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Becky Parker
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 7:49am | IP Logged
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Wow, this is hard!  I've been trying to go grain free for a while. When I am able to do it, I really feel so much better. My eczema heals, I loose a few pounds (I could stand to loose a lot of those!) and I feel like I have more energy. But i find it very difficult! The gluten free part is easy. I have a ds with celiac and I decided to be GF to support him. Maybe it's easy because I'm doing it for him and not myself?
If you are grain free, any tips on how to make this more doable? I have 5 hungry boys and 1 pasta loving girl, not to mention a dh who thinks the grain free thing is an expensive fad so I don't get a lot of support for the idea around here!
I would love to hear success stories. Perhaps I need a nudge that it truly is a healthy way to eat. I'm still on the fence. Grain has been around forever.
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Becky
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TryingMyBest
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 1:16pm | IP Logged
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I'm going grain free now too and also a little skeptical about it. I'm not anti-wheat but my weight stays in control better when I'm not eating it and I eat much less sugar. My situation is a little different than yours since I'm the only one doing it. I don't believe that whole grains are bad for children if they don't have a gluten intolerance. Although most of the meals I prepare are grain free so they eat much less grains than average.
The only way I can do it to do a meal plan including breakfast and snacks. I try to do an honest evaluation of how I eat, when I get hungry and when I'm too lazy to cook and plan around that.
In terms of food, I eat much higher fat when I'm grain free because that keeps me satiated. I try not to overdo dairy because it's high in calories (I love cheese!) so I eat a lot of meat, fish and eggs.
I can't stand things made with coconut flour since they are way too eggy for me (love eggs but don't like eggy/baked things). I've never tried almond meal because DH is allergic to nuts but I think I'm going to buy some to try it for myself.
Have you looked at any of the Paleo or Primal websites and cookbooks for tips? There are some blogs specifically geared towards cooking paleo/primal for children.
But honestly I don't believe you have to give up grains to be healthy which makes it hard to commit to this lifestyle long term. Also there are also good alternatives to traditional wheat flours such as spelt and buckwheat (not a grain technically). And then there is the idea of traditionally preparing grains by soaking them to make them easier to digest.
Sorry for the long answer but this is a hot topic for me right now.
Jennifer
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TryingMyBest
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 2:17pm | IP Logged
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Sorry I thought of something else. Almond flour is kind of controversial. Some people say that you should never cook nuts because it goes rancid and has PUFAs.
I know this isn't an answer to your question but the more I think about it, the more I believe that grains aren't bad for people without gluten intolerance. So basically if you're going to bake something you're probably better off using a 'better' flour (whole wheat or spelt, etc) than using something not intended for baking like almond flour. And of course if you're worried about your weight you shouldn't be baking too much anyway so that naturally reduces the amounts of grains you eat.
So I basically come down to the primary benefit of going grain-free for someone like me who can tolerate grains being weight loss.
Sorry for the rambling responses.
Jennifer
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JodieLyn
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 2:54pm | IP Logged
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In generaly, carbs are used up by exercise.. it's when they're not being used up and the body stores them that you get issues with things being "too high carb". Athletes need carbs for instance. But someone very sedentary may find that they're healthier with little to no carbs. In general, I think society is getting lazier, working hard is no longer a sought after trait.. we're stuck inside more.. kids don't get kicked out of the house until dark (safety issues) like used to be the norm. Our electronic are portable and go with us everywhere so we'll head outside and lounge out there with the electronics.
So basically, my thought is that we see benefit from reducing grain simply because we dont' need the levels of carbs that was the norm earlier.. we just don't work or play as hard physically.
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Angel
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 4:28pm | IP Logged
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Well, here is my experience with being grain-free... others have had better success, but on the other hand, from reading around the Internet and elsewhere, I don't think my experience is all that uncommon either.
It is very easy to go too low-carb on a strictly grain-free diet. If you cut calories and go too low-carb for too long -- I think particularly as a woman (and I was nursing, too) -- it can wreak havoc on your thyroid. And at some level, butternut squash and pumpkin just doesn't begin to cut it as far as carbs go.
