than it did 40 years ago. You could still lose weight with high carbs, but its best to add some heavy weight lifting with it. The older wheat is called Eikhorn now. To eat wheat traditionally they tended to sprout the wheat first by soaking it in water for at least a day. There is a lot more too it after that, but its best to consult

http://www.westonaprice.org/
There might be a virus on the site since it was flagged by avast. But eventually it will be removed since its a popular site.

Paleo could work too which is what I do. But I tend to eat some of the starches to fuel workouts.

[petitnicolas1]

Hi - long time lurker here, glad to finally post. I read that book at few months ago. The title makes it sound like a diet book but really Dr. Davis talks about the harmful effects of wheat, with some low-carb advocating at the end. I’ve been wheat-free since then and can’t see myself going back.

The fat in the abdomen is unique: unlike other parts of the body, it provokes inflammation, distorts insulin responses and issues abnormal metabolic signals to the rest of the body. It also produces estrogen, which creates “man breasts.” If you’re thinking about going wheat-free to lose weight, that’s great but it’s also a lot more than that.

A few decades ago, scientists were trying to increase the yield in wheat crops. They produced the high-yielding dwarf wheat we have today through hybridization (not genetic modification). However, it would be false to say that wheat before then was OK, it was just less bad, even the eikhorn kbell is talking about had its problems and is almost impossible to find today anyway.

You can’t reduce wheat to its gluten content. For example, another substance in wheat called “amylopectin A” is a carbohydrate that converts more efficiently to blood sugar than nearly all other carbohydrate foods. Wheat raises your blood sugar higher than pure sugar: the glycemic index of whole grain bread is 72 while that of sucrose is 59. It is also a powerful appetite stimulant. People who do not consume wheat eat an average of 400 calories less a day!

It also seems to cause a bunch of deseases. Wheat polypeptides bind to the brain and cause a lot of problems, including addiction (fatties who can’t stop eating), appetite stimulation, autoimmune deseases, skin deseases, dementia, alzheimer’s, pH disruption, accelerated aging and heart desease, among others. This is all explained in detail in the book.

Lastly, I think some people mix grain-free or wheat-free with low-carb or paleo. These are all different things. When you’re wheat-free, some grains are still ok, for example I eat rice and millet. Buckwheat is good too. The grains that are not to eat are: rye, barley, spelt, bulgur or kamut. Do not eat gluten-free “food.” That stuff is garbage.

Anyway, I highly recommend the book. It’s entertaining to read too. I saw Neil re-reading your post that you don’t eat butter. Is it because you think it’s healthier to eat less of it? ‘Cause butter is good for you (not margarine)

[RichieP]

my parents are doing so much better without wheat and desserts. Still not got them on full paleo yet, or really exercising properly, but, it's a big improvement. Both lost alot of weight just by kicking the bread and cakes.

[Armenian]

Heard of the book from a friend's wife who is becoming a nutritionist. I saw the author an interview. I am thinking of giving up wheat but find it hard.

[BIGINJAPAN]

Interesting side note to this is, before mass agriculture 7000 years ago or whatever it was we didn't have slavery or different classes of society. Even today we are enslaved by our food but in a different fashion. By producing GMO we are kept sick and unwilling to put up a fight.

[Sherman]

I have been reading a lot of diet books lately because I went on a diet and the advice is confusing and contradictory to say the least. First, there seems to be two factions – the carnists who think meat is great, and the vegetarians and vegans who claim meat is close to being a poison. Each side cherry picks results from contradictory studies to support their claims.

The carnists have actually come up with an argument supported by research that saturated fat is good for you. The Book “Deep Nutrition” lays out the case for why the previous research studies were faulty. Then among the carnists, you have those who claim potatoes are bad and no better than eating sugar. Then you have the faction that hates wheat and rice.

I have decided that there has been a failure of the scientific method. Scientists construct experiments by isolating and locating one variable at a time. But the body is a living system and can’t be so easily analyzed by isolating variables. As just one example, the French eat fat rich food but have low incidents of heart attacks and are not obese like Americans.

