A Diet that REALLY (No Kiddin') Works!
Hi all,
I am new to this forum, but I wanted to tell you about a "diet" regimen that my family has been on for the past 10 months. Please feel free to check out my profile for the "whole" story - I always tell people that "A kid with Down syndrome saved my life", because if it hadn't been for our youngest daughter being diagnosed with Celiac Disease, I never would have started on a "research journey" that has led me to discover a "diet" (actually, it's more of a lifestyle) that EVERYONE can live with for the rest of their life.
Have any of you ever been tested for Celiac Disease? I urge you to get tested ASAP, as many seemingly unrelated health conditions (diabetes, asthma, arthritis, osteoporosis, obesity, infertility, just to name a few) can be caused by undiagnosed/untreated CD. CD is a malabsorptive condition, and up to 40% of people who are diagnosed with CD are overweight, with 30% of that number being morbidly obese (this goes against what the medical community has been taught). If you have CD (or Non-Celiac Gluten Sensitivity) and you go on a Gluten-Free (GF) diet, you will more than likely find that the pounds start to fall off without you doing anything other than eliminating gluten from your diet.
I know about CD because our youngest daughter was diagnosed with it last April (she had NO symptoms, it was picked up on a routine blood screening for kids with Down syndrome). Since then, I have been on a GF diet and have dropped from 275 lbs. to 237 lbs. while eating all of the foods that I love. It is, without a doubt, the EASIEST "diet" that I have ever been on! The other benefit that I have found - quite unexpectedly - is that ALL of my bloodwork numbers have improved, the arthritis in my knee disappeared within 24 hours of going GF, and I have more energy than I did when I was a teenager. The reason that all of this wonderful stuff happened is that for the first time in a long time my body was absorbing ALL of the nutrients that I ingested - it's that simple.
You may want to try a gluten-free diet for a while and see what happens. I have been amazed at our family's results over the past 10 months. Best of all, it doesn't "feel" like a diet at all! Some people who have excess weight have Celiac Disease and don't know it. There is a blood test that can be run, but if you don't have any other health issues, it is possible that you are just gluten sensitive. Either way, the "cure" for both conditions is a GF diet for life.
The reality is that SO many more people are Gluten-Sensitive than have actual CD, but a person has to have a CD screen run first to determine if they do, indeed, have it. Only 3% of people who have CD actually know that they have it, yet almost 1% of the general population is believed to have it. That's a
If you go to www.celiac.com , there is a link there which lists all of the health conditions which are known and suspected to be associated with untreated Celiac Disease. If you have 2 or more of those conditions, you are more likely to have CD. Many people have their blood tests come back negative for CD, yet they still have problems, so they try a Gluten-Free diet. If their symptoms clear up, they can safely assume that they are gluten sensitive.
The best thing about the GF diet is that we have been able to eat ALL of the foods that we love - REAL ranch dressing, baked potatoes with butter, sour cream, and cheese, Snickers bars, ice cream, chicken-fried steak with gravy, etc. - the only difference is that the flours that we use when cooking are gluten free (you can find these in many different stores or online). We have been eating "full" fat foods (real butter, sour cream, cheese, etc.) and have actually lost weight and seen our bloodwork numbers come down significantly. My doctor (PCP) was skeptical, but the results don't lie, and now she is looking into the GF lifestyle as "the way to go" for all of her patients!
I don't know where you live, but chances are that you have a Gluten Intolerance Group (GIG) chapter nearby. They can be a wonderful source of information, and most GIG's offer a Restaurant Guide that tells you what is "safe" at various restaurants. Now, be aware that if you want to have the same results as we have, you CANNOT eat any gluten whatsoever - there is no such thing as "gluten lite"......