I don't know how "grain-free" you've been trying to go, Becky, as "grain-free" means different things to different people. I was basically trying to do GAPS, so I didn't eat any tapioca, sweet potatoes, jicama... etc. I was also pretty much dairy free because my nursing baby didn't seem to do well with dairy. I felt great for the first 6 or 7 months -- more energy, no aches and pains, no skin problems, and I lost a ton of weight -- but then I started to get *really* tired. And my hair started to fall out. And I had extremely dry skin on my lower legs. And I got sort of depressed. It took me several months, a thyroid hormone blood test, and the beginnings of weight gain to figure out that I was experiencing low thyroid symptoms. When I started experimenting with adding grains of all kinds back in and eating more carbs in general, my mood improved enormously, my hair stopped falling out, and the dry skin went away... but some of my other problems returned, like an achey back and some of the candida-related stuff that was the reason I went grain-free to begin with.
So after a lot of experimentation, what I've discovered is a diet that seems to mostly work for me. I discovered that I absolutely do need to be gluten-free, and although I haven't had an intestinal biopsy, what I think I am dealing with is celiac disease. Any sugar other than honey or maple syrup affects me just about as badly as gluten. I can't drink milk because it has too much sugar in it, I guess, but I can have kefir, yogurt, and most cheeses.
Mostly I try to follow the dietary guidelines from The Perfect Health Diet, making sure I get more carbs than they recommend (since I'm pregnant), but still using rice (or rice flours + tapioca for gf baking), potatoes, and sweet potatoes as my major source of starches. I *do* however still eat some GF oats and corn every week, but I try to make sure they've been prepared in such a way to make them more digestible... we found some soaked corn tortilla chips which are really, really good, but they're expensive so we can't eat too many of them. I don't eat many legumes and I've stopped eating peanut butter... although to be honest, I'm not sure what difference it makes. I think maybe if I ate A LOT of beans and peanut butter maybe *that* might make a difference.
Oh, and I avoid almonds and almond flour. Almonds are apparently goitrogenic, meaning that they will decrease thyroid function in larger quantities,as in almond flour baked goods and almond milk. I don't know if it's because I gave myself a sensitivity to them when I was grain-free or what, but they definitely affect my thyroid.
Anyway, here are some interesting posts/articles:
GAPS Diet and Adrenal Problems
Cheeseslave - Why I Ditched Low Carb
How I Went Too Low Carb on the GAPS Diet
I think the thing that isn't talked about a lot by the major proponents of the paleo/primal/grain-free diet is that it's really a big experiment. I think *most* people know by now that the SAD diet of processed foods and lots of sugar isn't optimal, but there is so much argument about what to replace it with. So I think that some people figured the pendulum ought to swing in as much the opposite direction as it possibly could. But I think that extremes of any kind are probably just unhealthy. It all comes down to what works for *you*. If we're trying to be really, genuinely scientific about it, we wouldn't really be taking the word of the paleo/primal experts as sacrosanct either... we'd be testing the results we could see in our every day lives against what they said, too.
So it's entirely possible that you need to stop eating *something* that you're currently eating in order to improve your eczema, for instance, but you may not need to adopt the whole grain-free package, as it is currently being promoted. Or, then again, you might. Unfortunately I think the only way to tell at this point is to use yourself as a guinea pig... but to be carefully on the look-out for any of the various symptoms that can go along with being too low-carb.
Oh, and here's an interesting post from a woman who lost 25 lbs not really "dieting" at all but eating only traditional foods:
How I Lost 25 Lbs
And, if you're really interested, you can read my original post on the problems I was having being grain-free here:
Problems and Plateaus with Paleo
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Angel
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 4:37pm | IP Logged
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Oh, and about being grain-free with the family... it was hard and expensive for us, too, without being able to stretch a meal with rice or potatoes! My boys were *constantly* hungry. They would eat *pounds* of fruit... I mean, more than they do already! When I added in more carbs, though, they stopped complaining quite so much about being hungry. (Like it's possible for boys to stop complaining entirely about being hungry, right? But they didn't complain *as much*.  )
I will say that I think it did make a difference that we cut down on our carbs, especially for my oldest. But cutting them too low was not really good for anyone, in my experience.
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JennGM
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 6:01pm | IP Logged
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I just read the Nourished and Nurtured article today and was thinking of you, Angela.
That Weed 'em and Reap looks good, and makes sense. I do think the no-grain and Paleo is a fad. I like the Perfect Diet with reservations...I'm enjoying that book, thanks to your suggestions.
