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Evidence-Based Nutrition for Moms

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Gluten-Free: Is It Worth the Trouble If You’re Not Celiac?

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Gluten-free is a major buzzword and has been for the last 2 decades.

And for those with celiac disease, hallelujah! Gluten-free foods litter the aisles of the grocery store, restaurants have gluten-free options even for pizza, and bloggers and chefs share their gluten-free recipes for your perusal.

Gluten-Free: Is It Worth the Trouble If You're Not Celiac?
Gluten-Free: Is It Worth the Trouble If You’re Not Celiac?

Celiac sufferers wish there was this much hype 60 years ago! (Although the banana industry was just fine with the way things were…)

For those without celiac disease, the other 99% of the population, we don’t need to be concerned with gluten.

Wait, WHAT? Don’t like 18,000,000 of us have a gluten sensitivity?

Yeah, not so much. What we do have is an overabundance of processed foods, which can make you feel like crap for many reasons.

What happens when you go on a gluten-free diet?

According to this article on Healthline, you stop eating:

  • bread
  • pasta
  • crackers,

which are all processed foods, and anything that contains

  • wheat bran, germ, or starch
  • and other grains such as durum, semolina, spelt, barley, rye, and bulgur,

ingredients that you pretty much only find in processed foods.

What you CAN eat is

  • Lean beef
  • Fish
  • beans and other legumes,
  • fruits and vegetables
  • eggs
  • rice, etc.

Look at that, a diet of whole foods avoiding most processed foods. What we have here is a DIET EVERY HUMAN SHOULD FOLLOW, celiac or not.

Let’s bring it back around to your so-called gluten intolerance and do the math. Are you sure it’s the gluten?

1 percent of the population in the US has celiac disease, which requires a gluten-free diet. Statistically speaking, if I chose a random person out of the entire population, let’s say, YOU, there is a 99% chance that you will NOT have celiac disease or require a gluten-free diet.

But wait. A diet full of whole foods and avoiding processed foods is a health requirement for 100% of the population. Statistically speaking, if I chose a random person (again, let’s say YOU) there is a 100% chance that you will benefit from a gluten-free diet. 

The benefit for those of us who do not have an allergic reaction to gluten comes from an increase of whole foods and a decrease of processed, unhealthy foods. This is, in essence, what every single healthy diet recommends.

The conclusion: we should all be on a diet, and it doesn’t really matter which one. If a gluten-free diet makes you feel good, please continue. Whole food is the way to go.

 

Celiac disease is a very serious autoimmune disease that is akin to having a peanut allergy, in the way that even a tiny bit of gluten can cause a major reaction. Please respect people who have a true allergy to gluten, and don’t eat their cookies at parties.

Does Sugar Make You Tired, Lethargic? Here’s Why

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Does eating sugar make you tired? Unable to focus? Drained?

If you have a human body, sugar can make you tired. And it happens to children, too, despite the initial energy boost.

My stomach churned as the school bus bounced through the turns on its way to the museum. I hadn’t been on a school bus in years, but it was exactly as I remembered. The brown, clammy benches with no safety belts, cloudy windows that only open halfway, and the unmistakable aroma of foot stink and plastic.

I chaperoned three kids. At lunch, we found a great place outside under a giant grizzly bear statue to eat our sack lunches.

Delicious, sugary snacks filled the kids’ tummies: fruit roll-ups, cookies, granola bars, fruit punch drinks, flavored yogurts, candy bars.

Of course, the healthier. yet half-eaten turkey sandwiches, lunch meat, and apple slices filled the trash.

The three pint-sized balls of energy ran back into the museum and I thought to myself, “So this is what you’re supposed to feel like after you fuel your body.”

But 30 minutes later the poor kids slumped over a table and watched a woman demonstrate tiny square robots without much focus. They CRASHED.

And that is NOT what you’re supposed to feel like when you fuel your body.

Does sugar make you tired, sleepy, lethargic, sick? Here's why it happens and what you can do about it

Does sugar make you tired, sleepy, lethargic, sick? Learn why it happens, and then learn how to stop it

 

The same thing happens to adults. That donut from the break room tastes soooo good – but a little while later, you’re sitting at your desk and can’t even remember what you’re doing. Can’t you just take a nap first?

What’s going on here? I thought sugar was supposed to give us energy.

Why would sugar make you tired?

The body does use sugar for energy. Simple sugars from processed foods and desserts are powerful fuel sources – so powerful, in fact, that eating them is like adding jet fuel to your car. It is more fuel than your body can handle.

When that jet fuel hits your bloodstream your pancreas releases insulin. Yup, the same insulin from diabetes fame. Insulin’s job is to get that sugar out of your blood and into your cells.

When you eat simple, processed sugars, your blood sugar gets really high, really fast, which causes the pancreas to release a ton of insulin. Then insulin does its insulin thing and brings your blood sugar back down to normal.

But here’s where things get a little crazy.

Since SO MUCH insulin is released, it hangs out in your blood for a long time, even after it does its job. The insulin keeps pushing sugar out of your blood and into your cells which causes a condition called hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar.

