Going Gluten Free while Having a Life

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Virgin Diet lifestyle show with your host.

Celebrity nutrition and fitness expert and New York Times best selling author, JJ Virgin.

Gluten intolerance seems to be in the news a lot these days. So how do you know if you're gluten intolerant and what's the best way to figure it out? And if you are, how can you live gluten free for life and still have a life? In this show, I'm going to demystify this subject and show you simple and delicious ways you can live gluten free. So there are a few ways that you can have challenges with gluten. Now, the first one is celiac disease, and it's estimated that 1 in 133 people have this. This is genetic, but, you know, I think it's way higher than that. We just aren't diagnosing people often enough. The other genetic way is something called gluten intolerance. And then there's also gluten sensitivity, but this doesn't have any strict criteria. And I'll tell you what I've discovered is that 90% of people I've pulled off gluten feel better. So gluten intolerance has been linked to over 250 different symptoms. And let me just run through a couple of them. I'm not going to run through all 250, but some of the most common ones that I see with my clients, GI issues. And that includes constipation or diarrhea or both, gas and bloating, weight gain or weight loss, joint pain, autoimmune diseases. In fact, this is key. This is kind of that root commonality with all autoimmune diseases. Skin rashes, migraines and headaches, fatigue, fibromyalgia, other food intolerances, which, by the way, gluten actually raises a protein in your small intestine called zonulin. And that protein makes gut leakier so that you are more likely to have other intolerances. Yikes. Nutritional deficiencies, brain fog. And also when I talked a little bit about weight gain, one of the reasons that that is, is because gluten raises insulin. In fact, two pieces of gluten of white bread will raise insulin more than sugar will. And when you raise insulin, you store more fat. So all of these are symptoms of some of the different ways that gluten is literally wreaking havoc on your body. Now, of course, you can go get tested, and there's different types of lab tests that you can do to look for it, both genetically and some kind of immune reactivity. But, you know, I believe the best test, the most conclusive test, and incidentally also the most affordable test, is to treat your body like the chemistry lab that it is. Because even if you don't show up with any issues on lab tests, if you feel better with it out, well, heck, isn't that the most important thing to know? So how do you do that test yourself by removing all sources of gluten from your diet. And it's critical now to know that that's all sources for at least three weeks. And the longer you can go with that, four weeks, five weeks, six weeks will be better for you. During that time, you're going to track your symptoms. So the first thing you do is go through all those symptoms them, journal what you're eating during the time, and then at the end of that time period, you're going to re challenge by eating gluten containing foods and tracking your symptoms again. And by the way, at the end of those three or four weeks, better four, you go back and you rechallenge. I like people to rechallenge for four days, but the moment they feel a symptom, they're done. All right, so you don't. Someone. Someone emailed me to go, I feel horrible eating gluten. Do I have to do the four days? No, you know the answer. So you go back and you challenge every day. Because sometimes with an immune reaction, it can take up to four days to start to notice it. But I found with most people, they're going to feel it within the first 24 hours. When I eat gluten, the next morning I wake up and my hands are swollen. I can feel it because gluten creates inflammatory responses in your body. So even though that's not life threatening, who wants more inflammation? And by the way, inflammation also can create insulin resistance, and insulin resistance makes you store more fat. Nothing you want to go near. And again, I found that 90% of my clients notice a significant difference in their health when they pull out gluten. And, you know, there are so many great swaps now that you're not even going to miss it.

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The big challenge here is to make sure that you're not eating it by mistake because gluten hides in some of the craziest places that you would never expect. Pringles, French fries, soy sauce, mustard, luncheon meat. So you know as you move away from processed food, which is obviously a health strategy we all should be doing, it's going to make it a lot safer because gluten is in a lot of processed foods and you might not see it outright like wheat flour. You might see things like msg, so it hides within things. So again, the easiest thing to do is step away from the processed foods. So to be sure you're getting it 100% gone right, you've got to know those lists because even a little bit is going to keep your immune system fired up and then you don't lower your body's defense system. So when you give yourself back that challenge, it's not going to work. You've got to get it out 100%. So let's talk about some simple swaps you can do. If you love pasta, switch over to quinoa pasta now. Here I'm going to make a special shout out because I find that most of the quinoa pastas out there have put corn in. Corn is crappy food is majorly genetically modified. But also there's actually a gluten in corn that tends to trigger problems just like the gluten and wheat. So get yourself corn free quinoa pasta. Andean dreams is the brand you want to look for there or spaghetti squash. What an amazing vegetable this is. Spaghetti squash. If you haven't tried this one yet, it's incredible. It looks like it's like a big yellow watermelon and you can boil it or roast it and then you shred it and it comes off just looking like pasta. So you're going to trade the quinoa pasta or the spaghetti squash for wheat pasta. Now what if you love to do a wrap or a burrito? You can trade those tortillas, the whole wheat tortillas, for rice tortillas or coconut wraps or lettuce leaves. All of those are great. But a big shout out on coconut wraps. These are the most amazing things. Gives it a little tie, a little Thai ambiance. Okay. Soy sauce, wheat free tamari, or if you want to go totally soy free too. Coconut aminos are amazing. And wheat flour, you can trade this out for almond flour, coconut flour, different bean flours. Again, there are so many options out there, but I want to give you a caveat. Do not fall into the gluten free junk food trap. You weren't eating cookies or cupcakes before. At least I hope you weren't. Don't start eating them now just because it says gluten free. It is still a cupcake. It's still got sugar. It didn't suddenly become good for you because they pulled the gluten out. All right, now I believe everyone. That means you should do a three to four week, rather gluten free trial and see how you feel. In a few short weeks, you're going to be able to connect the dots between what you're eating and how you feel so you'll know if gluten should get out of your diet or it's okay to have a little bit powerful information. And if you do find out that you got to take the gluten out for the long haul and the great news is that there's loads of delicious gluten free swaps out there that make it easy to follow a gluten free lifestyle. If you'd like a free transcript of Today's show, text 58885 and enter gluten1 that's gluten and the number one put a space, your first name, another space and your email address. Again, text to 58885 and enter gluten1 space. Your first name, put another space and your email address. In the Virgin Diet I have you swap seven foods for three weeks to uncover your hidden food intolerances so that you can finally lose the weight and feel better fast. Why wait? Start those three weeks today.

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