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CrunchyMom
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 6:34pm | IP Logged
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JennGM wrote:
| I like the Perfect Diet with reservations.. |
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Like the name?
We can't really believe there is any diet that can guarantee perfect health. 
It is likely the closest to our journey and ideals from what I've seen.
I also think that there are a lot of diets that can be beneficial for short periods of time but aren't always good or necessary as a permanent lifestyle. It does seem that many are able to reset their bodies by eliminating things like grains for a time.
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Angel
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 6:35pm | IP Logged
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JennGM wrote:
| I like the Perfect Diet with reservations...I'm enjoying that book, thanks to your suggestions. |
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I'm glad you like it, Jenn, although I have my reservations about it, too. For one thing, I think they recommend too many supplements. And the "only eat white rice" thing still gets me. Actually, I was just reading about traditional Japanese diets the other day and it seems that while they ate polished white rice, they took the rice bran that was removed from the rice and fermented it and *then* ate it.
So it sounded to me like brown rice *is* more nutritious than white rice, but you have to prepare it properly for it to be at its best (i.e., by soaking with an acid or probiotic food, like vinegar or yogurt).
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Angel
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| Posted: Jan 12 2013 at 6:43pm | IP Logged
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CrunchyMom wrote:
I also think that there are a lot of diets that can be beneficial for short periods of time but aren't always good or necessary as a permanent lifestyle. It does seem that many are able to reset their bodies by eliminating things like grains for a time. |
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You know, after I wrote my reply to Becky, I thought, gee, I hope I don't sound *too* down on being grain-free. Because I think it absolutely helped me for a while... I really needed to get so much accumulated *stuff* out of my system so I could determine a baseline for what my health could really be. It was only by going grain-free and then trying to add food back in that I could determine what really made me feel bad (wheat, sugar, milk, soy) and what didn't make me feel bad (rice, oats, potatoes). I just wish I had conceived of the grain-free diet as more temporary in the beginning so that I could have headed off the problems it caused me by staying on it too long term.
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Angela
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Becky Parker
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| Posted: Jan 15 2013 at 12:43pm | IP Logged
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I'm finding this all very interesting, and spending lots of time on rabbit trails through the various links about paleo, GAPS, whole foods, traditional foods ...
I know that gluten does not like me and that it is helpful for my ds to have his mom eating like he does, so I will continue that. But, I guess I'm just not sold enough on the grain free part to be disciplined enough for Paleo. I believe that like dairy, and gluten, it's not so much the food that God created that is causing the problem, it is what we people have done to it. Cows weren't meant to be on steroids, grain wasn't meant to be GMO, etc. Maybe if I just try to stick with non GMO whatever and steroid free meat/dairy that is enough for now? I get so overwhelmed when reading some of the websites. Going grain free is actually easy in one regard, because it cuts out a whole bunch of decisions regarding what is healthy and what is not. But I'm not sure I can do it for any length of time.
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Angel
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| Posted: Jan 15 2013 at 1:27pm | IP Logged
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Becky Parker wrote:
I know that gluten does not like me and that it is helpful for my ds to have his mom eating like he does, so I will continue that. But, I guess I'm just not sold enough on the grain free part to be disciplined enough for Paleo. I believe that like dairy, and gluten, it's not so much the food that God created that is causing the problem, it is what we people have done to it. Cows weren't meant to be on steroids, grain wasn't meant to be GMO, etc. Maybe if I just try to stick with non GMO whatever and steroid free meat/dairy that is enough for now? |
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That sounds pretty much like the way I'm eating right now, and I have to say that I feel better than I ever have, most of the time. Not perfect, but I'm handling this pregnancy ok, and I certainly feel better further in than I have in *any* of them, including #1 back when I was only 24.
I *do* think the proper preparation of grains and legumes does make a difference, though, and I guess we do go beyond "steroid free" for meat -- all the meat we eat is grass-fed (or pastured, if you're talking about chickens). I've been trying to add more seafood to our diet, too, but it's so expensive. 
Oh, and I think what has also made a difference in how I feel is probiotics and cultured dairy/vegetables. Especially homemade kefir.
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Angela
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4Real Forums : Our Lady's Loom, Larder, and Laundry
Topic: Trying to go grain-free
