The Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox: The effortless health and weight-loss solution

If you were to test blood sugars with a fingerstick glucose meter 30 to 60 minutes after consuming a food (when peak blood sugar usually occurs, not 2 hours as advised by physicians for diabetic blood sugar control), you would see that it takes most of us 15 g net carbohydrates before blood sugars rise, regardless of whether they are high-, medium-, or low-GI. We have based all Wheat Belly 10-Day Detox dietary choices and recipes on this limit.

Let’s dash another fairy tale commonly offered by the dietary community that can trip up your weight-loss efforts. They often tell us that if a high-GI food is consumed with added proteins, fats, or fiber, the glycemic effect will be reduced. As often occurs in the fictional tales of nutrition, this is an example of something being less bad but not necessarily good. A typical blood sugar after consuming two slices of multigrain bread on an empty stomach might be 10 mmol/L—high enough to provoke insulin, cortisol, insulin resistance, visceral fat accumulation, and inflammation. Consume two slices of multigrain bread with some slices of turkey, mayonnaise, lettuce, and tomatoes, and blood sugar will be around 9 mmol/L—better, yes, but still pretty high.

Less bad is not necessarily good. The wolf can wear Grandma’s nightie, but he’s still a big, bad, ugly wolf.

If you are worried about your cholesterol, know that the majority of people will experience a reduction in the LDL (bad) cholesterol with this lifestyle, along with plummeting triglycerides and a rise in healthy HDL. Eating fats and oils normalizes these predictors of cardiovascular risk. (A full discussion of the why behind these changes, and why and how a low-fat diet ruins health and booby-traps cardiovascular risk, can be found in both the original Wheat Belly and in Wheat Belly Total Health.)

REBECCA, 44, sales, Connecticut

“Funny: 8 nights with no binge eating and I forgot that for the past 8 years I have binged before going to bed—my biggest demon. I once read that this lady turned her kitchen faucet on so no one would hear her going in the freezer with a spoon to get ice cream. I couldn’t believe someone else did that! Wow! This was an addiction, and following the guidelines of Dr. Davis worked. For once I didn’t have to pretend to myself that I wasn’t starving. Once I gave him my full trust in the process, I upped my fat intake and that was my saving grace.”

If we are going to increase our intake of fats and oils, it also means avoiding foods labeled “low-fat” or “nonfat.” These terms mean high carbohydrate and high sugar and also serve as buzzwords for grains. Yes, conventional notions of healthy foods with reduced fat have not just wasted our time, but disposed of any control we may have hoped for in weight and health. Have nothing to do with them. If you consume dairy products, for instance, pour the fat-free, 1%, or 2% milk down the drain and go for the full fat or cream. No light coconut milk; we want the thickest, fattiest variety.

We also avoid hydrogenated fats, or trans fats, a common ingredient in processed foods, especially grain-based foods, as they contribute to heart disease, hypertension, and diabetes. Margarine is the worst, made with vegetable oils hydrogenated to yield a solid stick or tub form. Many processed foods, from cookies to sandwich spreads, contain hydrogenated oils and should be avoided for this and other reasons. Use real organic butter or ghee instead (if you include dairy).

Despite our embrace of fats and oils, you should not interpret this to mean that foods deep-fried in oils are healthy. They are not. But it’s not so much the fat as the high-temperature reactions that occur in deep-fried foods, even healthy foods, especially if polyunsaturated oils like corn are used. Because of the health-impairing effects of the by-products from high-temperature cooking, we avoid or at least minimize any food that is deep-fried.

There are a few additional tips that are useful for managing carbohydrate intake.

ABSOLUTELY AVOID GLUTEN-FREE FOODS MADE WITH CORNFLOUR, RICE FLOUR, TAPIOCA STARCH, OR POTATO FLOUR. These are the four ingredients most commonly used in gluten-free processed foods. They are awful for health and will completely shut down any hope of weight loss, often resulting in outright, sometimes outrageous, weight gain and inflammation. Managing carbohydrates to improve control over metabolism and health means 100 percent avoidance of these terrible products marketed to an unsuspecting public thinking they are eating healthy by avoiding gluten.

Nothing raises blood sugar higher than the gluten-free junk carbohydrates in, say, gluten-free multigrain bread or gluten-free pasta—higher than even table sugar. Blood sugar that results from eating two slices of whole grain gluten-free bread made with potato flour, rice flour, and millet can easily top 10 mmol/L (in those without diabetes) over the first hour after consumption, regardless of the mayonnaise, meat, cheese, or other foods in the sandwich. There are indeed some food producers who have developed gluten-free and grain-free products without junk carb ingredients that do not raise blood sugar and so are safe, but they remain in the minority.

LIMIT FRUIT. Adhere to our carb management cutoff and limit yourself to no more than 15 g net carbohydrates per meal. Choose fruit with the least carbohydrate content and greatest nutritional value. From best to worst, choose from: berries of all varieties, cherries, citrus, apples, nectarines, peaches, and melons. 80 g (3 oz) of blueberries, for example, contains 15 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber = 12 g net carbohydrates. This meets the 15 g or less net carbs limit (but don’t forget to factor in other foods you consume along with the blueberries, as it all adds up).

Minimize (ripe) bananas, pineapples, mangoes, and grapes, and when you eat them, do so only in small quantities, since their sugar content is similar to that of candy. A medium 7-inch banana, for example, contains 27 g total carbohydrates and 3 g fiber: 27 – 3 = 24 g net carbohydrates. 80 g (3 oz) of (unsweetened) pineapple chunks contains 20 g total carbs and 1 g fiber = 19 g net carbs. Both the full ripe banana and the 80 g (3 oz) of pineapple chunks are too much and enough to turn off all weight loss and actually begin to trigger some weight gain.

