The Hormone Reset Diet (24 page)

• If you have five or more of these symptoms,
you very likely have a problem with grains, particularly gluten. You have the hallmark symptoms that show inflammatory, allergic, digestive, autoimmune, mood, or cognitive problems. Go grain free and
consider asking your doctor for a blood (serum) test of your response to gluten (see the Test Yourself section, page 169).

•
If you have fewer than five of these symptoms or are unsure,
you might have a problem with grains, and I urge you to perform the three-day Grain Free reset.

Gena Lee Nolin, a star of the 1990s hit TV series Baywatch, seemed like the picture of perfect health at forty-one. With bronze skin, shining eyes, and a killer bod, she was the woman we all wanted to be. But internally she suffered.

Over a short period of time, she developed a baffling array of symptoms: exhaustion, brain fog, bloating, depression, and hair loss. When she got pregnant, her symptoms worsened. Soon, she developed a life-threatening heart condition (due to a thyroid issue that was misdiagnosed), which required medications with many serious side effects. And then there was the weight she simply couldn’t lose. After each of her pregnancies, it took Herculean efforts to fit into her skimpy red bathing suit. Gena ate perfectly and exercised hard with a trainer nearly every day—and her weight would barely budge.

Like millions of American women, Gena was struggling with undiagnosed thyroid disease. Thyroid problems leave women feeling anything but beautiful. After they describe their debilitating symptoms, they often find themselves stigmatized by friends, family, and doctors, and they blame themselves for not being able to get their act together. Gena was finally diagnosed by one astute doctor as having autoimmune thyroiditis, a disease in which the thyroid gland is attacked by the body’s own cells. Approximately 90 percent of Americans with low thyroid function have autoimmune thyroiditis, which means that one in every one thousand people are affected. But many people have experiences similar to Gena’s; it took ten years for her to get the correct
diagnosis, and she was told more than fifty times by doctors that there was nothing wrong. Gena isn’t alone.

After finally receiving the correct diagnosis in 2009, Gena went on an aggressive campaign to heal her body. She kicked grains to the curb and has been gluten free for more than three years. She began thyroid medication. And within seventy-two hours, Gena was a new woman. “I was almost symptom free,” she told me in amazement. When she fixed her low thyroid function through cutting out grains and augmenting her thyroid hormone levels, Gena lost weight and felt great, and life became a walk on the beach
—
and she published a superb book about it, called
Beautiful Inside and Out: Conquering Thyroid Disease with a Healthy, Happy, “Thyroid Sexy” Life.
¹
I was so inspired by Gena’s powerful story and her happy ending, I even wrote the foreword to her book!

Check out Gena’s awesome website, www.officialgenaleenolin.com, where she answers questions and offers an authentic conversation between women around the world, and conference calls with top doctors. Gena truly found the grace of hormonal reset and is applying her newfound vitality to spread the word!

It’s important to recognize why both gluten and grains can be bad for your gut—and your weight-loss efforts. Gluten is a protein found in some grains, but not all. If you love your carbs, there are plenty of healthy nongrain alternatives, such as sweet potatoes, yams, and plantains.

Grains are like the bully on the playground, pretending to be your friend but eventually causing you to be miserable instead. I should know: when I went grain free several years ago, I flipped the switch on fat storage and lost weight. Here are the top ten scary facts about grains:

1. Grains can keep you addicted to the very foods that are causing the worst damage by making you hungry for more. Under these conditions, it’s no wonder you are having problems losing weight.

2. Grains (yes, even gluten-free ones) cause blood sugar spikes that lead to your body depositing more fat, usually at your waist. These carbs enter your bloodstream too quickly, in the form of glucose, causing your blood sugar to spike, followed by an insulin surge, which leads to biological addiction. This is the pattern that is linked not just to getting fat but also to the development of diabetes and even Alzheimer’s disease.
²
Grains, bread, and potatoes are the most positively correlated foods when it comes to how much a food raises your blood sugar.
³

3. In one study of 117,366 men and women aged forty to seventy-four, eating more refined grains predicted an 80 percent increased risk of heart disease.
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In the United States, 80 percent of grains are consumed in the form of refined flour.

