Any experience with the no-wheat diet?

As I recently said in a different thread, I need to lose at least 10 pounds. However, my issue goes beyond weight, and I’ve started looking into alternative eating solutions.

At 31 years old, I’ve been on cholesterol medication for over 2/3 of my life. I’ve been on blood pressure medication for over half of it. This isn’t strictly due to my size, either; while I’m now 6 feet, 200 pounds, and fairly sedentary, I had these same issues at 130 pounds in high school and at 160 pounds as a college lacrosse player (that was the only time my BP ever stayed in the 130/85 range, though). I am genetically predisposed to have high blood pressure and cholesterol.

Or am I? I keep looking at the book Wheat Belly: Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weighton Amazon. From what I’ve read about the book and the “diet”, many people similar to me have had success with lowering their BP and cholesterol levels by following Dr. Davis’s plan and changing their lifestyle to avoid wheat products. I plan on buying it or getting it when it comes in at the library, but I’d like to hear what some Dopers think before investing the time or money on it.

I want off my medications. I spend at least $30/month on three prescriptions to handle this, and I can’t see that becoming cheaper or less medication as I continue to age. I’m feeling a bit desperate for a way to change my life and rid myself of these issues.

Have you had any experience with this book? Do you know anyone who has? Or is this just more quack science?

Going wheat free won’t really make much of an impact unless you’ve got an intolerance/allergy/Celiac/etc issue. It’s not the panacea people make it out to be. It’s a hard thing to give up. Not just because you’ll miss bread and pasta - but because wheat or gluten are used as thickening agents, flavor enhancers, all sorts of things. It’s VERY hard to avoid. You will end up making most of your own food from scratch. You may think that you can use wheat substitutes or gluten/wheat free products - but that stuff is hella expensive if you can even find it where you live. You will end up restructuring everything about the way you eat.

There are many easier ways to lose weight. Plus, fiber is super important and it can be hard to come by if you are restricting gluten, specifically, because even oats have some of that in them. This is not an easy diet…which is a big reason why I think this fad won’t last too long.

Source: I am allergic to wheat.

I’ve gone on a gluten-free diet in the past few years, which is similar to wheat-free, but along with wheat, you give up rye, barley, and and any other grains which may contain gluten or gluten-similar molecules or may have become contaminated with gluten bearing grains. The idea is that beyond celiac disease, in which the person is completely unable to digest gluten and they develop symptoms similar to IBS, there’s gluten sensitivity, where the gluten protein makes it past the intestinal wall into the bloodstream and sets off a cascade of immune responses.

At the time I thought it was possible that I had gluten sensitivity, but that turned out not to be the case. However, it is a fairly healthy diet, simply because most of the grain products we eat are highly processed, doped with sugar, and contain very little nutrition.

It may be that you’re sensitive to gluten, and you’ve been running around in a subclinical state of endemic inflammation. If you are, it could certainly increase your blood pressure, though I don’t know what effect it would have on your cholesterol.

What you don’t need is a whole book on how-not-to-eat-wheat. Just get a list of the words wheat, gluten, and gliadin show up as in product ingredients and start reading the labels. If it lists wheat or a derived product, you don’t eat it. Pretty simple.

True (I assume you meant “unhealthy”, not “healthy”), and also because people are eating too much, and as the first chart on this page, the main culprit is grains and added fats and sugars, aka processed foods (that graph comes from a unreferenced blog, but this paper, possibly the source of the data, supports the graphs):

(the last is particularly interesting, considering all of the vegetarians and particularly vegans who claim eating animal products causes obesity and disease; well, they can if you eat too much, but they aren’t causing the current epidemics of said diseases)

Eliminating wheat from your diet won’t help you lose weight all by itself.

cwPartner has been on a wheat- (rye-, barley-, oats-, spelt-, kamut-, etc) free diet for maybe 15 years now thanks to celiac disease. He didn’t make any other major changes in his diet or activities, and he didn’t lose weight, either.

If you have celiac disease, eliminating wheat, etc., is more likely to allow you to gain weight than it is to help you lose weight. Unmanaged celiac disease causes changes in the lining of the gut, which prevents it from efficiently extracting nutrients from digested food. With proper management, the gut returns to a more normal state, and nutrient uptake improves significantly.

Eliminating wheat products can contribute to weight loss if - and only if - it helps drive other dietary changes, such as replacing calorie-dense baked goods with lower-calorie fresh fruits and vegetable snacks.

Cut junk food out of your diet and you lose weight, lower your cholesterol , and etc. Cutting wheat, corn or sugar out are all easy ways to cut junk food out. Even potatoes, since far too many are fried junk food.

This is why Low Carb seems to work also- almost all snack/junk food is high carb. Vegetarian works on a similar principle

Few dudes can do “moderation”. Saying “NO” to a entire class of foods seems to work better for most Americans. If “no wheat’ works for you, then fine.

Personally I’d do “No HFCS”’. :stuck_out_tongue:

Wheat Belly has been making the rounds in my neighbourhood and lots of people have lost significant weight (we’re talking 20-40 pounds in a couple of months). A couple of their kids have also had noticeable health improvements going wheat free - improved digestion, better energy levels, etc.

I can’t comment on any cholesterol changes.

I love wheat products too much to give them up and I’m currently at a healthy weight, but I think reducing wheat intake is probably a good thing in general. My wife has tried to include more chinois (probably spelled improperly) and rice into our diets, so I think that’s positive, but we still eat brown bread, whole wheat pasta, cereal in the morning, etc.

My recommendation would be to try to get more healthy in general rather than concentrating on one single attribute of ‘health’. Get more excercise, try to eat better, reduce stress and strengthen social connections. All those things will make you healthier and should contribute to some reduction in cholesterol levels over the long term.

phreesh, quiona?

My husband went gluten-free about a year ago because he suspected he was gluten intolerant. (He was.) He dropped about fifteen pounds in the first two months because with sandwiches off the menu, he didn’t know what else to eat and his meals were much smaller. Once we figured out a good rotation of gluten-free meals (and lots of rice and potatoes), his body went right back to his equilibrium weight. So, my anecdata says that cutting out wheat but replacing it with other equally processed carbs isn’t really going to do anything for your weight. I suspect going low carb or cutting down on processed foods is more likely to change your body shape.

I have no idea how wheat interacts with cholesterol, so no suggestions on that one.