lectin free diet - Kristen Ann McLaughlin

Lectin-free cooking: beginnings

I didn’t begin the right way. When I headed off on my lectin-free cooking adventure, I hadn’t read Dr. Steven Gundry’s “The Plant Paradox.” If I had, I would have discovered his three-phased approach to this diet.

Instead, I simply found his “Yes” and “No” lists, copied and carried them with me to the grocery store and used them to choose my produce. Then I decided what to make for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Advice: read “The Plant Paradox” first.

The lectin-free experiment, part 2

It’s been about nine months now since we started this experiment, and several months since my last post about how and why we began, but after eating this new way for most of the year, I can say with certainty that we’ll never go back to “the way it was.”

Not that this new diet doesn’t come with its drawbacks, most notably in the area of eating out, whether at restaurants or at the homes of friends, which can be challenging. Being “gluten free” had its challenges, too, such as the lure of French or Italian baguettes and “real” pasta (in which case I usually indulged and simply ached in my joints for a few days afterwards), but being “lectin free” means, in addition, trying to avoid dishes containing ingredients such as white potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants, cucumbers, peppers, and other potential gut disruptors.

The lectin-free experiment

Something was wrong. I was eating a totally organic, gluten-free diet of fresh fruits, vegetables, free-range chicken, and wild caught fish. No fast foods, no packaged foods. I made almost everything from scratch. But after meals, I often was bloated. Why? Did I have irritable bowel syndrome? Or “leaky gut”? Bloating would indicate one of those.

So I started poking around the internet, investigating both IBS and leaky gut and reading articles. I didn’t “check with my doctor,” as my own experience told me that all roads starting from that source inevitably lead, after multiple tests, to one or more pharmaceutical drugs – something I definitely wanted to avoid. I didn’t want to put a band-aid on my situation, but find out what was causing it.