Improve you diet by cutting out wheat products

What you need to know:

  • First up, the white, fluffy “bread” we now eat every morning with our tea bears little resemblance to what our ancestors ate.

  • For one, the gluten content is considerably higher. While gluten’s “glueyness” improves the way the finished product is after baking, it wreaks havoc on our guts.

  • Our bodies simply are not designed to handle so much of this hybrid wheat that we consume.

If there was just one thing I could change about my diet, what should that be?

This is a question that really had me stumped, not because I did not know what could be changed, but rather that there were so many things I would choose: from drinking more water to eating more vegetables to cutting down on your junk food.

But then, I reasoned, the writer of this question, like many of you, already know these things.

What this person wanted was something that he had not thought to do. And with that, I had my answer: cut wheat out of the diet.

When I first started talking about eliminating wheat, my patients were up in arms.

If bread had been a staple since the early days of the Bible, why was it suddenly so bad for you? Furthermore, if I was asking them to cut it out of their diets, what were they supposed to eat instead?

HAVOC ON GUTS

First up, the white, fluffy “bread” we now eat every morning with our tea bears little resemblance to what our ancestors ate. For one, the gluten content is considerably higher. While gluten’s “glueyness” improves the way the finished product is after baking, it wreaks havoc on our guts.

Our bodies simply are not designed to handle so much of this hybrid wheat that we consume.

As many of you will know, due to Baby Boy Mukherjee’s issues with my breastmilk, I have been gluten-free for some time now (gluten is the protein found in wheat and other grains like rye and barley) and I eat brown rice, ugali, or even starchy root vegetables for the carbohydrate portion of my meals.

My diet was already pretty clean, so the benefits I can report are more like icing on the cake.

However, as many of my patients will testify, cutting out wheat has given them clearer skin, better bowel movements, sounder sleep, and more energy.

Now, of course, this assumes that you do not replace the wheat with junk food like chips.

You see, when wheat comes out of the diet, digestion automatically improves.

After just a few days, the peristaltic action that moves the food material through your gut becomes more efficient and waste is eliminated better. As a result, fewer toxins are reabsorbed in the bowel and you should start to feel more energetic.

This lower toxin load also explains why many report that joint pain improves.

Furthermore, as your bowel movements become more regular (ideally three times a day, one for every meal), this will be reflected in another of your organs of elimination: your skin.

Eruptions on the skin are normally nothing more than an angry bowel. 

Many of my patients also remark that they are fresher on waking up.

This is also due to improvement in bowel transit time. A healthier bowel really does translate to a healthier body.

So, tweak your diet and give it a go. Your day could look like sweet potato for breakfast, beef stew and rice for lunch, and githeri with greens for dinner. It is that easy.