4. Men and women respond differently to refined grains when it comes to metabolic syndrome (the constellation of symptoms that signal a broken metabolism, including a thick waist, abnormal cholesterol, high blood pressure, and/or problems with blood glucose). Men are at greater risk for metabolic syndrome when they eat a higher proportion of carbohydrates in their diet, but women are at risk for metabolic syndrome based solely on their intake of refined grains, including rice and pasta.

5. More carbs may reduce your fertility, even if you’re otherwise a healthy woman.
⁵
The worst offenders are high-glycemic-index foods, such as cold breakfast cereals, white rice, and potatoes.

6. In a Harvard study of eighty-three thousand women, an intake combination of lower carbohydrates, higher proteins, and
higher fats was not linked to risk of heart disease; in fact, vegetable sources of fat and protein were tied to a moderately reduced risk. A higher glycemic load in the same study was associated with a 90 percent greater risk of heart disease.
⁶

7. Refined grains are linked to weight gain in women.
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Examples include white rice, pasta, pastries, doughnuts, and anything with white flour, including cookies and cake.

8. Twenty years ago, we were told to eat more grains and cut the fat. Since then, the diagnosis of diabetes has tripled, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
⁸

9. Toxins from mold, called mycotoxins, are found in wheat and other grains. They make you fat and cranky. In one study, 65 percent of cereals contained at least one mycotoxin.
⁹

10. Grains contain potentially harmful anti-nutrients beyond gluten, including

• Agglutinins, a type of lectin that may cause leaky gut, dysbiosis (overgrowth of bad bacteria in the gut), and inflammation;

• Phytates (or phytic acid) that can cause leaky gut and reduce the absorption of certain minerals (calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, and zinc), which may lead to mineral deficiency; and

• Digestive enzyme inhibitors, which may cause leaky gut and dysbiosis and stimulate the immune system (also found in dairy, legumes, nuts, and seeds).

The solution to these dire facts? Go grain free! See how you feel when you cut out the grains in the next step of your food rehab.

How could it be that modern grains are linked to blood sugar problems and getting fat? It turns out that the grains common in the
Standard American Diet (SAD) came into the picture for humans relatively recently. Long before grains, we ate vegetables, seeds, nuts, and wild game. Our Paleolithic ancestors were adapted to a diet high in fiber, clean (and anti-inflammatory) proteins, and phytonutrients. So, it makes sense that many of us haven’t adapted to eating grains.

That’s where the Paleo diet comes in. This diet is supposed to mimic the food of our cavewoman ancestors. It includes fresh fruits and vegetables, meat, and seafood, while eliminating whole grains. Its stance on grains? That they don’t provide adequate nutritional support, and our bodies weren’t designed to digest them. Paleo makes a lot of sense to me, but I highly recommend some modifications for women. Although I agree with the consensus to cut out the grains, women must be careful with carb restriction. Cutting out all carbs on a very low carb or ketogenic diet may lead to thyroid problems, mood issues, adrenal dysfunction, and heart complications. For that reason, I designed the Hormone Reset Diet to eliminate the grains but not cut your carbs so low that you’re bingeing or otherwise having your best intentions backfire.

Overall, the Paleo diet helps most men and some women get lean. So, let me share the important tweaks proven to make Paleo work for you.
¹⁰

• If you’re trying to lose weight, focus on your pound per day of vegetables and you’ll get the carbs you need.

• Eat carbs, such as the beloved roasted sweet potato, at night twice per week.

• Make sure to get your vitamin D,
¹¹
because most of us are deficient and it boosts metabolism. The Paleo diet works a whole lot better with sunlight (to improve your circadian rhythm) and added vitamin D—I recommend 2,000 IU (international units) per day.