Conclusion – I have decided to eat a little of everything because variety is healthy. I love bread and I do not have any allergy to gluten so why should I worry about it? I just finished the 15th week of my diet and now can officially say that I lost 50 pounds. I did it by calorie counting. I ate less than 700 calories a day, counting the calories on an Excel spread sheet. I bought a food scale and had several internet sites which gave nutritional information for any food, such as calories, protein, and carbs. I made sure to keep my protein above 50 grams a day. Calorie counting is absolutely reliable because it is based on the law of thermodynamics – if you expend more energy then you take in, you will lose weight. I believe the diets which don’t count calories are taking people’s power away from them so that they have to spend thousands of dollars in special food and doctors to monitor their progress. Do it yourself. Keep your power and lose weight.

[Don_Johnson]

(10-01-2012 05:52 PM)Cruisen_Chubby Wrote:  

It is because most humans, although not diagnosed, are somewhat resistant to gluten. This leads to an increase in the amount of time it takes to digest said grains.

You can look at this like a bottleneck in production. If process A can complete 5 units in a minute and process B can only complete 4 units per minute, we clearly have a buildup of 1 unit per minute. It's like pushing rope.

This same thing happens when gluten intolerance occurs. It slows down digestion/absorbtion times. So even when you follow up with a different dietary choice, it is forced to wait longer than it regularly should due to the grain (gluten) build up.

This is why fat accumulation is more prevalent in those who eat a diet filled with grains.

Ironically, the food pyramid loves to push the grains on the American public. If I remember right, it was General Mills who came up with the prototype for said pyramid anyways... Hmmm

The problem is gluten is decomposed into an opioid peptide similar to morphine. This is why wheat is addictive. Which is why Subway and pizza parlors vent their baking bread onto the street. If you think about it, does the smell of fruit - our primordial food - cause such desire? Nope. This is also why wheat products make many people tired, and due to wheat gluten being added to many more foods than in the past, this is a major cause of various fatigue syndromes. But what really matters in this context is the other effect of all opiods.

And that's constipation. Most of the characteristic wheat guts you see are effectively megacolon as a result of chronic constipation.

The truth is wheat has always been primarily a drug. It has never been easy to grow, but has always been preferred because it is better to have your populace anesthsized and fat. There is a reason it is bread and games, and not say - rice and games. Or taro and games.

[hypesession]

DOnt waste your fucking money dude.

I had a little fat over my abdominals. The only way you take that off is if you shred up and do sprints, core work on an empty stomach and compound exercises. fat on your abs sheds from top to bottom.
simple hard work thats all.

Ill eat wheat all day lol, if you want to see my abs pm me and ill gladly send a pic of my slabs no homo.

p.s genetics kind of play a part but judging from yr avatar pic i think yr good.

HOLLAaaaaa

[kbell]

700 cals a day?! Are you just sitting on a couch all day? That's like a single meal for me. If your doing any sort of strength training its not unusual to have calorie needs in the 2500 cal to 5000 cal.

Paleo explains the french pretty well. Fat never did cause heart attacks. Low LDL does trigger strokes in some, which is also a CVD.

[Sherman]

(10-01-2012 11:40 PM)kbell Wrote:  

700 cals a day?! Are you just sitting on a couch all day? That's like a single meal for me. If your doing any sort of strength training its not unusual to have calorie needs in the 2500 cal to 5000 cal.

Paleo explains the french pretty well. Fat never did cause heart attacks. Low LDL does trigger strokes in some, which is also a CVD.

No, I walk a lot, exercise at the gym treadmill every week, do pushups every day, do a circuit on the weight machines, and work out on the boxing bags. My waist went from 41 to 34 so I know that I lost mostly fat.

[flyfreshandyoung]

I lost 10 pounds my junior year of college by changing nothing in my lifestyle other than scrapping pastas and bread and other wheat products. Ask anyone who has cut wheat how their results are. You don't need to buy this book to tell you the benefits.

