How to get healthy and lose weight

 

Behold the mighty cheeseburger!

It’s probably my favorite food, as it is for millions of people. Unfortunately, it gets a bad rap for being unhealthy. Most fingers get pointed at the meat and cheese and they are blamed for clogging arteries, expanding waistlines, and a whole host of other ailments.

The good news is that part isn’t true. The real culprit is the bun!

There is an abundance of new research available that proves hamburger buns, bread, doughnuts, and nearly every single product made with wheat flour is bad for you. That includes the breading on fried foods, the croutons in your salad, and the tortillas in your favorite Mexican dishes.

Wheat is directly linked to obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart disease, and a host of other health concerns, possibly including Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

But how can this be? Haven’t humans been eating wheat for millennia? The answer is yes, humans have been eating wheat throughout recorded time. The difference is the white stuff being passed off as wheat flour today is not real wheat. It has been so cross bred, hybridized, genetically modified, and had other additives mixed into it that it no longer resembles the wheat we had prior to World War II.

There is a direct correlation between the modification of wheat in the 1940s and ’50s and the rise of obesity, diabetes, etc. The goal of the modifications at the time was to increase yields and to help combat world hunger. In that regard, the scientists were abundantly successful. What they didn’t consider is the effect these modifications are having on the human body.

Modern wheat is highly addictive, and it destroys needed bacteria in your gut that is crucial to digestion and overall health. The body converts modern wheat into blood sugar at levels higher than sugar itself. The same goes for just about every mass-produced grain crop in this country.

More than just wheat

The top three top ingredients in the modern American diet that are making us sick are wheat, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup. Eliminate those from your diet and you’ll find that you not only become much healthier, but you also lose weight and keep it off. As simple as that sounds to eliminate those three things, doing it is much harder.

Giving up sugar means giving up all of your sodas, sports drinks, energy drinks, flavored coffees, fruit drinks, and such and drinking more water, black coffee, red wine, and unsweet tea (hot or cold). It means giving up nearly all desserts (dark chocolate is actually good for you). It means saying no to most snacks, fast foods, packaged meals, and more.

You should also be looking at ingredient lists on the stuff you buy at the grocery store. High fructose corn syrup is toxic and should be completely removed from the human diet. If you see it on an ingredient list, put the item back on the shelf and don’t eat it. This includes some brands of ketchup and a lot of other condiments that we like to put on cheeseburgers and other foods. If there are a lot of chemicals, additives, preservatives, emulsifiers, dyes, etc. on the ingredient list, don’t buy it and definitely don’t eat it.

So, what should I eat?

What we should be eating are whole, natural, organic foods. If you want to eat wheat, look for natural, organic varieties of einkorn or emmer wheat. Yes, it is very expensive but so treating diabetes. Those varieties are the unadulterated, pure versions of wheat.

About two-thirds of our diet should be vegetables and a few fruits, especially berries. The other third should be proteins, with an emphasis on white meat, fish and seafood, eggs, and small amounts of red meat.

Dr. Mark Hyman, author of “Food: What the Heck Should I Eat,” frequently quotes Michael Pollan by saying, “If it came from a plant, eat it; if it was made in a plant, leave it.” That’s good advice!

How do you know this is true?

By now you might be asking yourself, “why should I listen to this guy? He’s not a doctor; he’s just another journalist trying to tell us what to do.”

This is why you should listen to me. I’m living proof that it works. In 2019 I went on a very strict keto diet and lost 60 pounds. I was smart enough to know that a keto diet is unsustainable in the long run, so I started reading books and researching diet and health.

Last year I started allowing more of the things I stopped eating back into my diet and I quickly gained 15 pounds. Lesson learned!

You don’t have to take this information from me alone. I invite you to check out my sources of information. Keep in mind that these books are by doctors from different fields of study approaching the topic from different perspectives and coming to the same conclusions.

• “Wheat Belly” and “Super Gut” by William Davis;

• “Formerly Known as Food” by Kristin Lawless (just ignore her hyper-socialist, ultra-feminist rant in the last couple chapters);

• “Brain Food” by Lisa Mosconi;

• “Unlocking the Keto Code” by Steven Gundry;

• “End of Craving” by Mark Schatzker; and

• “Food: What the Heck Should I Eat” by Mark Hyman.