Giving up wheat

[Girlieschmoo]

Just an FYI: if gluten is your issue, oats are naturally gluten-free (but not low carb). The thing about oats is that you have to buy ones that state "gluten-free" if you need to eliminate gluten. This is because they have designated crop space for gluten free oats, where only oats are grown.

If it doesn't say "gluten-free", they were grown on fields that have been rotated with crops that do have gluten (ie wheat) and some of the volunteer remains can get into the oats during harvest.

[Janknitz]

Honestly, I think the only tough part is thinking about giving up wheat & grains

Absolutely! When I started (back) on low carb, I was heavily into bread baking (although, suprisingly, not a big bread EATER) I thought there was NO WAY I was ever going to give up grains, and, since I was starting with Jorge Cruise's BFC, it was perfectly OK to have stuff like half a whole wheat pita. But I gradually rolled my carbs down to Atkins induction levels (going in steps like that was very comfortable, no low carb flu) and gave up bread--temporarily I thought--and somewhere in there decided to take the plunge and just try being totally grain free (no more using up some of my daily 20 grams of carbs with tiny servings of noodles or couscous).

I didn't think much of it at first, but one day I realized "hey, I haven't taken NSAIDs all week." I was having daily skeletal pain at least 7 on a scale of 10 (often more) and suddenly realized it was GONE. Not better, but GONE. This was not an expected outcome! That alone is worth giving up every grain of wheat forever.

During our vacation in December, I somehow got "glutened" at a family potluck, even though I was trying to be careful. I was in SO much pain the next day, and the scary thing was that it felt very familliar--that's how I used to feel all the time, and I didn't even perceive anything was wrong--I thought I felt OK back then. The difference in how I felt was dramatic. I don't even consider myself gluten sensitive (and it may not have been just gluten), but boy, this was an eye opener.

As awful as going grain or wheat free sounds, my experience is that you will feel 1000% better for doing so and it's totally worth it. And here's the thing, if you don't feel any benefit, wheat will still be there waiting for you when the experiment (you need to give it a reasonable period of time--say 30 days) is done. You'll have the rest of your life to eat wheat if you don't find any benefit from eliminating it.

Another added bonus is that I see people here talking about cravings all the time and I have a hard time relating. I think that since I've eliminated grains, cravings have completely disappeared. Some of Wheat Belly is hyperbole (William Davis has even said that his publisher pushed him to beef up the hype) and his science has been questioned, but my n=1 observation is that something in the grains contributed to cravings as he claims, and without the grains I just don't get tempted by things any more.