[Sherman]

If you want a background, I recommend a fascinating book called “An Edible History of Humanity”. The book describes the history of the three grains – corn in Mesoamerica, wheat from the Middle East, and rice in the Orient. All of these grains were genetically engineered by our ancestors thousands of years ago through natural selection of mutations from natural grasses. None of these grains can grow in the wild anymore, but are domesticated and depend on farmers to continue planting them.

Here are some interesting quotes:

“A cultivated field of maize , or any other crop, is as man-made as a microchip, a magazine, or a missile. Much as we like to think of farming as natural, ten thousand years ago it was a new and alien development.”

“Hunter-gatherers actually seem to have been much healthier than the earliest farmers. According to the archaeological evidence, farmers were more likely than hunter-gatherers to suffer from dental-enamel hypoplasia— a characteristic horizontal striping of the teeth that indicates nutritional stress. Farming results in a less varied and less balanced diet than hunting and gathering does. Bushmen eat around seventy-five different types of wild plants, rather than relying on a few staple crops. Cereal grains provide reliable calories, but they do not contain the full range of essential nutrients. So farmers were shorter than hunter-gatherers.”

In other words, these foods are genetically engineered adoptions that our bodies may not have been evolved to recognize and process efficiently, and the earlier hunter-gatherers appear to have had a healthier diet.

[Ziltoid]

The anti-wheat paleo dogma frankly has no particularly compelling medical basis.

If you want to lose visceral fat ("belly fat"), the factor to pay attention to is the glcyemic index... Not real rocket science, just limit your carbohydrate intake overall, and replace high-GI foods (sugar, white rice, white flour...) with wholesome and fibrous low-GI carb sources (vegetables, beans, nuts, whole grains/cereals, and yes... that includes wheat) wherever you can.

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that a good deal of food products in the US labeled with the terms "multigrain", "whole wheat", "whole grain", or even "100% whole grain wheat" are in fact little more than normal white flour with some paltry amounts of whole grain reconstituted in.
If the first listed ingredient isn't "whole grain" or "whole grain wheat", and/or you see the word "enriched" anywhere in the ingredients, throw that shit in the trash.

Also, slather on the butter dude!
Eating fat simultaneously with any carb source significantly lowers it's glycemic index.

[Thomas the Rhymer]

(10-01-2012 04:48 PM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

Anyone tried this diet? Opinions?

I haven't read the book but I agree with the basic premise that starch (i.e. long chains of carbohydrates) is better left out of the modern diet.

Foods high in starch, like potatoes, bread, pasta, etc. have a high energy content and not much else. They are nutritionally useless outside of their energy content, and if you're fat then you don't need starch - you are already eating too much energy.

I've had a much easier time controlling my weight since I quit eating starches.

[Spike]

(10-01-2012 11:36 PM)hypesession Wrote:  

DOnt waste your fucking money dude.

I had a little fat over my abdominals. The only way you take that off is if you shred up and do sprints, core work on an empty stomach and compound exercises. fat on your abs sheds from top to bottom.
simple hard work thats all.

Ill eat wheat all day lol, if you want to see my abs pm me and ill gladly send a pic of my slabs no homo.

p.s genetics kind of play a part but judging from yr avatar pic i think yr good.

HOLLAaaaaa

Yes, i fear it has to do with exercise more then with my eating habits. I do more cardio now but perhaps it's still not enough. I'm a lean guy guy but my whole I have been without rockhard abs and this pisses me of. I always had some belly fat even when i'm dieting (not calorie counting but pretty strict) and working out a lot (heavy lifting combined with some cardio (10 to 15 minutes cycling or crosstrainer)

I don't eat butter because I only eat cheese or peanutbutter which is already fat enough.

[Ziltoid]

What sort of cardio?

[dasher]

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Why We Get Fat & What To Do About It, has a lecture on youtube that is more or less a summary of his books.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDneyrETR2o&

You can just watch the last 20 minutes or so and get the tl;dr version if watching the entire 70 minutes is too much of a time commitment.