An exception to fruit guidelines are avocados, which are high in fats, rich in potassium, wonderfully filling, and low in net carbs (3 g per avocado).

AVOID FRUIT JUICES. As with fruit, be very careful with fruit juices. You’d do best to avoid juices altogether. If you must drink fruit juice (such as pomegranate or cranberry juice for health benefits), drink only real, 100 percent juice (not fruit “drinks” made with high-fructose corn syrup and little juice) and only in minimal quantities (no more than 55–110 ml (2–4 fl oz) per meal), as the sugar content is too high. One 240 ml (8 fl oz) glass of orange juice, which dominates the breakfast habits of many people who think they are consuming something healthy, contains more than 6 teaspoons of sugar, or 26 g net carbs.

LIMIT DAIRY PRODUCTS. Have no more than 1 serving per day of milk, cottage cheese, or unsweetened yogurt (preferably full fat, if you can find it). Remember: Fat is not the problem. We limit dairy because of the lactose sugar content and the peculiar ability of the whey protein to provoke insulin, which can impair weight loss and encourage insulin resistance, not to mention issues such as estrogen content, bovine growth hormone and antibiotic residues, and potential adverse effects of the casein protein.

Organic, full-fat cheese, full-fat cream cheese, and organic butter and ghee are the least problematic forms of dairy. Organic production avoids growth hormone and minimizes antibiotics, and the culturing process to make cheese reduces lactose and whey, as well as the content of dangerous forms of casein. These products can therefore be safely consumed more liberally, provided you don’t have a specific intolerance to one or more dairy components.

LIMIT LEGUMES, COOKED POTATOES, SWEET POTATOES, AND YAMS. Here is where carbohydrate counting can be put to work, keeping intake to no higher than 15 g net carbs per meal. In general, it means eating no more than ¼ of a tea cup of any of these foods per meal. Including some of these foods can be important, however, as they benefit bowel flora, especially raw white potatoes (see the discussion (#litres_trial_promo) in Chapter 4).

INDULGE IN THE DARKEST CHOCOLATES. Chocolates that are at least 70 percent cocoa, preferably 85 percent or higher, easily fit into your regimen. Count net carbohydrates: the delicious Ghirardelli Intense Dark 86% Cocoa chocolate bar, for instance, contains 15 g total carbs, 5 g fiber (lots of fiber in dark chocolate) = 10 g net carbs in 4 squares (45 g) of chocolate, which is half of the entire 75 g (3 oz) bar, more than enough to satisfy even the most serious chocolate habit. Remember: Wheat and grain elimination amplifies your sense of taste and sweetness so that, even if you previously found dark chocolate to be bitter and not sweet enough, you will now appreciate how delicious it is without the taste distortion of grains. And go ahead: Dip your chocolate into natural peanut butter or almond butter.

BE AWARE OF SAFE VS. UNSAFE SWEETENERS. We have to be picky with our choice of sweeteners, as there are benign sweeteners that we will be using in some of our recipes—cookies, muffins, and pies—and there are destructive sweeteners that impair weight loss and pose other undesirable effects. You need to avoid foods sweetened with the sugar alcohols sorbitol, mannitol, lactitol, or maltitol, as they act much like sugar and cause diarrhea and bloating. Also avoid sucralose, saccharine, and aspartame as there is a theory that they result in unhealthy changes in bowel flora. We will also strictly avoid fructose-containing sweeteners: sucrose (table sugar, which is 50 percent fructose), high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar (90 percent fructose), coconut sugar, and other sugars marketed as “natural.” Some people use honey and maple syrup, as they are natural sources of sugar, but both are high in fructose and should be used sparingly (never more than 1 to 2 teaspoons per serving).

Among the safest sweeteners are pure liquid or powdered stevia; stevia with inulin but not maltodextrin; monk fruit (also known as luo han guo); and two safe naturally occurring sugar alcohols, erythritol and xylitol. (Be careful with xylitol around dogs, as it is toxic to them.) An occasional person will experience triggering of their sweet tooth with these sweeteners, leading to cravings for other sweet foods, but it is uncommon. Inulin is safe and has a light sweetness and even provides benefits to bowel flora.

Important: If You Start with Diabetes . . .

If you are injecting insulin or taking certain diabetes drugs, precautions will be necessary to avoid the potential danger of hypoglycemia (blood sugars lower than 4 mmol/L) and, less commonly, diabetic ketoacidosis, if you have diabetes associated with inadequate pancreatic insulin production. There are also the uninformed objections of many doctors who have come to believe that diabetes is incurable, irreversible, and a diagnosis for life—not true in the majority of cases of type 2 diabetes.

Anyone taking insulin injections in any form will need to reduce the dosage in order to follow this lifestyle without experiencing hypoglycemia. An immediate need to reduce insulin by half is typical. Ideally, this is undertaken with the assistance of a health care provider with experience in helping patients reduce or eliminate their diabetes. This almost always means identifying a new practitioner, as the one who prescribed the insulin for type 2 diabetes in the first place is likely a member of the “diabetes is incurable and irreversible” school, not recognizing that insulin injections are a weight gain drug.

I cannot stress enough that hypoglycemia must be avoided, even if higher blood sugars result temporarily (though ideally kept below 11 mmol/L throughout this process). Other medications, especially oral agents glyburide, glipizide, and glimepiride, can cause dangerous hypoglycemia. For this reason, many people eliminate these oral drugs or reduce doses, even if it means a temporary increase in blood sugars. As blood sugars trend downward, you’ll need to further reduce medications. If, for instance, you have fasting blood sugars of 6 mmol/L or less, it is essential to reduce or eliminate a medication.