Reduce cortisol—As cortisol surges become less marked, sleep improves, circadian rhythms drift back toward normal, and the risk for diseases such as type 2 diabetes and Alzheimer’s dementia are reduced.
Improve libido and erectile function—The above hormonal improvements (reduced estrogen, increased testosterone, reduced inflammation) all add up to a return to vigorous interest in sex and the ability to perform as men are meant to perform. The effect can be powerful: Many men, resigned to accepting prescription testosterone replacement and taking drugs for erectile dysfunction when the opportunity demands, are able to return to normal life without such sexual performance crutches.
AS YOU CAN see, many of the benefits of living this lifestyle in both men and women develop because of the loss of visceral inflammatory wheat belly fat, while other effects develop specific to wheat/grain elimination, with additional benefits from the nutritional supplement program we follow. Grandma may have needed to shave her beard every day and your uncle may have had to wear loose-fitting sweaters to conceal his generous breasts, but the Wheat Belly lifestyle allows you to get your hormonal house in order.
LIFE IN THE MOSH PIT
Allow the peculiar changes related to grain consumption to develop in males, and the most extreme (though still common) form of hormonal disruption labeled Male Obesity Secondary Hypogonadism (MOSH) can develop, or just “hypogonadism,” which refers to abnormally low activity of the testes.
Men with MOSH experience overactivity of the aromatase enzyme in visceral fat, converting testosterone to estrogen. But add into the mix loss of bone density, sarcopenia (loss of muscle), increased intestinal permeability that allows bacterial lipopolysaccharide to enter the bloodstream and further amp up body-wide inflammation, increased levels of the hormone leptin that further magnify inflammation (leading to inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and cardiovascular disease), even impaired cognition.12 You’ve seen these men: They’re the ones with big tummies, female-shaped hips, generous breasts, red faces, skinny arms and legs, painful joints, hobbling from chair to chair and struggling to remain effective at their jobs. Such body- and mind-distorting effects are not just physical, but emotional, as well, as these men also typically suffer from diminished self-esteem, disengagement from social life, and depression.13
As with so many other afflictions of modern people, MOSH is on the rise, affecting as much as 10 percent of the male population. It is, like PCOS in women, a man-made phenomenon, created by foods that contribute to visceral fat accumulation.
Conventional “solutions” include testosterone injections, surgical breast reduction, gastric bypass, anti-inflammatory drugs and antidepressants, along with admonishments to exercise restraint in diet and engage in more physical activity—“move more, eat less”—none of which yields durable or effective long-term solutions. As so often happens in conventional healthcare, when someone suffers a multitude of health problems and body distortions it’s cast as their fault, not the fault of dietary advice and misinformed doctors and dietitians.
As with PCOS, the entire hormonal tangle of MOSH reverses with loss of visceral fat and efforts to restore bowel flora to something closer to normal, changes that allow the MOSHed male to throw away prescription drugs and other health crutches, instead allowing inflammation and hormones to settle back to normal, just as it should have been all along before dietary advice, doctors, dietitians, and other factors bungled it up.
HOT-BLOODED, SKIN-TIGHT, AND ROCK HARD
Living the Wheat Belly lifestyle can return you to being slender, small-waisted, cellulite- and drug-free, and fertile; not needing compressive clothing to conceal embarrassing body folds; and having interest in your partner—just as nature intended it to be before you were told what and how to eat and the hormonal disruptions of modern life set in. Slender, sinewy, six-packed, and ready to procreate or just enjoy moments of intimacy—that is what you were intended to do, unimpeded by hormonal distortions, layers of belly fat, or failure of interest or performance, much of it because of jelly donuts or multi-grain bread.
Conventional dietary advice, corrupt and misguided, has fiddled with your private parts. It’s time to hitch up your loincloth, put down the BLT sandwich, and allow your body to right its hormonal health, as provided by genetics. Follow the dietary script programmed by thousands of preceding generations and so many of the odd, seemingly unexplainable, modern hormonal phenomena that surround us simply go away without need for prescription drugs or storing human eggs in refrigerators.
There is so much more to the Wheat Belly lifestyle than just cutting calories or eating smaller portions, certainly more than the awful and misguided world of being “gluten-free.” Hormonal benefits that emerge with living the Wheat Belly lifestyle are profound, often life-changing, certainly health- and appearance-changing, regardless of what they wrote or didn’t write in your high school yearbook.
CHAPTER 17
WHEAT BELLY–SHRINKING RECIPES
ELIMINATING WHEAT AND grains from your diet is not insurmountably difficult, but it does require adopting some new ingredients and methods in the kitchen, as many of your standbys and family favorites will now be on the verboten list. I’ve come up with simple, healthy recipes, including those that can serve to replace familiar wheat-containing dishes while allowing you to continue regaining health and losing pounds. In this revised and expanded edition of Wheat Belly, I’ve updated recipes to emphasize fat intake, added several recipes for probiotic and prebiotic foods, as well as added new recipes for dishes never before included in any previous Wheat Belly book.