Without enough sugar in the blood, your body and brain slow down to save energy. You feel tired, lethargic, ready for a nap.

Thirty minutes after that donut, you get up for another cup of coffee because you can’t focus. Or worse, grab another donut and the cycle starts all over again.

Now if you have time to watch someone demonstrate tiny robots all day, that might be okay. But for a driven, productive person like you? You should probably skip the donut. Or learn some tricks to eat sugar without the crash.

Why Am I Always Tired? How Food is Sucking Your Energy

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Why are you always tired? Are you sleeping enough but still tired during the day? It’s what you eat that is sucking your energy. Read on, exhausted friend…

On Sundays, I sleep in as late as I want. My husband gets up with the kids, and when I sleep really late, he’ll even make breakfast. Sunday is my catch-up time, the only day I don’t wake up feeling tired.

I’ll sleep for 10 – 12 hours sometimes. Despite the glaring sleep debt that I built up over the week, I get to recharge and reset.

If you’ve read my weekend meal philosophy, however, you know that I don’t like to cook on the weekend. So meals on Sunday consist of whatever’s in the fridge and dinner is usually pizza. Sometimes I’ll drink some beer while I’m watching NASCAR and football. And almost inevitably, I fall asleep on the couch.

How could I fall asleep on the couch after 10 hours of sleep?

The truth is even if I slept for 10 hours every night, I would still be exhausted if I ate pizza and beer every day.

Because lack of sleep isn’t what makes us tired during the day – it’s what we eat.

It's not lack of sleep making you tired - it's what you eat
It’s not lack of sleep making you tired – it’s what you eat

Sleep is a function of two different systems – the circadian rhythm and homeostasis, or how long you’ve been awake.

Both of these systems make you feel tired at night so that you can sleep.

Neither of these systems makes you feel tired during the day in a properly fed body.

Your daytime lack of energy is not sleep related. It’s your body’s inability to turn “On” its energy switch.

Your body has to be able to access the energy it has stored in your cells. This ability is what determines how much energy you have to get your kids off to school, volunteer for the high-profile projects at work that will get you noticed, connect with your spouse in the evening instead of nodding off watching TV.

So, how do you flip your body’s energy “On” switch? It’s all about the fuel you give your body – the metaphorical version of “You are what you eat.”

Yes, each body is different, and I encourage you to say, “Your diet can bite me” when people try to sell you on a fad.

But as a human, there are habits that work with your biology to supercharge your energy and habits that suck the energy right out of you. I’ll bet at least one of these is keeping you from pumping your days full of energy.

  1. Processed Food

I know, right? We’ve heard this before, and it sounds so simple, except for the fact that 80 percent of our standard diet is “processed” in some way. Unfortunately, processed foods are missing essential chemicals such as micronutrients like vitamins A-K, manganese, phosphorus, and a crap-load of others that you can’t get from a Gatorade or any other “enriched” processed food. Your body needs those chemicals to release energy from your cells. Truly, even though processed foods have calories, they don’t let you let your body use the energy you are eating.

  1. Sugar Crash

Don’t worry; I will never tell you to stop eating sugar all together. But you can enjoy sugar responsibly and avoid the sugar crash. Eating the wrong kind of sugar at the wrong time (snacking on Halloween candy when you get bored in the afternoon) will not allow your body to regulate your energy, causing you to crash and draining your oomph.

  1. Hydration

It is surprising to me that drinking water is the biggest surprise to people when it comes to energy. Water is critical to your energy level because, without water, your cells can’t carry out the chemical reactions that release your energy. Seriously. Water and oxygen are essential to releasing your energy, which is why you cannot live very long without either of them. Unfortunately, 60 – 90% of us are dehydrated on a daily basis. Drink some water, friend!

  1. Overeating

We all know that when we engorge at Thanksgiving dinner, we crash on the couch afterward. But chronic overeating, regularly eating more calories than we can use without getting enough nutrients, is the Standard American Diet. Your daily diet sucks the energy out of you by making your body process and digest more food than it needs, which uses up energy. Then storing excess calories as fat also disrupts the body’s function and makes you tired. The good news? It is nearly impossible to overeat if your diet consists of non-processed, nutrient-dense foods (like fruits and veggies.)

  1. Immune Response

Look, sometimes your body just plain hates something. You know the saying, if the mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy? Well, you can think of your body as the mother of feeling good and having energy. If you eat something and your body gives you the signal – you know, the bloating, the gas, the stomach ache, the general feeling of BLAH – then you can bet it is also sucking the life right out of you. If you want more energy, don’t eat that! And your triggers can be random stuff. Some people react to carrots. Some gluten. Or beer, much to my hops-loving chagrin. You just have to listen to your body and test for yourself what might be sucking your energy.

When I wake up exhausted on Monday morning, I know it’s not because I didn’t sleep enough over the weekend. It’s because I didn’t drink enough water. I ate pizza and beer, and way too much of both. I know if I eat that Maple French Toast bagel, I’m going to crash by 9 AM. And my feeling of dragging feet, almost-headache, tired-as-hell Monday “ugh” could have been completely avoided if I just put better stuff in my mouth.