My suggestion would be to request your doctor to run a Celiac Screen for you, and then do a "trial" GF diet. You will want to do it for at least a couple of weeks, preferably for a month. Don't be discouraged if your weight "yo-yos", because what will be happening is that your body will be converting fat cells into muscle, and muscle mass weighs more. The weight loss will be slow, but it will be steady over time. I have "lost" 5 pounds, then "regained" it over and over due to this process, but the net result has been a 37 pound loss over a period of 10 months. I would probably have lost more, but I like to drink Cokes, and I don't like to exercise.......
My husband told me that if I DID quit the Cokes and started exercising, I could probably lose weight faster, but I told him that I am "conducting a scientific experiment", and I can only have one variable. Nobody believes me when I tell them that I am losing weight simply by eliminating gluten, so I am going to see how far this takes me. So far, so good! I am confident that I will be able to lose most, if not all, of my excess weight - it may take 3 or 4 years (maybe 5 or 6), but I figure it took me a while to put it on, so I can be patient.
Also, my skin isn't sagging like you see in so many people who lose weight so quickly on WLS. Since I am eating so much dietary fat, my skin is actually kind of glowing now, and my face is nice and soft. Plus, some of the complications that I have read about several years after surgery sound EXACTLY like the conditions that are seen in people with untreated CD - it can't be a coincidence that both situations involve malabsorption. The main difference is that one of them (CD) is very treatable. Even with a reversal, someone who has had WLS will NEVER get all of their intestinal tract back, so there will always be some form of malabsorption - not something I want to do at all......
One other website that you may want to check out is www.junkfoodscience.blogspot.com - a whole lot of food myths are debunked there, including the one about dietary fat causing heart disease. There are LOTS of interesting articles on that site that you may find very interesting; I know I did!
Good luck, and please keep me updated! I am always available to answer questions. PM me, and I will send you my contact information –
Links to Obesity/CD Related Articles:
Obesity, Overweight & Celiac Disease
Link to Essay about Gluten Sensitivity: (This is EXTREMELY informative!)
http://www.baumancollege.org/pdfs/articles/Gluten_Sensitivit y.pdf
Link to Celiac Disease / Gluten Sensitivity Symptoms:
www.celiac.com/articles/1106/1/Celiac-Disease-Symptoms/Page1 .html
Teresa Koch
Fort Worth,
Well, one thought I have is that any of us can just get on a gluten free diet, skip the diagnosis! As you say, there are many cooking classes for it and suddenly a glut of info on it, so there is no excuse if anyone wants to just see how it might work.
I salute you for trying to get the word out!
"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not." ~Mark Twain
You can certainly do that if you want to. However, if anyone has a history of related health complications, they may want to be tested first. That way, if they DO have a positive test, they will have a "reason" to have other family members tested.
The average time for a person to "finally" be diagnosed with CD is around 10 years - it is the LAST thing that most doctors will test for, because it is still considered a rare condition. Also, the symptoms that are seen in adults are very different from those that are seen in children; children tend to be diagnosed fairly quickly.
The effects of gluten are cumulative, and by the time the antibodies show up on a blood test, quite a bit of damage has been done to the digestive system. Also, most doctors don't know that just because someone tests negative for CD at one checkup, it doesn't mean that they will not test positive later on down the road.
One reason that people may want to go ahead and have a screen run is that they may get a "definitive" diagnosis. I can't tell you how many people looked at us like we had grown 2 heads when we said that we couldn't eat gluten. However, once we had the CD and Gluten Sensitive diagnoses (and we went one step further and had an independent test done that looked at antibodies in the intestinal tract rather than the blood which showed that all of our other family members were producing antibodies to gluten and tTG), we had a "medical" reason that we couldn't eat gluten.
Also, if a person KNOWS that they have CD, they know that they will need to adopt a GF regimen for life - there can be no "falling off the wagon" as it were. I know that for me, regardless of what my test results may have shown, I felt SO GOOD when I stopped eating gluten, that I will NEVER eat it again. It turns out that I have the skin manifestation of CD, yet my bloodwork "said" that I didn't have it - that is one of the weird things about my particular condition, however; a lot of people who have it will not test positive for CD, yet there is 100% correlation between the 2 conditions!
