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.
But I was too impatient – I just plunged in. Fortunately, after a few false starts, I got the hang of it. But I never followed it to a T. I still don’t. Not that I eat lectins knowingly, but neither my husband or I are overweight. While many, if not most, people who choose this diet want to lose weight, we needed to keep up our calories so we didn’t get too thin. (I know, most people don’t sympathize with this problem.) As it was, I went from a size 10 to a size 8 rather quickly. Which is fine. I just don’t want to go any lower.
Therefore, what we eat on a daily basis might be more than others. To his patients who want to maintain their weight, Gundry suggests eating macadamia nuts, along with walnuts and pistachios, for their good fat content.
What we miss are peanuts and cashews, our favorites. I can hear someone saying “Well then, eat them if you like them!” Thank you, but no thank you. It appears that lectins were eating through my gut wall and causing gastrointestinal problems, which in turn affect all parts of the body, aggravating everything from my autoimmune disease to my high blood pressure. I can definitely live without peanuts and cashews.
I can live without nightshades, too, although I don’t, actually – if tomatoes, peppers and eggplants are fresh, I can peel and seed them (yes, it’s time consuming, but again – the benefits are huge health wise).
I can also buy, and do, canned Italian tomatoes, which have been peeled and seeded. Brands include organic Mutti and organic Cento tomatoes, readily available in most supermarkets.
I don’t miss beans, either. I can soak and pressure cook them to remove lectins, but because I’m usually too lazy to do this (and still leery of pressure cookers or Instapots), I stock up on Eden brand canned beans, which have been pressure cooked before canning. Someone somewhere, I won’t name names, countered that all canned foods are pressure cooked, but that’s not actually the case. Eden goes through a whole different process. You’ll just have to take my word on this, because I’m not going to digress to explain. I can get black beans at my local health food store, but the others I buy online.
What I missed most on this diet was finding a good bread substitute. Even the gluten free bread we normally bought contained grains on the “No” list. However, thanks to the rise of the Keto diet (which differs from Lectin-free mainly in its elimination of certain carbohydrates and its reliance on high fat meats, albeit grass-fed), there are certain mixes made by Bob’s Red Mill that we like, such as their grain-free Flatbread and their grain-free Blueberry Muffins, which we often enjoy with a shake at breakfast.
Could I make muffins and bread from scratch? Of course, and I have. There are some good lectin-free, grain-free, sugar-free recipes out there. But again, while I like to cook, I don’t like spending all my days in the kitchen. Bob’s Red Mill has been a real time saver.
However, making sourdough bread is something I’m definitely pursuing, in spite of its arduous process. But that’s for another time.