by Mike Geary, Certified Personal Trainer, Certified Nutrition Specialist
Okay, so, you've probably heard a million times now how bad trans fats and high fructose corn syrup are for your health... so I'm not going to bore you with that same old story.
Instead, we're going to look at some common foods that are most likely in your diet in large quantities and may be causing major problems for you, such as weight gain, headaches, sicknesses, indigestion, etc, etc... and those possible culprits are: Wheat and Dairy
Fear not! I'm not going to tell you that both of these staples need to be eliminated completely and permanently from your diet... but read on to see an interesting test that may help you a great deal...
In all of my years of personal training and nutrition counseling, if I had to choose a couple VERY simple dietary changes that have made the biggest difference for my clients in allowing them to FINALLY see fat loss results (and other health problems solved), it would be this following test:
1. Test removing all wheat products from your diet for 2 entire weeks, and take notice of how you feel, look, and your body composition.
2. Test removing all dairy from your diet for 2 entire weeks, and take notice of how you feel, look, and your body composition.
The most effective way to do this is to eliminate them both for 2 full weeks, and then reintroduce one at a time so that you can determine if one of them or both wheat and dairy are causing negative health effects for you.Wheat and dairy are easily 2 of the biggest intolerances that a large percentage of the population has.
This doesn't mean that you have to entirely eliminate wheat and dairy for the rest of your life, but what I am saying is that this is an important test to do for about 2 weeks to gauge if you see some dramatic changes in your body fat percentage, how you look and feel overall, your energy levels, and other health issues.
If you do the 2-week elimination of wheat and dairy and don't feel that it helped you at all or made you feel better, than you can probably do fine on moderate amounts of each.
Most people do not realize this, but a large percentage of the population has at least some degree of intolerance to the gluten in wheat and several other grains. The biggest offender is wheat though, as it's in such a large percentage of the average western diet... from breads, to pastas, to bagels, to cakes, wraps, cereals, etc, etc.
Most people don't have the extent of intolerance that a celiac has, but most people feel much better, improve all sorts of health problems, and also lose fat faster when they eliminate wheat from their diet.
In fact, I just had a client last week tell me that when she eliminated wheat from her diet, her chronic headaches disappeared almost instantly... these are headaches she's been having for years, and after eliminating wheat from her diet, they are gone (along with some body fat that she lost too!).
What about me? Do I still eat wheat?
Well, what I do is try to only eat wheat on cheat days, which many times means when I'm out at restaurants or at parties, barbeques, etc. Since wheat is so integral in the typical western diet, it's almost impossible to avoid when eating out or at other people's houses.
But I have virtually ZERO wheat products in my own house usually. Anything is simple to avoid at least 90% of the time, when it doesn't even exist in your cabinets!
However, even though I'm anti-wheat , I'm actually pro-dairy... But ONLY if the dairy is raw milk or raw cheese and from grass-fed cows. Did you know that many people who "think" they are lactose intolerant actually can drink raw milk without a problem? This is because the live enzymes and friendly bacteria in raw milk aid in the digestion of the lactose and the proteins in milk. These enzymes and friendly bacteria are destroyed in pasteurized milk, which makes it more difficult to digest for many people.
If I can't get raw dairy, I choose to go dairy-free (with the exception of small amounts of yogurt). That's because I feel that the pasteurized, homogenized milk products are not suitable for long term consumption (but that's another story for another day).
By the way, you can always search to see if raw milk co-ops or farms are available in your area on RealMilk.com. You'd be surprised at how many co-ops are available that deliver from rural areas to urban areas. It's important to make sure that the farm is reputable and certified (in some states) to produce raw milk. Most raw milk farms are the cleanest operations in the entire dairy industry.
For the "germo-phobes" out there... I've been drinking gallons upon gallons of raw, full fat milk for about 6 years now, and I've never once gotten sick from it, nor has anybody else that I know that's been drinking it long term... so to all of these so-called "experts" out there telling you that "there's a reason they pasteurize milk, because it's dangerous if not"... well, they obviously don't know what they're talking about.
Plus, the full-fat milk certainly has not made me fatter either... I used to drink skim milk only for years, but now for the last 6 years, I've drank nothing but full fat raw milk, and I'm easily in the best shape of my life now and leaner than ever.
People are more likely to get sick from pasteurized milk, because mass factory farms are generally dirtier operations with animals that are in poorer health than grass-fed raw milk farms.
And don't forget the high levels of fat-burning, muscle building CLA in full-fat, raw, grass fed milk (and omega-3's)!
Back from the tangent... I think this elimination of wheat and (pasteurized) dairy is one of the most important tests anyone can easily do to see if wheat and dairy are negatively affecting them. After all, it's only 2 weeks to test yourself!
A couple quick things to note:
1. Eggs are NOT dairy... I'm not sure why so many people seem to think that eggs are a dairy product, but there is absolutely no dairy in eggs... eggs are basically meat if you want to categorize them. Eggs are practically a perfect food in terms of nutrition density.
2. When trying to eliminate wheat, this usually means that almost ALL processed foods have to be eliminated because wheat components are in so many processed foods.
Good luck with the test if you try it! Many people find it to be one of the best things they've done for their health.
Here's another recent article that was very popular in this ezine... Basically, I did a 6-week experiment on myself and tried to overeat constantly... see what happened:
6-week Overeating Experiment: Did I gain massive weight, stay the same, or lose weight?
Till next time!
Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer
Author - The Truth about Six Pack Abs
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