Try a Wheat-Free Diet for Better Health

The gluten contained in wheat products can cause or contribute to digestive disorders and joint problems. If you suffer with these conditions, a wheat-free diet may be just what you need to relieve your uncomfortable symptoms. Need another reason to consider going wheatless? Kicking this food out of your eating plan can also help you drop those unwanted pounds (I thought that might get your attention).

A wheat-free diet is often confused with a gluten-free diet. Although wheat products contain gluten, these two types of diets are not the same thing. When you’re on a wheat-free diet, you simply eliminate all foods that contain wheat. When you follow a gluten-free diet, you not only give up wheat, you also eliminate barley and rye.

Digestive Problems and Wheat

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) can cause abdominal pain, bloating, gas, changes in bowel movements and cramping. People with IBS may be constipated one minute and have diarrhea the next. The urge to have a bowel movement can get so intense sometimes that it’s hard to control. Can you imagine being stuck in traffic feeling like this?

The symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome vary from person to person, and they can come and go. Gluten intolerance has been shown to produce or pronounce IBS symptoms. Since gluten is found in wheat, eliminating it from your diet can help reduce the symptoms.

You don’t have to have irritable bowel syndrome for wheat to cause digestive problems. When you eat wheat, it can clog up the intestines and make digestion difficult. A wheat-free diet can promote a healthy digestive tract by allowing food to flow through easier.

Go Wheatless and Drop a Few Pounds

Wheat is found in bread, pasta, baked goods, cereal, ice cream, gravies and other processed foods. These types of foods have no nutritional value and they make it hard for you to lose weight. On top of the empty calories you get when you load up on processed wheat products, you ingest all kinds of unhealthy chemical additives.

When you boot wheat out of your diet, there’s nothing left to eat but lean meats, fish, poultry, fruits, beans, nuts, legumes and vegetables. These foods are nutrient-dense and lower in calories than processed foods. When you opt for healthier foods, you automatically reduce your caloric intake, so you have an easier time slimming down.

Lose the Wheat to Reduce Joint Pain

Gluten can hinder your body’s natural defenses against joint pain caused by osteoporosis or osteoarthritis. If you have either of these conditions, a wheat-free diet may help reduce discomfort. Also, when you suffer from joint conditions, being overweight will amplify the pain. The weight loss you experience from a wheat-free diet will take some of the pressure off of your joints and help ease pain.

When you’ve been eating wheat all of your life, the thought of eliminating it from your diet can be scary. If going wheat-free is difficult for you, take small steps. Start off by cutting your intake by half. After you do this for a while, continue to reduce the amount of wheat you eat. Before you know it, you’ll be wheat-free and on the path to better health.

Want to get healthy, but don’t know where to begin? The Diet Solution Program can get you on the right path and keep you there. Our recipes are all friendly to a wheat-free diet, too.

How I Use Exercise to Help Me Lose Weight

When I finally got fed up with being rotund, the first thing I did was clean up my diet. However, this wasn’t enough to help me lose weight consistently. With the amount of fat I needed to lose, nutrition alone just wasn’t going to cut it; so I started an exercise program to keep those fat burning results coming. Here’s how to use exercise to send unwanted body fat packing.

Do Plenty of Cardio

In order to lose one pound of fat you have to burn 3500 calories. It’s almost impossible to achieve this without doing cardiovascular exercises. Aim to get cardio (with an emphasis on high intensity interval training) five days a week. If you’re super busy (like most of us) and find it hard to squeeze cardio into your day, break your workouts up into chunks.

Here’s an example of how you can break your cardio workouts into manageable pieces:

• Run on a treadmill for 15 minutes when you wake up.
• Take a brisk 15 minute walk around the parking lot during your lunch break.
• Pop in a workout video and exercise for 15 to 30 minutes before dinner.

Don’t feel like your only options for good cardio workouts are treadmills and exercise bikes. There’s nothing wrong with these machines, they work great. But if you do them all the time, they can get sort of humdrum. There are plenty of other ways to get your heart jumping. Some examples include kick boxing, mowing the lawn, gardening, jumping rope and swimming.

Pump a Little Iron

Many women avoid weights like the plague. They fear pumping iron will make them look bulky and masculine. This is absolutely not true. Unless you use some sort of performance-enhancing drug when you lift weights, the possibility of looking like the Hulk is slim.

When you build lean muscle tissue by lifting weights, it kicks your metabolism into high gear and helps you slim down. Keep in mind, the more lean muscle mass you have, the more calories your body will burn—even when you’re stretched out on the couch doing nothing (nice!).

