Experiences with the No Grain Diet As advocated by Dr. Joseph Mercola?

oy. Another “No ____” diet? When are people gonna get over these idiotic fads and realize that the only diet that has ever worked and ever made sense is a balanced diet + exercise? Remember that food pyramid we learned back in grade school? Lots of fruits and veggies, many protiens, some grains & dairies, few sweets? I will never understand why people think this diet can be “improved” by removing one of the components. The No Carb diet. The No Meat diet. The No Grain diet. The Only Carb diet. ... I’m shocked no one’s yet suggested the Only Fat diet, and remove everything else.

Here’s a great diet for you, it’s called the “eat less and move more diet”. Tried and tested. The only reason to cut out foods as far as I am concerned is if you have an allergic reaction, a balanced diet is good.

@MrItty you seem to assume that i can coming from the point of view that I want to take up this “fad” diet. There has been extensive research that grains are intrinsically bad for the human digestive system. Having struggled with IBS for years; I am actually coming from the point of view that this could possibly be the answer? AND it could possibly NOT be also… hence the question. It is NOT an inquiry as to whether it will help me solely lose weight. I am fully aware of how the human body works in terms of what goes in must get burned or you get fat.

lynne, your assumption of my assumption is incorrect. You’ll note that absolutely no where in my post did I refer to you, either by name or by pronoun. Your post was the first time I’d ever heard of this particular fad, and I used a spot on this forum to comment upon it. My response was directed at the fad diet itself, not at you in any way shape or form.

Grains have been the staple food for humanity for thousands of years, I don’t see how cutting them out is going to help. I think the better option is to change the type of grains; stay away from white rice and white flour.

If you stick with whole grains and eat beans, lentils, etc. your source of protein is then complete. I’ve cut out dairy and meat for about 5 years and I feel great and keep trim. But as said above it is about balance and exercise as well.

@MrItty i apologise for my defensiveness…but you ahve to admit..it wasn’t a particularly “positive” answer

Apologies accepted of course, but in my defense, you didn’t ask for a positive answer…

lol… very true… I’m so grumpy today…maybe it’s the wheat?

Dr. Mercola is a genius! Anyone that doubts him is a fool!

Right off the bat, “No Grains” does not sound smart.

I am starting the No Food Diet, guaranteed to help you lose all the weight you want. Of course, you might die in the process, but hey, just think, you’ll leave a nice slender corpse in the coffin for your friends to admire. :-)

okay, that was rather crass of me to do, but it sounded good in my head.

welcome @birdnerd25 can you elaborate please?

Personally, I’d suggest the no-fat diet.

Not everyone goes on a diet for weight loss. It was suggested to me to go on this diet to help with psoriasis. I looked at this website thinking it may help – but it makes me shudder at the number of people that take it so personally. Get a life.

Well I have tried it, but it was a bit hard to adjust. I am very addicted to grains and I went off the diet a lot. But when I did stick to it, I lost some weight and I did not feel as tired as I usually do and I had more energy throughout the day.
But something I am beginning to try now is the raw food diet. This is the one diet that I think everyone should do. Its not a “fad” diet or anything, it is a 100% lifestyle change. When you go on it, you expell a lot of stuff from your body and their usually is a period of time where you feel like crap. But once thats over(its not that long, maybe 2 weeks at the very most) you feel utterly amazing. Your skin takes on a very healthy glow, you achieve a healthy weight, you have bounds of energy and feel more upbeat. A good book to read before going on this diet is The Live Food Factor by Susan Schenck. It is very insightful and you will learn a lot.
Although I haven’t been actively on it now, when I was I felt very good, and now not so much. But I recommend researching this a lot because it is a big leap. But well worth the rewards in my opinion. I even know some people who have cured chronic diseases with this(just as long as they stayed on it). Hope this helps. :)

@wilhelmina right then!

@Ailia I know of people who have done the raw food diet but it is really sustainable? it seems not so?

lynneblundell Well that depends on where you get your food. If you go with local organic produce and try to get everything you can within your area, you are really helping out yourself and the planet. But really when you think about it, is a cooked diet better? A lot of the stuff you would normally eat is probably not local and comes from other countries. So I think personally the raw lifestyle is better. And even if some of the stuff you do get is not so close, there are almost always alternatives.
In my case I couldn’t get a lot of fresh local produce so my family and I decided to start a garden. Its been a unique and enlightening process and the food tastes delicious. Though it can be difficult, especially when your whole garden can be destroyed by a storm(which happened not too long ago to me) but then again it really depends on the climate. But then again that could have been prevented too(e.g. a greenhouse).
What it really all comes down to is you and what you want to achieve with this. Health is generally what you can expect from this, but you can get so much more. Going raw is really a learning process. Finding things to eat, what to eat when you travel, staying on it, finding a support group and etc. So I strongly recommend you researching this more. Books are a great place to start, as well as support groups, as they give you everything you need to know about this. Anyways I hope this helps you decide. :)

I’ve been studying the ancient grains of the sumarian and egyptian people. The wheat they ate was called Einkorn and it had a 14 chromosome gluten structure. The wheat we eat today is genetically modified and has a 42 chromosome gluten structure.

I’m thinking that the wheat we eat today, which is genetically modified, may actually be the cause of the increase in gluten intolerance cases we hear about.

I dont’ think I ever said thank you to @Ailia > Thank you!! The weather here is not so good or reliable at all…and I do find it quite an expensive way to eat and incredibly time consuming to grow your own as I might have said (and I don’t have much of either)...but anyway, Thank you…maybe I’ll meet a farmer!!! lol

@skadu that’s interesting thank you… will look into this more i think! Is all the wheat we eat genetically modified…? well…the majority of it i mean?

@lynneblundell yes, the varieties farmers grow today are genetically modified to increase yields. The are some of the ancient varieties of wheat becoming available (and related wheat and cereal products) but they are pretty scarce, at this point. I will keep you posted.

do you think that..well… we could create a whole new life community through fluther… farming community that is,...

I’d take on Dr. Mercola’s no grain diet with a grain of salt!

From what I’ve read…he finds information, edits it to suit his agenda and perhaps re-writes it. I don’t know…he’s a little bit of a head trip for me. But, that’s just me.

Lynne, I would suggest looking into the Specific Carbohydrate Diet. The website is here. The book is called Breaking The Viscious Cycle, by Elaine Gottschall. It is based on the premise that (for various reasons) the intestines can get damaged and not be able to process complex carbohydrates, leading to a buildup of bad bacteria, which produce toxins, which damage the intestine some more, causing more problems with digestion, etc. It’s very strict, but I found it effective. It works well for IBS, UC, crohn’s disease, celiac disease, and several other conditions, some of which you wouldn’t think would be related to diet at all.

I did not go on it to lose weight – I went on it to clear up some issues I was having that seemed to be related to gluten. When I went on the “standard” gluten-free diet, I reacted badly to the various starches that are used to replace gluten-containing products, and a friend suggested this. It worked really well for me – I did lose weight, about 30 lbs (a lot for someone my height), that mostly seemed to be bloat from malabsorption. I stayed on it about 7 months (one thing the diet does is allow your intestines to heal, in many cases), and am now back to a “normal”, healthy diet and doing pretty well.

Wow… thank you!! I’ll definitely look at that… that’s really interesting!! xxxx