[Handsome Creepy Eel]

I am not opposed to wheat and similar products, as long as they are in at least a somewhat natural form (integral pasta, dark bread, potatoes, etc.). They're a good source of nutrients other than just carbs, the fiber is healthy, and their glycemic loads don't rape your digestive system. I think that eliminating them from your diet is going a bit too far.

The carbs that need to be avoided are primarily sugars, imo.

[void]

want to be starving 3 hours after your lunch? eat pasta + can of coke. anyone who has actually tried going a low carb diet or abstained processed carbs has experienced less hunger. processed wheat/carbs are near the level of sugar and fuck with your insulin levels very hard and quick.

[Moma]

(10-02-2012 04:56 AM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

Yes, i fear it has to do with exercise more then with my eating habits. I do more cardio now but perhaps it's still not enough. I'm a lean guy guy but my whole I have been without rockhard abs and this pisses me of. I always had some belly fat even when i'm dieting (not calorie counting but pretty strict) and working out a lot (heavy lifting combined with some cardio (10 to 15 minutes cycling or crosstrainer)

I don't eat butter because I only eat cheese or peanutbutter which is already fat enough.

I did it years ago. First came up on the concept seeing a nutritionist in London. I had a small pot belly but it had abs on top which baffled my friends.
She told me to cut out wheat and yeast. I did and dropped about half a stone (7 pounds). Been working for me ever since until 2009, my system just kind of gained a little pot that I have been toying with since.
However, now that I am down south and opened up to the galaxy of supplements and health tweaks, we shall see.

I have been eating wheat a lot down here but I can vouch for the non wheat diet.

Bottom line: Give it a shot for two months and see. It worked for me. You've nothing to lose.

[Spike]

I work out 3 times a week where I do heavy bodybuilding. Results are showing and i'm packing on muscle but still have that bellyfat. If I suck in my gut or flex then abs a re showing but the low belly fat is annoying because it stops me form heaving a six pack.

I used to just use the cross trainer before working out for 5 minutes but nowadays I'll burn a 100 calories on the bicycle and sometimes do another 50 to 75 cals after working out when i'm already exhausted. I want to experiment a bit with extra workouts just for cardio between lifting days

I also started doing the abs workout the gym offers. They call it 15 minutes of abs and its quite difficult but i haven't done it enough to already notice a difference.

On one hand I think I should exercise more with longer cardio and on the other hand people say: abs are made in the kitchen and there's only so much you can do working out. Which one to follow?

Furthermore, if i would cut out wheats in the form of brown bread and breakfast porridge, what should I replace it with? I can't live on protein alone of course.

[Moma]

(10-02-2012 09:43 AM)Neil Skywalker Wrote:  

I work out 3 times a week where I do heavy bodybuilding. Results are showing and i'm packing on muscle but still have that bellyfat. If I suck in my gut or flex then abs a re showing but the low belly fat is annoying because it stops me form heaving a six pack.

I used to just use the cross trainer before working out for 5 minutes but nowadays I'll burn a 100 calories on the bicycle and sometimes do another 50 to 75 cals after working out when i'm already exhausted. I want to experiment a bit with extra workouts just for cardio between lifting days

I also started doing the abs workout the gym offers. They call it 15 minutes of abs and its quite difficult but i haven't done it enough to already notice a difference.

On one hand I think I should exercise more with longer cardio and on the other hand people say: abs are made in the kitchen and there's only so much you can do working out. Which one to follow?

Furthermore, if i would cut out wheats in the form of brown bread and breakfast porridge, what should I replace it with?

Abs are definitely made in the kitchen. You can get bread that is made from rice flour or sour dough gluten free. You may not like the taste but you can experiment with what you put on the bread and see. I use pumpkin seed butter or almond butter. Porridge is from oats which is not wheat. I usually have porridge every morning and it's fine. I used to eat Quaker Oats but now I eat steel cut oats which is very filling.

Canada has all that stuff forementioned but I'm not sure if Holland has jumped on board as of yet.