Anyway, I just wanted to get this information out to as many people as possible, as it may save someone a lot of health heartaches down the road. I know that for me, I almost started crying when I realized that all this time, it WASN'T my lack of willpower that caused me to eat all of the time - it was my body not absorbing all of the nutrients that I was eating. My stomach kept telling my brain that it wasn't full yet! Since I have been on a GF diet, I don't eat nearly as much, and I feel full all of the time - pretty neat, huh?
Love to all,
Teresa K.
Yeasr ago, when I was self-diagnosing my binge/purge issues, I came across lots of discussions on just plain old intolerance to wheat/eggs/dairy. All that you say can be true for folks with serious, very hard to diagnose, intolerances.
I think that can be also why so many of us do better on Atkins-like diets, which promotes eating plain meats, veggies, full fat dairy above other foods.
Two very famous doctors for women's health, Drs. Peeke and Northrup both contend that most older women can no longer process grains in their systems. I know for me, eating higher grade grains like barley, oats, quinoa just does not bloat me out! At that, i cannot eat too much in one sitting.
Being menopausal has made me very sensitive to eating most breads - if i have a sandwich I eat about half the bread or use sprouted breads or unleavened.
I understand your mission! never know....
"The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don't want, drink what you don't like, and do what you'd rather not." ~Mark Twain
Neecee,
Be VERY careful with Barley and Rye, as both of those grains are in the same "class" as Wheat - all of the triticale-based grains contain gluten. That entire class of grains will not "release" their starch in water, so tTG has to be added to them to chemically break down their bonds. All of the other grains are water-soluble; that is, they will release their starch when water is added.
Incidentally, even though beer is alcoholic, it is brewed, so people with gluten intolerances cannot process beer (hence the "beer belly"). However, Scotch Whiskey and Rye are OK, because they are distilled - go figure, huh?
Soy sauce has perhaps the highest concentration of wheat in it - that may explain why so many people are hungry just an hour after they eat Chinese food.......
Teresa K.
Denise Phares/kitties4
General Mills already has Rice Chex converted to GF, and they are in the process of getting several other Chex cereals converted as well. Sometime this summer, Betty Crocker will be coming out with several GF mixes for things like cookies and cakes. In the meantime, there are lots of other mixes that can be used. If you have a Central Market or Whole Foods Market near you, they carry a pretty good selection of GF products. Also, the celiac website that I referred you to carries an abundant number of products.
If you go to the "Forum" section of the celiac website, you can look for the "Weight Related" forum page. Most people have a lot of problems keeping weight on when they have undiagnosed CD, but as I said before, up to 40% of Celiacs are overweight, with 30% of that number being MO.
Many people are gluten sensitive without having CD. In both conditions, the body is essentially telling the brain that it doesn't have enough nutrients. THAT is the reason that so many people with CD/GS are overweight! I have read story after story on the forums about people who struggled with their weight all of their lives, just to find that once they implement a GF regimen that the weight falls off.
As I said before, though, the weight is going to come off slowly. Your body will be burning fat, which will make you lose weight, but it will also convert food into muscle mass, which will make it APPEAR as if you are gaining weight. The upside of the muscle mass conversion is that muscle burns food much more efficiently, so you will start to see a net LOSS in your weight. Believe me, though, you will find that you will fit into smaller clothes pretty quickly, and your body shape will change dramatically over time. I have quite the cute little waistline now! Of course, there is still a LONG way to go, but I look better in clothes now, and I am not afraid to buy form-fitting shirts anymore.
