The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet: Activate Your Body's Natural Ability to Burn Fat and Lose Weight Fast (61 page)

Gluten and dairy are by nature inflammatory (dairy may raise your insulin level even if you are not sensitive or allergic, so I recommend eating it only occasionally if you have diabesity). If you don’t experience any reactions like the ones listed above within seventy-two hours, you should be safe and can freely incorporate the food.

In general, if you tolerate gluten and dairy, it is okay to eat them from time to time, but don’t make them staples of your diet. For dairy choices, be sure to stay away from industrial processed cheese, as it is full of chemicals and additives and hormones. Also, modern forms of wheat (dwarf wheat) have much higher starch content and more gluten
proteins, which make them more likely to cause inflammation. Try to find “heirloom” sources of gluten and dairy, such as grass-fed, heirloom cows and locally sourced cheeses. They may be more expensive, but they taste better and it will take less of them to satisfy your appetite.

You can also experiment with other grains such as spelt, rye, or Kamut. If you are not gluten sensitive, whole-kernel German rye bread can be a wonderful addition to your diet. Or try the “new” Einkorn wheat eaten by the ancient Sumerians. It is what we ate for thousands of years before hybridization led to the modern-day Frankenwheat we eat now. (This “new and improved” dwarf wheat has led to a 400 percent increase in celiac disease and caused 7 percent of the population to have gluten sensitivity.)

If you do experience a reaction, I recommend entirely eliminating the offending food from your diet for twelve weeks. For most people, this is enough time to allow the inflammation to cool. After that, you likely will once again be able to consume that food in small doses because the elapsed time will have allowed your leaky gut to heal. Still, I suggest limiting any problem food to once or twice a week so you don’t trigger the same cycle of illness.

Often, it is one primary problem food, either gluten or dairy, that triggers the leaky gut, and then you react to a lot of other foods. If you stay off gluten and dairy, you can often include other foods you once reacted to without having problems. In other words, once you remove the primary triggers, the other allergens simply won’t affect you as much. Again, though, I suggest limiting any potentially problematic foods to just once or twice a week so you don’t trigger the same cycle of illness.

If you still react after eliminating that food for twelve weeks, avoid that food entirely, or see a physician, dietician, or nutritionist skilled in managing food allergies.

On the Blood Sugar Solution Plan for Life, you can add back in a few treats (such as coffee or tea, alcohol, and sweets) if you choose, but
all in moderation and as an occasional pleasure, not a staple of everyday life. You can find some healthier sweets and treats in
The Blood Sugar Solution Cookbook
. Some people tolerate coffee or tea just fine, so I am least worried about that, but alcohol and sugar can be awful triggers for weight gain and out-of-control eating behaviors. Remember, they hijack your brain chemistry—so please be careful. Pay attention and track your responses. If you notice that cravings get triggered, it’s a sign to scale back on the treats.

In
Part I
, I talked about the bigger issues that are contributing to our obesity and health crises. Our first order of business was to get
you
healthy and help you break free of food addiction. Now that we’ve gotten you on track, it will take a bigger effort from all of us combined to take back not just our own health, but also the health of our families and society. Think big here, because together, with our collective will and action, we can address the deeper challenges that created the health and weight problems in the first place. Together, we can fix our big fat global problem and make our world safer and healthier for ourselves and our children. Getting healthy is indeed a team sport!

Imagine if we lived in an environment where health wasn’t something we had to “protect,” but rather something that was the expected norm. Sadly, we have come to accept obesity as the new normal. I was recently looking at some family pictures and saw pictures of my grandmother Mary, who we also called fat Grandma Mary. Although she might have been technically overweight, by today’s standards, she looks pretty normal. When I was a kid, I remember going to the carnival and seeing the “fat” lady, who weighed in at 300 pounds. Now we see 300-pound people everywhere we go. Just go to McDonald’s, or the supermarket, or the fairgrounds.

At Saddleback Church in California, where we created the healthy living program called the Daniel Plan, the average weight for women
was 170 pounds and the average weight for men was 210 pounds. And that was
average!

This shift has happened over twenty or thirty years, almost without our noticing. It is said that if you place a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will jump right out. But if you put a frog in cold water and turn up the heat and slowly boil the water, the frog will cook to death. We are like those frogs, slowly coming to a boil in a similarly intolerable situation. We accept seat belt extenders as normal on airplanes. We accept supersize portions as standard options. Why is the smallest soda at a movie theater thirty-two ounces?

We have to begin challenging the idea that all this is normal and acceptable.

Diabesity is now our single biggest public health problem at home and abroad. Today, the leading cause of death in the developing world is not infectious disease or starvation, but obesity-related chronic disease. It kills 50 million people a year; that’s twice the number of people who die from infection or starvation.

Why should we care about this? For so many reasons, not the least of which is that economic issues related to the obesity epidemic pose huge problems for us and for our children’s future. One in five dollars of our gross national product goes to pay for health care costs caused mostly by diabesity, and the amount is growing by the day. These costs are the single biggest driver of our national debt. It’s why we have had to mortgage our future and why China owns much of our national debt.

The obesity epidemic threatens our global economic competitiveness and national security. It undermines our ability to manage our federal debt, to educate and maintain a healthy and productive work force, and to maintain a viable military (up to 70 percent of military recruits are refused for service because they are too fat to fight).

On the home front, we have a choice about the kind of food environment we create today for children. Our children’s future depends on turning the tide
now
for how food is made and sold in this country. We
want to leave a legacy of health and well-being—not toxicity and chemically induced food addiction.

So what can you do to help fight back against the industrial food system? A lot! Here are some important strategies for becoming a game changer in the worldwide effort to take back our collective health.