Sunday, January 2, 2011

Why I'm not really eating grains anymore, sorry for the inconvenience

I apologize in advance to anyone who's used to ordering pizza or feeding me spaghetti when I come around.  : )

So on and off over the past year, I've been experimenting with going grain free.  This year I'm planning to ramp up my effort even more.  I don't know if people are wondering why, but here I'll put it out there anyway in case you're interested.

The whole thing started with trying to lose weight in '08 to '09...  I started using The Daily Plate and calorie counting.  It worked for me for quite a while.  It had a handy graph that showed weight v. calorie intake.  I first noticed that if I ate veggies, I could get a lot more food for my calorie expenditure than if I ate breads, so I made a substitution. Then I noticed that after the initial weight loss, I'd go through plateaus and the periods where I'd drop weight again.  I also could track that the plateaus would be when I was eating grains and the drop periods with veg instead of grains (both were the same number of calories consumed & expended).  I love data! 

OK, fast forward to July/August of 2009 and I go to the MovNat seminar, they feed me "paleo" all week, I come home, get pizza & a beer & have fish & chips the next day for lunch.  Subsequently, I broke out in a rash around my torso and forearms.  I went to the doctor & the doctor wrote it off as being woods related eventhough it was a breakout pattern that is related to Celiac stuff.  At some point I requested the full test for both markers of Celiac & came back negative.

Starting with that MovNat experience, I experimented over the next year with on again/off again paleo/primal, and have done a lot of reading and personal research into human body metabolism and health and nutrition and all that jazz.  If you know me well, I've probably irritated the shit out of you this year with all of this.

There's been a lot of press this past year about Gluten Free diets & products and there's been some info about it and a bunch of articles about it being a fad and people are just jumping on the bandwagon.  "All these people are claiming to be 'gluten intolerant' and they're not celiacs so they're just making a fuss to be special & it's stupid" etc...

Here are two things:
1) Article on Celiac Diagnosis - summary: you're only celiac and get a celiac diagnosis once the villi in your intestine gets destroyed.  THEN you get the immuno response markers in your blood stream that they test for. The destroying happens over time.  Some people will get to this point, some people won't but that doesn't mean there's not damage going on because you can find the same markers in the stool of people who have a problem with it and who don't show up on the blood tests.  End result: lots of people can have issues and body responses without knowing this is the cause.
2) Article on digesstion of grains, comparing Europeans and Africans - summary: european children couldn't break down proteins in grains well while african children could because the african children have bacteria in their guts (coincidentally also found in the stomachs of termites) which breaks down the grain constituents for them.

After a while of experimenting on my own, here are a few of my own personal findings which are leading me to give up the grains for real (I don't mean to be a pain for meal planning, but it's a quality of life issue at this point):

When I go grain free:
  • my winter eczema (which has been getting progressively worse every year) is non-existent
  • my seasonal allergies are almost non-existent (used to be non-stop from March to November)
  • a lot of my low-grade aches & pains go away**
  • I don't get PMS bitchiness or cramps
  • my intestines normalize & I don't fart as much and become more "regular"
  • my mood swings disappear
  • when I don't get fed on time, I just get hungry, instead of turning into a raging psychotic bitch
  • I feel like I have more energy & my ability to move is improved.
  • I also *seem * to get sick a lot less
 ** I starred this one because to be honest, I didn't realize I was achy until I STOPPED eating grains & felt different.  You don't realize how shitty you feel until you feel good?

Anyway, I've at this point been so many time through the cycle of  grains/no grains that I can see definite patterns at this point and reasonably make these conclusions.  During allergy season, if I go on a weekend grain bender (this may be just eating like a normal person), my nose immediately starts running & clears up in a day or two when I go back to no grains.  Same with the eczema.  I currently have a little red crusty patch on my right calf and I've been partaking in the holiday splendor.  I went semi-clean again yesterday (today back to full clean) and it's a little better than it was. I expect it to be gone by tomorrow or the next day.

Anyway, to sum up:  once again, I'm not choosing this lifestyle to be difficult on other people; while the physical ailments are motiv, it's more the psychological effects that motivate me.  I don't like feeling like a raving lunatic - especially now that I can no longer blame it on being female or having PMS.  Now that I know I can control it by what I eat (or don't), I feel like anything else is being unfair to myself and my friends and family.

Also, not to get preachy, but seriously...  if you are reading this & have any sort of chronic pains, moodiness, really bad PMS, skin problems, allergies, or anything that classifies as an "inflammatory condition", try 30 days no grains.  Just try it.  If nothing changes, then so be it.  If something does change, then it may be helpful!

p.s.  some may be tempted to argue "how can so many people have issues with grains?  we've been eating them for thousands of years & some cultures still live almost exclusively on them!"  Well, true.  people have been eating them for a long time, but we've also stopped eating dirt and termites.  that could, ultimately, be what's making the difference.  I don't know.  All i know is that since I can't take a termite supplement, I'll just stick to not eating grains as much as possible.

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