G-FREE: The Help vs the Hype!

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I’ve been reading a lot of social media post lately on people going grain free and gluten free.  I often have people asking me what type of diet I follow if I follow a diet at all.  I decided to write this blog on G-Free – The Help vs the Hype.  So many people are jumping on the gluten free and grain free bandwagon.  A lot of this is because of the growing gastro-intestinal issues (gas, bloating, and constipation) which later can lead to IBS, Chrones and Ulcerative Cholitis.  But not everyone is suffering with these issues so what’s with all they hype?  When I teach to individuals and groups I say “go gluten free but don’t eat gluten free food”.   Many people go gluten free and end up purchasing products like muffins, pancakes, cookies etc. that are gluten free,  but when you look at the ingredients they just equal sugar.  Rice flour, Potato starch, Tapioca flour to name a few.  Grains are also more processed today and tough to tolerate by many.  Yes they do have vitamins and minerals but so do vegetables!  Reach for those first!   

What you want to avoid is sugar as this grows visceral fat and increases inflammation in the body leading to a lot of modern day health concerns.  Gluten and grains  throw our blood sugar into a cycle of sugar cravings!  Gluten free products don’t contain gluten (which many people are growing sensitive to because  of the amount of processed foods available today) but they do contain a lot of sugar so look for real food that is not processed 80 per cent of the time. I call all  processed food that contain flour food mimickers.  They do nothing for us nutritionally.  Look back to the days of cavemen and try to mimic how they ate.  Fruits and vegetables, meats in moderation and little to no dairy products.  Nothing was processed.  Cavemen were lean and exercised and had very few if any health concerns.  So when I am asked what kind of diet I follow I usually say the caveman diet which today is close to the Paleo Diet.  I actually don’t like to say the word diet at all, I usually refer to dieting as die with a “t”.  You never want to feel like you are depriving yourself and if you are addicted to sugars, usually there is a phase of detoxing that must be done but afterwards look for real food that has little done to it like fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, bean and legumes, lean meats, fish, eggs to name a few.