The first month or so will be the hardest one, mostly because you are trying to figure out what foods you can eat. As the months go on, you will become much more comfortable and you will probably find that you are experimenting with lots of fun recipes. You do have to eliminate gluten COMPLETELY from your diet for this to work, however, as just a little bit of gluten in the intestinal tract will cause problems. If you are like me, though, you will feel SO good when you drop gluten (and you will be able to tell when you do get hold of it) that you won't WANT to eat anything with gluten in it ever again!
One last thing - be SURE that you don't limit calories or eat "low-fat" items. As long as you eat a lot of full-fat foods, your tummy is going to get full faster, and you will find yourself eating less food each day. If you are like me (and lots of people on the Celiac forums), you will be able to eat whatever you want - as long as it doesn't have gluten in it - and pretty soon, you will be thumbing your nose at all of the skinny minnies who are eating nothing but grapefruit and celery! Pretty sweet, huh?
Teresa K.
I am Denise Phares/kitties4, and my family doctor just called me back while I was reading about those different CD websites. She doesn't recommend a blood test for CD, and she has conveyed the info through her nurse/receptionist that I don't have the symptoms of CD. Is she right, or is she just out of date? The receptionist said that if I want to talk with her further about it, I could make an appointment with her. Do you feel that I need to do this?
All my adult life, since I was around 8 years old, I've been a compulsive overeater, and have been on more than 20 weight loss diets, only to gain the weight back again, and end up even heavier. Lately, I've been loosely following my doctor's diabetes management food plan, trying to stay at 1600 calories, and I've been slowly losing weight, also. But I have infrequent binges because of my emotional states at times, and I have severe sleep apnea (which I use a CPAP to correct) because of my morbid obesity.
Thank you for your information. I may consider the possibility that my doctor isn't up to date on her CD information, and that your websites may be more current than she is.
Denise Phares/kitties4
Denise,
What most doctors don't know is that the "typical" symptoms of CD only present in 3% of the people who actually HAVE CD. Our daughter didn't have ANY of the symptoms, and neither did I - unless you look at the list of symptoms on www.celiac.com that they list. The "typical" symptoms are failure to gain weight, constant diarrhea/constipation, and gastrointesinal complaints. The list of "other" symptoms is too long to list here!
If you are interested, there is an excellent book out there by one of the leading CD researchers in the US, Dr. Peter Green of the Celiac Center at Columbia University. The title of it is "Celiac Disease: The Hidden Epidemic", and it explains how terribly underdiagnosed CD is in this day and age. If you really want to have the CD test run, I would just INSIST that your doctor run one. If he/she still doesn't want to run the test, you can just go on a GF diet and see what happens. Of course, you can always tell your doctor that if your test comes back positive, he/she will see an immediate change in your health for the better. My doctor is thrilled to death with my results! Best of all, in the long run I am going to end up SAVING her money, because I am not going to be needing as many medicines, tests, or office visits. I haven't been as sick as I normally am in the wintertime (I didn't get hoarse once; an almost annual event before I started GF!), and I feel fantastic. My blood pressure is going down, and my bloodwork numbers are all in the "good" range. But you know, if your doctor isn't willing to give you a test to see if you can improve your health.......
Again, please be aware that even if your CD test comes back negative, you may still be gluten-sensitive. The CD screen will simply let you know if you have an "active" case of CD. You may also want to talk to your insurance company if your doctor isn't willing to run a CD screen. I know that when I went in to my doctor's office 6 months after starting GF, she had just had 3 MO patients diagnosed with CD - she was shocked that their results came back positive, since she still thought that the "typical" symptoms were the ones that presented in most patients. I think that she is looking at testing LOTS more patients since then; she commented that she was surprised at how many seemingly unrelated symptoms turned out to be gluten-related -
Teresa K.
When research low carb diets (how I went from a 26/28 to a 14/16)...I came across gluten free diets because of the elmination of grains. The research was interesting and supported my reason for low carbing.
I agree about the wonderful benefits!
BTW, did you know CD is becoming a huge problem in of all places--ITaly? My pasta loving ancestral relatives are having a hell of a time!
