being green

My husband has been super preachy with me about my love affair with carbs over the last year. Prior to my pregnancy in 2012, we ate very healthy. We would obviously have ‘cheat days’ — aka our Vegas trip — for special occasions. But overall, we ate clean, we ate healthy, and we rarely (if ever) got sick.

Then pregnancy — dun, dun dunnnnn!! Carbs were the one thing that staved off the nausea. And boy did I eat them! Postpartum it’s been hard to give them back up.

I love potatoes. LOVE them. I love french fries and baked potatoes. Heck, even the french fries can be baked! I just love the crap out of potatoes!!

And bread. Which is weird cause you will rarely find me eating a sandwich. But I will eat me some bread, man. Especially brioche. And challah. And other buttery, flakey goodness.

And sugars. Well, aren’t these all really sugars?? Yes. Yes, they are. But I also have a sweet tooth. I won’t eat your normal ‘junk foods,’ like Little Debbie. Nope. My tastes for all of these foods are really specific. Local artisan breads, local cookies from teeny bakeries in town, and, well, with the potatoes I’m a lot less picky. Ha! I’ll eat any potatoes from anywhere.

So after one self-indulgent weekend, I looked at Chad and said “OK, I’m all in.”

The Wheat Belly Diet is based on the premise that if you cut out the wheat, you’ll lose the weight.

Wheat creates an insatiable appetite for that cycle of blood sugar spikes that make a person crave wheat and go back to it time and time again.

Here’s an article on MindBodyGreen about the effects of Gluten and Wheat on the body.

So here’s what I can eat unlimited amounts of (eating ’til full):

• Unlimited fresh or frozen veggies (excluding potatoes).
• Raw nuts & seeds.
• Healthy, unheated oils (such as coconut and avocado oil).
• Red meat, pork, fish, chicken, turkey, eggs. We use consider free-range, grass-fed and/or organic sources.
• Teas, coffee, water, unsweetened almond milk, coconut milk or coconut water
• Real cultured cheeses only (no processed ‘cheeses’ like velveeta or singles).
• Avocado, guacamole, and hummus.

Here’s what I can eat limited amounts of:

• Fruits are limited to 2 servings a day. Stay away from bananas and pineapples if possible because they are very high in sugar.
• Real fruit juices (which is nice because I love fresh juice!). But it’s limited to about 4 oz.
• 1 serving of any fat content milk per day.
• Legumes, beans, peas.
• Dark chocolate.

And here’s what I’m not allowed to eat at all:

• ”Gluten-free” foods made with rice flour, cornstarch, tapioca starch, or potato starch. Which is OK because we rarely eat anything with rice flour anyways. Chad ends up either grinding his own almond flour or using Bob’s Red Mill Coconut Flour!
• Fried foods (womp womp = my beloved french fries! Ha!)
• Fast food (which I never eat anyways).
• Hydrogenated fats/oils.
• Cured meats like hot dogs, sausages, and bacon with nitrates. (But Yay for nitrate free bacon! That’s what happens when you buy locally sourced and organic meats).
• Anything with high fructose corn syrup.
• Salad dressings.

Chad has been eating like this since the first of the year. I, on the other hand, am one week in. And in the last 7 days, I’ve lost 4 pounds!

I’ve eaten a lot of avocados (just plain – I know, I’m weird.), a lot of salads with chicken topped with homemade salad dressing (no yucky stuff!), raw/unsalted peanuts, pork chops, cheese and dark chocolate. And I didn’t have the opportunity to work out once during those seven days. Not once, and I lost 4 pounds! No joke.

I feel good. I feel really good actually. I had a moment of “Give me pizza!” Friday night. But I didn’t cave. And I’m so happy about that. It’s a long and slow process but I’m confident that this lifestyle change will produce amazing results for our family!