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  • Writer's pictureCJ

That game-changing book

Updated: Apr 7, 2019

Recall the book my co-worker, the nutrition researcher, handed me? That book is Wheat Belly, written by cardiologist, Dr. William Davis. Reading this book (twice!) was the first step I made toward changing my life forever, and wow, what a doozy of a change it's been.


I'll admit at the time I read the book in October 2016, I did not incorporate this change into my life. I was tremendously overwhelmed trying to find a new job (I mentioned in my last post that in October 2016 my divorce had just finalized on the same day I was given notice on a job I hated). I just didn't have it in me to make this kind of a radical change at that time (had I known how I would feel in only 10 days, I would have done it in a heartbeat). Instead, I focused on one thing--finding a new job, and I did manage to find a new job rather quickly. So I finished the final days of my old job (they had eliminated my position and given me a month to wrap up loose ends), flew to Arizona to see my parents who I hadn't visited in years, and when I returned, I launched into the job, hopeful that perhaps the new level of pain I had reached was due to the toxicity of that old job. Well, some of that is a true statement. Stress can take a serious toll on the body by increasing inflammation. The new job turned out to be fantastically boring, but it gave me a breather and the holidays quickly zoomed by. Unfortunately, the new job also required me to walk blocks each day from my assigned parking garage to the office. For anyone else, this would have been a golden opportunity to get in a few steps and a bit of cardio. But for me, I was still suffering from rampant tendonitis and bursitis (including severe plantar fasciitis) and that chronic limp I had was now causing--what I would later learn--permanent damage to my right knee. Things were getting grim. I tried knee braces, new shoes, arch supports, icing my feet ... everything I could find online. I even saw a foot specialist and paid money for custom made insoles. Nothing helped. And then I remembered the book I had borrowed from my co-worker, recalled a 10-day detox the author had mentioned, and quickly bought a copy for myself to read a second time. I knew something had to change. We were only talking 10 days for this detox. Who can't change their diet for 10 days? (My pithy answer to this question is only someone who is not in enough pain.)


It gets worse before it gets better.


Have I mentioned the detox symptoms Dr. Davis warns about in his book? Yeah. Seems the body goes through massive withdrawals when you remove grain from your diet. For 9 of the 10 days, I felt like I had the flu or a massive hangover. It was quite awful. And keep in mind, I didn't eat that badly to begin with. But if I ate a salad, I usually had croutons. If I ate soup, I usually added crackers. I generally tried to incorporate some kind of wheat product into a meal at least once a day because my doctors told me to.


The day I started the detox, I was 155 pounds. When I finished the detox, I was 145 pounds. I'd literally dropped 10 pounds in 10 days! This honestly wasn't my goal at all. At the time, I just wanted to get rid of the pain. But wow, what a nice, natural side effect. What's more, when the withdrawal symptoms had completely faded by the 10th day, I realized about 75% of the pain in my tissues had vanished. I could actually press into my thighs or lower back and not flinch. In 10 days! Mind you, I had lived with this pain all of my life so I had never felt like this. It was quite startling. And it wasn't a pill or surgery that had helped me; it was the simple removal of grain from my diet.


Quite honestly, it felt like I'd experienced a miracle. It was the most life-altering discovery of my life. And the proof was right there in 10 days. I was hooked! If I could impact my health so greatly with this one step, imagine what else I could do? I was determined to do more. I wanted to start happening to my life instead of allowing my life to happen to me (to paraphrase a quote I'd once heard from the late Luke Perry). I became a researching machine.


Fast forward 2 years: I've been eating grain-free for two years now with great success and only a few sidesteps and/or setbacks along the way as I've tweaked my diet. Within the first six months of removing grain from my life, my weight dropped to 120 and is still 120 today. That's 35 pounds. My weight doesn't fluctuate and I never have to think about how much I'm eating--only what I'm eating. My chronic plantar fasciitis disappeared and has never returned. What's more, I discovered inflammation affects cholesterol. Since I work in a hospital, I'm fortunate enough to have my blood work done every 6 months and I decided to monitor that closely throughout this change. Remember my post on how thin I was as a teen? Well, even so, I'm one of those people who has had high cholesterol since they first tested me at 18. I've tried everything possible to lower it. Nothing worked. Since going grain free, my total cholesterol has dropped 36 points in 2 years. That may not seem like much, but that's more than I've ever been able to drop my cholesterol. Ever. AND, that's also considering that while my LDL (bad cholesterol) dropped 46 points, my HDL (good cholesterol) has increased to higher levels than they have ever been. So all together, my cholesterol ratio went from an at-risk 4 to a healthy 2.6. And my Body Mass Index (BMI) went from an at-risk 25.5 to a healthy 21. My triglycerides also dropped 62 points. (High triglycerides, if you don't know, are known to cause a myriad of health problems.) Also, after a year without grain those skin bumps that looked like cancer on my shoulders disappeared. The puffiness in my face decreased. I no longer needed daily antacids (many people don't know that taking omeprazole daily is associated with a lot of long-term health problems, including osteoporosis!).


So you can see the benefits to making this radical change to my diet were many and oh so very worth it. I'm not saying it was easy. And it's still a bummer sometimes when I eat out at restaurants because I have to be careful when I don't have an ingredients list in front of me. I generally stick with simple things like salmon with lemon butter, baked potatoes and salad or roasted/steamed vegetables. But is it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. 100%.


And because Dr. Davis' book changed my life so greatly, I also thought I'd mention he has a cookbook and a blog!


Stayed tuned for my next post: A simple step to curing my plantar fasciitis.



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