goodbye grains

I'm not really even sure where to start.

As Americans go,

we eat healthy.

Whole grains, and lots of 'em.

Cold-pressed good-for-you oils.

Honey - raw, of course - and Xylitol instead of sugar.

Whole wheat pastas, 

except for the 4-6 times a month 

the kids have mac & cheese or curly noodles.

For goodness sake, we drive over 2 hours

one way

to buy our milk.

To say I care, greatly, about the nutrition of my family

is an understatement.

Those 4-6 serving per  month of white pastas?

I feel guilty for

every

single

time.

I only buy them because the kids like them so much

and it's an easy thing to fix if I'm gone.

And really, when the bulk of our diet is good,

I figure it can't hurt that much...

Last Tuesday,

I followed a link that Elizabeth shared to this post.

One look at me

and you can see I have 'issues'.

I continue, even with severely reducing my food intake

(of healthy foods)

and exercising some (although admittedly, I could do more...)

I am gaining weight.

I weigh more than I ever have in my life.

In my life, people!

I have been pregnant 10 times!

And then there is the pain.

I've had pain in either my SI joint

or my heel

or both

pretty much every day

since February.

Some days the pain has been debilitating,

sometimes it's just a nuisome.

But I don't think I've had even three pain-free days in 11 months. 

Tyler, while his weight is fine for his height,

has a bit of fat in the worst possible place - his belly.

He also has high blood pressure,

liver 'irregularities',

high cholesterol,

and is considered pre-diabetic.

After reading The Post last Tuesday,

I immediately sent it to Tyler.

A few hours later, he sent me a link to this post.

I spent the entire day on the computer.

We emailed.

We talked.
We prayed.
I may have shed a tear or three.

We decided that we would probably do a 

60 day wheat free experiment 

starting in January.

We watched the documentary Fathead.

And I couldn't bear the thought of feeding my family wheat

again.

Yes.

I have 450# of wheat in my pantry,

and with the exception of Friday, being Jeremiah's birthday

and Saturday morning pancakes for the kids

and a few other times 

when the kids have had a tiny bit of wheat in something

We have been wheat-free for a week.

I'll be honest,

when I was looking for ways to help my husband live a long life,

I wasn't expecting to find that we'd need to do something so extreme.

so counter-cultural.

('cause we are so normal ;-)

Most of my research was comforting, actually;

pretty much everything said 'more whole grains'.

That, I could handle.

I also determined we needed more leafy greens

and more exercise.

But the nagging thought was there,

why,

if we are eating so well

(for the most part)

is Tyler having these health issues at a fairly young age?

I pretty much decided he just had lousy genes.

I'd been exposed to the idea of going wheat free before,

but come on - I've got those buckets and buckets of wheat...

And how could that even be healthy?!

Bread is the 'staff of life'.

When I read Dr Davis' Wheat Belly article

it began to make sense.

And as I studied further, it seemed foolish to wait until January.

So

 that is how

a wheat-grinding girl like me

said goodbye - in December, no less

(perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever)

to Saturday morning waffles

and my finally-perfected wheat biscuits

(that I never even got posted, I so recently perfected them!)

and our delicious whole wheat bread.