Saturday

The 1 food he reduced to eliminate his love handles

My dad has always been in pretty good shape most of his life right into his 60's.  He's always been a hard worker (he built our house that I grew up in with his own 2 hands) and very active with outdoor activities most of his life.

And he's also always eaten a pretty healthy diet with a lot of wild game meats, wild caught fish (he's a super fisherman), and lots of home grown produce that he grew himself in his huge garden.  But in addition to those super healthy foods, he's also had a lifelong addiction to cereals, breads, pasta, and ice cream (we'll talk more in an upcoming newsletter about what we found out about what all these grains have been doing to his health over the years)

About a year ago, my pops and I were talking about one of my clients that had great results and had lost a good amount of fat.  So he asked me,

"Mike, I've always been in good shape, but I've had these love handles my entire adult life for at least 40-50 years now" (he's 66 currently)

My response to him was something like this,

"Dad, you eat healthier than 90% of the population because of all of your wild game, fish, and garden produce, but I honestly think that you eat far too many grain-based foods with your daily bowl of cereal for breakfast, the bread you have during lunch, and the pasta or noodles you have several times a week at dinner... oh, and all that sugar from the ice cream every night for dessert. I think if you reduce the grains and sugars, you'll have no problem getting rid of those love handles that you've had your entire life"

My pops nodded and stored the advice away, but didn't change his daily eating habits yet at this point.  Fast forward another 6 months or so, and I gave him a copy of the book Wheat Belly, which talks not only about the effects of wheat in your body on blood sugar and body fat, but also the numerous health effects of eating too much wheat.  It was some of those health effects of eating too much wheat, such as the increased risk of heart disease, that finally got my pops to drastically reduce his wheat intake.

He went from eating cereal 7 mornings a week, bread 7 days a week, and pasta 2-3 days a week, to basically only having 1 day a week now that he eats these types of wheat based foods.

Fast forward another 6 months, and we just went back to visit my parents for the holidays last week.  After 6 months of dramatically reducing his wheat intake (and replacing those calories with healthy fats from more nuts, avocados, grass-fed dairy, etc), he looked noticeably slimmer...

In his own words, "Mike, I took your advice and cut down my cereals and breads to only 1 day a week, and those love handles I've had for 50 years... GONE... completely GONE!"

Not only that, but he also told me this surprising side benefit, "Surprisingly, once I stopped eating so much wheat, all the joint pain I've had for years is almost 100% GONE!"

Pretty cool huh!  This doesn't surprise me, and I've heard similar results with other clients of mine that have dramatically reduced their grain foods.

I'm not saying reducing grains is the miraculous cure for everything under the sun, but as you'll see in this article, there are at least 11 reasons why too much wheat in your diet can be harming your body.

I think my dads results with reducing wheat in his diet prove some pretty powerful benefits to his body!  He didn't even fully eliminate wheat... he just drastically reduced his intake from 7 days a week to 1 day a week.  And his love handles and joint pain he's had for as long as he can remember are completely GONE!



Mike Geary
Certified Nutrition Specialist
Certified Personal Trainer