The switch to a gluten-free diet promotes healthy food choices that have helped many to lose weight and reverse symptoms of the disease. Eliminating addictive refined carbohydrates found in bread, pasta, and cakes automatically reduces calories in the diet. Wheat products that elevate blood sugar levels and increase body fat become a thing of the past. Nutritious whole foods take their place, improving health and increasing energy.
But you will often hear of those who struggle on a gluten-free diet. Their weight and flab actually increase. Their health doesn’t improve. They may even develop problems with yeast overgrowth or insulin resistance.
A gluten-free diet is supposed to be healthy. So how does this happen?
A Growing Trend: Gluten-Free Junk Food
Gluten-free goodies line the shelves of health food stores. Even supermarkets are getting into the game. People love these products because it means that they can go gluten-free without giving up many of their favorite foods.
Unfortunately, these products replace toxic gluten proteins with fattening starches. Rice flour, potato starch, tapioca starch, and cornstarch rapidly increase blood sugar levels for long periods of time, even more so than sugar. This prompts a spike in insulin, which stores sugar into your fat cells as fatty acids.
Processed Gluten-free products contain just as much sugar as their conventional counterparts. As far as your body is concerned, you are basically eating a product that is made entirely of sugar. When you trade your conventional pizza crust, brownie mix, and pancakes for gluten-free varieties of the same foods, you exchange one fattening, unhealthy substance for another.
A Refined Carbohydrate is a Fattening Health Hazard
All carbohydrates turn to sugar (glucose), so it’s important to be mindful of the amount you consume. Not all carbohydrates are the same, however. Refined carbohydrates are quickly converted and released into the bloodstream at a high rate.
It isn’t accurate to say that all calories are the same. The source of your calories influences whether they become food for fat cells or nourishment for muscles and organs.
For Weight Loss and Healing, Glutenous Grains Should Be Replaced With Whole Foods
According to some experts, about 60 percent of the population is gluten intolerant, even if they don’t test positive for celiac disease. Gluten can disrupt healthy gut bacteria, causing damage to the intestinal lining that protects the rest of the body from pathogens and food particles.
A cupcake doesn’t become a good food choice simply because it lacks the gliadin protein. Simply replacing glutenous refined carbohydrates with gluten-free refined carbohydrates won’t help heal your intestinal lining or promote the production of healthy gut bacteria.
In order to be successful, a gluten-free diet should replace damaging, fat-producing items with nutritious whole foods and fermented products like yogurt. This will rebuild a healthy intestinal tract, promote healing, and remove body fat.
Some Foods Satisfy Your Appetite While Others Increase It
Sweet and highly palatable foods only stimulate your appetite, not satisfy it. Human and animal studies show that eating sweet foods regularly only increases your appetite for sweets. Your palate becomes desensitized to sweetness, causing you to increase it more and more.
Highly palatable processed foods also stimulate your appetite. Intense flavors not found in nature stimulate reward pathways in your brain. This process increases cravings and promotes food addiction.
The Switch Isn’t Easy, But It’s Worth the Effort
Like other habits, changing the way you eat is not easy. If you are used to eating a donut or muffin for breakfast every day, getting yourself out of that rut is going to take some time to get used to. But when you eliminate these foods from your diet, you soon see that you don’t even have a desire for them.
When you choose natural foods over processed varieties, you become more sensitive to flavors. Your coffee that used to need three teaspoons of sugar now has a bold flavor without it. Cooked carrots burst with sweetness, and a handful of frozen blueberries is a satisfying dessert.
It is difficult to imagine life without brownies and bagels when you’re addicted to refined carbohydrates, but it can happen. Appetite and cravings are biological; they are not character defects. The foods that you have been told are good for you–complex, refined carbohydrates–are the very source of your weight control issues.
Resources:
Fine, Kenneth. “Early Diagnosis Of Gluten Sensitivity: Before the Villi Are Gone.” Enterolab. Web. 02 June 2012.
Temple, NJ. “Refined Carbohydrates – a Cause of Suboptimal Nutrient Intake.” National Center for Biotechnology Information. U.S. National Library of Medicine, 10 Apr. 1983. Web. 02 June 2012.
Sclafani, A., and K. Ackroff. “The Relationship between Food Reward and Satiation Revisited.” Physiology & Behavior 82.1 (2004): 89-95. Print.
Berridge, Kent C. “Food Reward: Brain Substrates of Wanting and Liking.” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews 20.1 (1996): 1-25. Print.
“Gliadin, Zonulin, and Gut Permeability: Effects on Celiac and Non-celiac Intestinal Mucosa and Intestinal Cell Lines, , Informa Healthcare.” Scandinavian Journal of Gastroenterology. Informa healthcare. Web. 02 June 2012.
Davis, William. Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health. Emmaus, Penn.: Rodale, 2011. Print.
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