These recipes were created with several ground rules in place:
Wheat and grains are replaced with healthy alternatives. This may seem obvious, but the majority of wheat-free foods on the market or gluten-free recipes do not yield truly healthy foods or, even more likely, cause substantial health problems—replacing a problem with another problem is pointless. Substituting wheat with cornstarch, brown rice starch, potato starch, or tapioca starch, for example, as is often done in gluten-free products, will make you fat and diabetic and prevent you from ever slipping into your size 4 jeans again.
In the recipes provided here, wheat flour is replaced with nut meals/flours, ground golden flaxseed, coconut flour, and other healthy meals or flours, foods that are nutritious and do not share any of the abnormal responses triggered by wheat or other common wheat substitutes. Nut meals are ground from whole nuts, while nut flours are ground from blanched nuts (skins removed) and sometimes pressed to remove oils for finer texture. Use meals for better nutritive content but use flours whenever a finer texture is desired, as in, say, a two-layer birthday cake. All meals and flours can be purchased pre-ground or you can grind them yourself in a food chopper, food processor, or coffee grinder. With flaxseed, look for ground golden flaxseed that lacks the musty flavors of brown flaxseed. As with nut meals/flours, flaxseed can be purchased pre-ground. Other meals/flours that you can use include those ground from walnuts, pecans, and sesame seeds (buy bulk, not the tiny jars in the spice aisle). Pumpkin and sunflower seeds also make a nice meal when ground, but skip the baking soda/powder with sunflower seeds, otherwise it will release chlorophyll that will turn your end product green.
Unhealthy oils/fats like hydrogenated, polyunsaturated, and oxidized oils are avoided. The fats and oils used in these recipes tend to be richer in monounsaturates and saturates, especially olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and butter.
Because a low-carb effort is healthier for a long list of reasons, such as losing visceral fat, suppressing inflammatory phenomena, reducing expression of small LDL particles, reversing fatty liver, and minimizing or reversing diabetic tendencies, these recipes are all low in carbohydrate content. For this reason, we avoid using grain-substitute ingredients such as buckwheat and quinoa; while not grains, they yield excessive carbohydrate content that can, for instance, stall weight loss efforts or sus
tain high blood sugars.
Benign natural sweeteners are used: stevia, monk fruit, inulin, erythritol, xylitol. (Xylitol, like chocolate, is toxic to dogs.) I’ve also added allulose, another natural non-caloric sweetener, to the list. There are also commercially available sweetener combinations such as Swerve (erythritol + inulin), Truvia (rebiana, an isolate of stevia + erythritol), Virtue Sweetener (monk fruit + erythritol), and Lakanto (monk fruit + erythritol). The quantity of sweeteners specified may need to be adjusted to your preference. Because most people who eliminate wheat from their diet have a re-awakened sensitivity to sweetness, they find most conventionally sweetened foods sickeningly sweet. This has been addressed by reducing the quantity of sweetener in the recipes. If you are just starting out on your wheat-free journey, however, and still desire sweetness, then feel free to increase the quantity of sweetener over that specified. Also note that the potency of various sweeteners, especially stevia powdered and liquid extracts, vary in sweetness. Consult the label of the sweetener you purchase to determine the sucrose equivalent of your sweetener. Also, avoid sweeteners that are bulked up with undesirable ingredients, especially maltodextrin (a form of sugar).
We avoid or minimize the fructose-rich sweeteners sucrose, agave nectar, maple syrup, and honey, and we dodge synthetic sweeteners with adverse health effects, such as aspartame, sucralose, saccharin (that alter bowel flora and encourage weight gain), and most sugar alcohols, such as maltitol, lactitol, sorbitol, and mannitol, that are little different in effect than sucrose and cause diarrhea.
The various milks available at stores, such as almond, hemp, and coconut, typically contain emulsifying agents that have the potential to disrupt the mucous lining of the intestinal tract, contributing to dysbiosis. Whenever coconut milk is specified in these recipes, it therefore refers to canned products only. Look for brands without emulsifiers such as guar, xanthan, or gellan gums. Or, of course, you can make your own milks.
Lastly, these recipes were created with a busy schedule and limited time in mind and are therefore reasonably easy to prepare. Most ingredients used are widely available.
To be safe, please note that anyone with celiac disease or its non-intestinal equivalents should also choose ingredients that are gluten-free. All ingredients I’ve listed in the recipes were chosen to be readily available as gluten-free, but obviously, you can never control the practices of every food manufacturer and what they put in their products. Check to be sure.
WHEAT BELLY ESSENTIALS
Recipes for basic Wheat Belly essentials include wraps, an all-purpose baking mix, and wheat- and grain-free breads. (See the separate section for making your own compliant condiments.)
FLAXSEED WRAP
Wraps made with flaxseed and egg are surprisingly tasty. Once you get the hang of it, you can whip up a wrap or two in just a few minutes. If you have two pie pans, you can make two wraps at a time and accelerate the process (though they will need to be microwaved one at a time). Flaxseed wraps can be refrigerated and will keep for a few days. Healthy variations are possible simply by using various vegetable juices (such as spinach or carrot) in place of water.
