Curious about how many here have tried or considered wheat-free diets

[highplainsdem]

I first heard about Dr. William Davs's book Wheat Belly here at DU, in topics about news stories on the bestselling book. I got his book and related cookbook then, and followed his http://wheatbellyblog.com blog.

But what's impressed me most about the wheat-free diet's potential as a weight loss diet are the personal testimonials and photos Facebook users are posting on his Facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Wheat-Belly/209766919069873

Lots of really stunning improvements there, some that could be called transformations.

For what it's worth, my personal experience: I used to LOVE wheat products. Whole grain bread -- and I'd sometimes do my own baking, and add raw wheat germ from health food stores or co-ops to cereal. Really loved cereal with breakfast. Snacked a lot on crackers. But I'd noticed, too, that snacks like crackers wouldn't satisfy my appetite at all, and often I'd feel hungrier afterward.

I used to be about 30 lbs over what I considered my ideal weight, my weight in my 20s. My weight had kept creeping up despite occasional diets. I finally managed to lose about 20 lbs of that over a year by exercising a lot more and cutting back on carbs and desserts at lunch and dinner (breakfast still almost always included a lot of cereal or toast as well as protein and fresh fruit...and I'd usually be starving again before lunch).

Cutting out wheat took off another 10 lbs effortlessly.

I haven't used Dr. Davis's cookbooks (he has two out now) very much. I've ignored his recommendations on restricting dairy foods, for instance, since I love milk, cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt. I haven't cut potatoes, including sweet potatoes, out of my diet. I think the low-carb recipes I've found online for oopsie rolls

http://yourlighterside.com/2009/05/gluten-free-low-carb-buns-aka-oopsie-rolls/

are better than his recommendations for bread subsitutes, and when I just HAVE to have pizza, I'll use a gluten-free tapioca flour recipe for the crust since it holds up well when you pick up a slice, even though it's starchy and high in carbs. I still have ice cream at times (as long as it's wheat free; no more chocolate chip cookie dough flavor), and I also make paleo-diet "fat bombs" at times to replace calories lost by giving up wheat. (I do try to keep my intake of refined carbs within limits, though, and I'd be limiting it more if I needed to lose more weight. And I wouldn't recommend just switching processed snack foods high in wheat for commercial gluten-free snack foods that are also high in refined starches. Dr. Davis is right to warn against those.)

I've found that I still feel better without wheat, even though I'm not following every detail of the Wheat Belly diet. I sleep better, I've had only one migraine in over a year when I used to get at least a couple of days-long migraines a month, my skin is better, and I don't have the almost uncontrollable craving for food I used to get after eating wheat products.

I didn't have a lot of weight to lose, but judging by that Facebook page, giving up wheat has helped a lot of people succeed in losing a lot of weight. And many of them say it improved their health in other ways.

When I first read about Davis's book here at DU, I noticed some long-time DUers posting about how their health and weight had improved since they gave up wheat.

Which is why I've been surprised not to see more about it here. And I'm wondering how many people in this group have tried or at least seriously considered going wheat-free. (And yes, I do realize what a huge change in diet this can be for many people, especially if they do think it's necessary to follow all of Dr. Davis's guidelines very strictly. And of course our food industry makes it extremely difficult to go wheat-free.)