I want to honor you for all the effort you’ve put into your Hormone Reset up to this point, and you’re more than halfway there! The good news is that it gets easier starting now, and one reason is that you are losing your taste for the foods that harm your metabolism. Here are a few startling and hopeful facts about your taste buds, which is where you sense the nutrients that you eat:
¹²

• You rebuild new taste buds once every two weeks, so after going grain free you will have a whole new set!

• Your taste buds use receptors for the following tastes: salty, sour, bitter, sweet, and umami. (If “umami” is a new word, keep in mind that the Japanese define it as a “pleasant savory taste” that is distinct from “salty.”)

• Each taste bud contains approximately fifty to one hundred taste cells.

• You have three thousand to ten thousand taste buds in your mouth, on the tongue, palate, and esophagus.

• Many women are in the habit of eating sweet foods. Because your taste buds are reset every two weeks, you will find that the foods that serve you best will start to taste better. You may notice during the Grain Free reset that steamed broccoli and spinach taste yummier than they did on Day 1.

• Advances from genomic medicine have taught us that much of taste is genetically determined. For instance, you may inherit the taste of increased bitterness from a parent (the gene is called TAS2R38), and every time you eat cruciferous vegetables, such as broccoli or cabbage or Brussels sprouts, or some other foods, including soy products and dark chocolate, you find they taste bitter and you do not enjoy these foods. Never fear! We have many other less bitter, nonstarchy vegetables for you to choose from, including asparagus, bell pepper, carrots, squash, and zucchini.

We can’t have a conversation about grains without talking about gluten, which is in so many of our favorite products. The word “gluten” is actually the Latin word for “glue”; it is the protein found in wheat, barley, and rye that provides elasticity to baked goods, such as bread, cereal, and pizza.

The problem is that gluten may make you fat. When ingested, gluten can sound an alarm in your gut and brain, trigger immune overreaction, increase appetite, and hook you into overeating. It can punch holes in the wall of the gut lining, leading to bloating, creating an aching belly, and causing your immune system to malfunction.

Even a small amount can cause discomfort. After staying off gluten and losing weight, I tried one slice of bread. Immediately I became bloated and couldn’t zip my cute jeans.

While gluten is widely consumed in the Western world, here’s the rub: it turns out that gluten is quite difficult to digest for the majority of people. You need special enzymes to break it down. Some experts believe that up to 80 percent of the population lacks sufficient enzymes needed to break down and assimilate gluten. It’s like trying to eat a whole onion—it’s a lot easier to consume when you chop the onion into smaller pieces, the way enzymes chop your gluten into smaller pieces that your body can handle more efficiently. When the gluten proteins are not sufficiently chopped down to size, they permeate the underlying immune tissue of the gut and lead to overstimulation of the immune system. That means your immune system can backfire and actually make you sick, such as with autoimmune conditions like Hashimoto’s disease.

In fact, several of the most serious health conditions we face, including diabetes, thyroid disease, and even autism (plus about fifty-two other diseases), may be linked to gluten consumption. The consensus among scientists is that gluten-containing grains are a
mistake of evolution
—that is, gluten creates a perfect storm of the conditions needed for human disease.
¹³

When you eat refined carbohydrates, gluten causes blood sugar to spike. People who go on a gluten-free diet are thereby avoiding the refined wheat products that cause their blood sugar to spike and then drop, which may account for the health benefits experienced by those who go gluten free.
¹⁴

I’m in awe when I consider how much work our gut does for us, and often without the appreciation and understanding that it rightfully deserves. Did you know that 60 percent of your immune system is directly below a single layer of cells in your small intestine (that’s the connector between your stomach and large intestine)? That single layer of cells protecting us from the outside world makes us quite vulnerable. It’s the true reason that gluten wrecks the gut so easily. Imagine if the windows of your home were made of aluminum foil instead of sturdy glass. During a storm, you’d feel pretty insecure. Over time, your “window” would probably start looking pretty haggard. The rain, wind, and cold air would inevitably start to come in. It’s the same with your gut. You need to take good care of it and protect it from the elements, and you will be much safer in the long run.