MAKES 1 WRAP
3 tablespoons ground golden flaxseed
¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ teaspoon onion powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
Pinch of sea salt
1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted, plus more for greasing the pan
1 large egg
1 tablespoon water (or your choice of vegetable juice)
In a small bowl, mix together the flaxseed, baking soda, onion powder, paprika, and salt. Stir in the 1 tablespoon coconut oil. Beat in the egg and the water until blended.
Grease a microwave-safe pie pan with coconut oil. Pour in the batter and spread evenly over the bottom. Microwave on high for 2 to 3 minutes until cooked. Let cool about 5 minutes.
To remove, lift up an edge with a spatula. If it sticks, use a pancake turner to gently loosen from the pan. Flip the wrap over and top with desired ingredients.
WHEAT BELLY ALL-PURPOSE BAKING MIX
This mix of healthy, wheat-free flours has passed the Wheat Belly road test over the years and saves a few steps in making sandwiches, muffins, biscuits, and other baked goods.
Keeping a supply of the Wheat Belly All-Purpose Baking Mix will help save time in creating the Wheat Belly baked recipes. Just substitute an equal quantity of baking mix for the meal or flour cited in the recipe and you will improve the structure and cohesiveness of the end product.
If you don’t have any Wheat Belly All-Purpose Baking Mix on hand, you can substitute your choice of meal or flour such as almond meal, sesame seed meal, or other grain-free combination.
MAKES 5½ CUPS
4 cups almond meal/flour
½ cup coconut flour
1 cup ground golden flaxseed
2 teaspoons ground psyllium seed
In an airtight container, mix the almond meal/flour, coconut flour, flaxseed, and psyllium seed. Store, preferably in the refrigerator. Use within 4 weeks.
BASIC BREAD
This is our workhorse wheat-free recipe for bread in a loaf form. Whipping the egg whites generates some “rise,” but this bread works best spread with cream cheese or butter, not used as a sandwich bread.
MAKES 1 LOAF
½ cup butter or coconut oil, melted, plus more for greasing the pan
1 cup almond meal/flour
¼ cup ground golden flaxseed
¼ cup coconut flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
2 teaspoons white vinegar
6 large eggs, separated
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease an 8½ × 4½-inch loaf pan.
In a large bowl, combine the almond meal/flour, flaxseed, coconut flour, baking soda, and salt, and mix.
In a small bowl or cup, mix the vinegar into the melted butter, then add this mixture to the almond meal/flour mixture and mix thoroughly.
Add the egg yolks and mix thoroughly.
In a large bowl, using an electric mixer on high, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Pour the whites into the flour mixture and mix until combined. Spread the dough into the pan and bake for 40 minutes, or until a toothpick withdraws clean. Let cool and serve.
BASIC SANDWICH MUFFINS
These small flatbreads make wheat-free bread making virtually foolproof, as we don’t have to be concerned with “rise” (as we do when making loaf breads). Put eggs and sausages between two of these sandwich muffins and you have a quick and delicious breakfast.
To save time, make the muffins ahead of time. The recipe can be doubled or tripled to make larger batches.
MAKES 2 COMPLETE SANDWICH MUFFINS (TOP AND BOTTOM)
Coconut oil
1 cup Wheat Belly All-Purpose Baking Mix (this page) or 1 cup almond meal/flour
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon sea salt
½ teaspoon ground rosemary
½ teaspoon ground oregano
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium egg
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Grease four wells of a whoopie pie pan with coconut oil.
In a medium-sized bowl, combine the baking mix, baking soda, salt, rosemary, and oregano, and mix. Add the olive oil and mix thoroughly, then add the egg and blend by hand until mixed. If the mixture is too stiff, add water, 1 tablespoon at a time.
Spoon four equal portions of the mixture into the whoopie pie pan. Flatten with a spoon until approximately ½-inch thick, leaving a shallow well in the center. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes until the edges begin to brown. Let cool and remove the muffins carefully from the pan.
EASY RECIPES TO ADD PREBIOTIC FIBERS AND PROBIOTICS
At the sta
rt of your program, limit prebiotic fiber intake to no more than 10 grams per day, increasing to 20 grams per day for the long term. This means, for instance, using no more than half of a green banana or half of a raw white potato in each recipe at the start of your program, then a whole banana or potato once you are beyond your introductory experience. Likewise, the optional inulin is meant to be added later, once you are confident that you won’t experience discomfort from uncorrected dysbiosis.
I also balk at the high price we often pay for quality probiotic supplements. You can cultivate the microorganisms from probiotics by making yogurt and other fermented foods, allowing you to purchase a probiotic and stretch it out ten, twenty, or thirty times.
Here are tasty ways to be sure you achieve your daily prebiotic fiber goal while including plenty of probiotic microorganisms. You will also find other recipes elsewhere in this chapter that further add to your prebiotic fiber intake.
MOCHA PREBIOTIC SHAKE
Here’s an easy way to get your morning coffee with your prebiotic fibers. So tasty, this is more like a dessert than a routine morning coffee.
MAKES 1 SHAKE
1 medium green banana or medium raw, peeled white potato (Use only half a banana or potato at the start of your program.)
1 cup water
2½ tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons dried instant coffee
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
Wheat Belly (Revised and Expanded Edition) Page 32