Also, lean muscle mass is compact so it takes up less space than fat. Any lean muscle tissue you build lifting weights will tone your body and give you a streamlined physique. Ladies, if you really want to get in shape, put your fears of huskiness to rest and pump weights three times a week.

Sample Workout Plan to Get You Started

In one of my past newsletters, I talked about building a foundation by focusing on mastering the basics—lunges, squats, pushing, twisting and pulling. Do the below exercise back to back. After you do the entire circuit, repeat all five exercises two more times.

• Bodyweight squats – 10 to 20 repetitions
• Bodyweight lunges – 8 on each leg
• Modified pushups on your knees 10 to 15 repetitions
• Assisted pull ups – 10 repetitions
• Medicine ball or dumbbell woodchop – 10 repetitions per side

As your fitness level increases, you can build on these exercises to make them more challenging by increasing resistance and making them more complex.

There’s nothing like waking up every morning looking and feeling your best. Anything less is unacceptable. Let The Diet Solution Program show you these tried and true methods that I’ve used to help me lose weight.

Diet Solution Recipes Roundup

Tossed Salad with
Our Basic Dressing.
Your Organic Greens
Will Taste Wonderful, Trust Me.

I love to get my claws (and mouth) on healthy Diet Solution recipes. I get a lot of the cool recipes from generous DSP followers. I also thumb through cookbooks, surf the Internet and do a lot of experimenting in the kitchen. When I get a hold of delicious recipes, I’m always excited to share them with you.

I’ve sent out recipes in my newsletters, published them in my books, and posted them here on this site. If you’re short on time and you don’t want to dig through tons of recipes, today’s your lucky day. Here’s a quick roundup of some favorites.

Healthy French Toast

• 2 slices of sprouted grain, rice or spelt bread
• 2 eggs
• 1 tablespoon of real butter
• maple syrup
• cinnamon

Mix the eggs in a bowl. Dip the bread in the egg mixture and generously coat both sides. Heat a pan on a low to medium setting and add the butter. After the butter melts, add the coated bread. Cook the bread for 3 to 4 minutes on each side. Top with cinnamon and maple syrup.

Mediterranean Roast Turkey

(Andrea, a DSP member)

• 1 large chopped onion
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 1/2 cup pitted and copped kalamata olives
• 1 1/2 teaspoon minced garlic (bottled)
• 1/2 cup of julienne-cut, oil-packed, sun-dried tomato halves (drained)
• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
• 3 tablespoons arrowroot powder
• 1 teaspoon Greek seasoning mix
• 1 trimmed, boneless turkey breast
• 1/2 cup fat-free, low-sodium chicken broth
• 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Combine turkey, onion, lemon juice, garlic, tomatoes, sea salt, seasoning mix, olives and pepper in a crock pot. Pour in 1/4 cup of chicken broth and let the ingredients cook for 7 hours. Combine the arrowroot and the rest of the chicken broth in a small bowl and whisk until it’s smooth. Add the mixture to the crock pot. Cover the pot and cook on low for 30 more minutes. Slice the turkey breast after it’s cooked.

Tomato and Cucumber Salad

(Annie, a DSP member)

• 5 diced tomatoes
• 1 onion, finely chopped
• 1 chopped green pepper
• 1 sliced cucumber
• handful of chopped basil
• handful of chopped parsley
• 6 chopped garlic cloves (optional)
• sea salt
• pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a bowl and season with sea salt and pepper.

Cilantro Marinade

(Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions)

• handful of chopped cilantro leaves
• 3 minced garlic cloves
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
• juice from a lemon

Mix all of the ingredients together in a bowl.

Basic Salad Dressing

• 1 teaspoon of smooth or grainy Dijon mustard
• 1/2 cup olive oil
• 1 tablespoon flaxseed oil
• 1 1/4 tablespoon wine vinegar

Add mustard and vinegar in a bowl and whisk. Slowly stream in the olive oil and continue to whisk until the oil is emulsified. Whisk in the flaxseed oil. Serve immediately.

These Diet Solution recipes are absolutely delish and approved for a healthy meal plan. Try them out and let me know what you think!

Don’t wait another day to get a healthy lease on life. Let The Diet Solution Program help you achieve your weight loss goals. Learn a little more about our program and join our community where you’ll find many more Diet Solution recipes from me, our staff, and our members.Diet Solution Recipes