Beat Carbohydrate Addiction with the No-Grain Diet

What were your thoughts when you first heard about the No-Grain Diet?

Yes, it may sound extreme and radical but it’s not another fad diet.

If you have trouble sticking with a strict diet or if you find it extremely difficult to suppress your food cravings, then the no-grain diet may be just what you need.

Dr. Joseph Mercola explains that when he uses the term “no-grain,” he is not speaking solely about grains; he expands no-grain to include all forms of grains, starches and sugars that promote weight gain, food addiction and health problems.

The No-Grain Diet emphasizes that grains and sugars are a dieter’s worst enemies when it comes to weight loss and living longer.

For Dr. Mercola, overcoming carbohydrate addiction is one of the most important keys to optimal health. He explains that fats shouldn’t be blamed when people gain weight and get fat; the real villains are grains, starches and sugars.

Why Most Diets Just Don’t Work

Majority of diets fail because of the cravings for grains and sugars. Foods like bread, pizza and cookies have caused a lot of people to abandon their diets due to grain addiction.

The Atkins' diet tried to solve this problem by promoting a reduced carbohydrate diet. As a result, many people started to believe that all carbs are bad. However, it was the bestselling book The Carbohydrate Addict's Diet by Drs. Rachael and Richard Heller which first drew attention to carb addiction and its associated health dangers.

But despite their sound diagnosis, the Hellers’ food plan was ineffective because for them, it was still okay for dieters to eat ample quantities of grains, starches and sweets for a brief period every day.

Dr. Mercola explains that diets fail because you just return to your old habits after doing the diet. This is not to say that you lack the willpower; it's simply because you’re just following what your body is telling you to do because of the cravings.

The Advantages of the No-Grain Diet

The common misconception about the no-grain diet is that one has to stop eating all types of carbohydrates. Mercola explains that quality high-carbohydrate foods such as whole grains and potatoes are not necessarily bad for everyone. However, people who need to lose weight should completely avoid all carbohydrates at the beginning.

Whole grains can be healthy – if you are at your ideal weight. But if you have been struggling with your weight for the longest time, it's most likely that they aren't healthy for you, especially if you’re eating processed breads, pastas, and cookies rather than healthy grains like quinoa, teff, millet, buckwheat, and amaranth.

Therefore, the first step is to eliminate all grains, starches and sweets from your diet. This will help reorient your body's signals to help you lose weight and get fit.

One of the flaws in the Atkins' diet is that it promotes excess animal protein consumption, which hinders your ability to lose weight and keep it off in a healthy and sustainable fashion.

The no-grain diet addresses this concern and helps dieters incorporate a wider range of healthier foods than other diets. Dr. Mercola recommends the consumption of more organic foods and vegetables, and guides dieters in selecting the right source of proteins, which is crucial to any successful and long term weight loss program.

With the no-grain diet, you'll also learn about the Emotional Freedom Technique or EFT, a psychological acupressure method. EFT will help you get rid of your remaining grain and sugar cravings. Once you permanently overcome your grain and sugar addiction, you effectively eliminate the biggest obstacles to weight loss.

Dr. Mercola has applied the principles of the no-grain diet for over a decade on thousands of patients with a high success rate. Slowly but surely, more scientific studies are supporting the no-grain diet’s teachings, bringing hope to those suffering from obesity and carbohydrate addiction.

Source:  http://www.nograindiets.com/2009/03/beat-carbohydrate-addiction-and-lose.html

The Truth about Grains and Your Health

Ever wondered what our ancestors ate? Generations of humans survived primarily on meat from wild animals and whatever edible vegetation they can gather. Agriculture was born when man finally learned how to till the soil.

Now, from being a hunter and a gatherer, man now grows 17 plant species to provide majority of his food needs. Approximately 17 plants species provides 90 percent of the world's food supply. Six of the top 10 are all grains: wheat, corn (maize), rice, barley, sorghum and oats.

Imagine how the world could support its current six billion inhabitants and the estimated 12 to 15 billion people expected during the next century without plant-based foods.

Food grains are rich in carbohydrates, providing you with the energy you need to function. Grains also deliver B vitamins, iron, fiber and some phytonutrients.

Carbohydrates are generally grouped into two types: simple carbohydrates and complex carbohydrates. Simple carbohydrates come from sugars while complex carbohydrates are starches from whole grains, beans, nuts and vegetables.

A common (and unhealthy) misconception is that you need a lot of carbohydrates in your diet. The truth is you can survive without eating carbohydrates. Just take a look at Eskimos. They thrive by having a diet composed of high-quality protein, fat, water and minerals.

The carbohydrates from vegetables are preferable than those from grains. Most grains should be avoided because grain carbohydrates increase insulin levels and interfere with the body’s ability to burn fat.

The USDA’s Food Guide Pyramid recommends 6-11 servings of bread, cereal, rice and pasta – all grain foods – per day.

Does this mean that the nutritionists have gotten everything backwards about grains?

This may sound contrary to everything you’ve learned and believed about diet and nutrition but if you want to experience optimal health – to stay fit and avoid disease – you should severely limit, or may even need to entirely eliminate, grains from your diet.

Go Against the Grain

From an evolutionary point of view, the simplest explanation is that man’s body was not designed to consume grains.

Humans began consuming grains and sugars only 6,000 years ago. That’s how “recent” grain consumption is in relation to our total dietary experience. Man may have been eating grain foods for "millennia," but millennia is still a very short period in the overall timeframe of human existence. The estimated amount of genetic change which has occurred in the human genome over this time period is negligible, meaning modern man’s genes have remained largely unchanged and are still essentially the same to that of pre-agricultural man.

In terms of diet, this shows that modern humans are most ideally suited to eating the same types of food which were available to pre-agricultural man, like lean muscle meats, limited fatty organ meats, and wild fruits and vegetables, and not grains, legumes or the high-fat meat of modern domesticated animals.

When man learned agriculture, he secured the world’s food supply but he paid a very high price: his health would never be the same again because he began eating food that his body wasn’t designed to consume.

As a result of the agricultural revolution, modern humans began experiencing illnesses and health problems which their hunter-gatherer ancestors never had to deal with, including: infectious diseases, reduced stature, bone abnormalities and diseases, tooth problems, iron-deficiency anemia, and a shorter life span, among others.

The numbers don’t lie: in America, two-thirds of the population is already overweight and the obesity epidemic is rising. A key factor in these developments is poor diet, including the high consumption of grains and sugars.

Dr. Joseph Mercola, a leading natural health expert and author of New York Times bestseller The No-Grain Diet, has called grains and sugars as the main enemies to losing weight and living longer. But Mercola is not the only health professional advocating this seemingly radical stand. Over the last decade, a number of doctors and nutritionists have broken away from the accepted belief that grains are important for your health.

This site was launched to educate people about proper diet and nutrition and provide information on how to live healthy, eat right, lose weight and fight disease based on the “no-grain philosophy.”

It’s time to break free from the bondage of “grain gluttony.” If you want to experience a long-lasting positive change in your health, follow the nograindiets blog over the next few weeks for more articles and relevant information.

Source: http://www.nograindiets.com/2009/03/truth-about-grains-and-your-health.html