In July of 2018, a full six months before this blog home of mine even existed, I embarked on my first Whole30. I was sick + tired + overwhelmed at all of the ways it seemed my body was failing me. Doctors weren’t helping + I was losing hope. As a last ditch effort, I decided to try something different. I changed my diet + it changed my life.
For me, the Whole30 wasn’t the magic healing bullet that it seems to be for many people, but it was a tool that I used to change and improve many aspects of my health + my life including my digestion, my energy, and my sleep patterns.
We’ll dive more into the specifics of what the Whole30 is, and what it does, below. But, for me, the Whole30 provided a structured framework to question why + how + what I was eating, as well as how food was connected + contributing to my physical + emotional symptoms.
The knowledge I gained from my first round of the Whole30 inspired my transition into Paleo-based eating, which is how I’ve lived for the past 13 months. I’ve learned a lot + I’m not sick anymore. But, just like 85% of other Whole30ers, I’m back for more!
What is Whole30?
“The Whole30 is a 30-day experiment designed to teach you how the foods you’ve been eating are impacting how you feel, how you look, and your quality of life,” Hartwig says. “It’s thirty days of self-care.”
Many people label the Whole30 as a nutritional reset, which it is. But, it’s also SO MUCH MORE than that. It is not, however, a diet – more on that later.
This programme removes foods from your diet that are commonly (and scientifically) linked to food sensitivities, cravings, disrupted hormones, autoimmune issues, digestive troubles, poor sleep, weight gain and a host of other issues. It’s designed to exclude these common ‘issue inducing” foods from your diet for the full 30 days, giving your body a bit of a break (like an elimination diet). After the 30 days are completed, the programme instructs you on how to systematically add these foods back into your diet + evaluate how your body tolerates them. For example:
- Eating non-gluten containing grains = feeling great!
- Eating dairy = headaches
- Eating legumes = tummy trouble.
- Etc, etc. etc. with the remaining food items.
These pieces of information, about how your body digests, processes +reacts to certain foods, allow you to make the most informed choices about how you want to eat to fuel your real life.
For example, if you know that legumes cause dietary distress, you might avoid chickpeas on a Tuesday night when you have a big presentation the next day. On the flip side, a headache might be worth it to indulge in your grandmother’s homemade ice cream on her birthday! But, only you can make the “is it worth it?” call + you can make the best choice only when you have access to all of the information. Make sense?
And for the record, the ultimate goal of the Whole30 is not to eliminate all of these foods forever. In fact, the Whole30 team speaks out against maintaining the Whole30 long term – that is NOT the perfect end result. Food freedom (based on real knowledge + applicable experience) is what we’re after.
The Emotional Rules
Most people, the media especially, approach the Whole30 as a weight loss programme or as a way to recharge your diet and physical health. Weight loss is not the purpose of this programme. It is designed to rework your physical relationship with food for your optimum health, yes, but your emotional relationship with food is just as important! Weight loss can be a side effect, but it’s not the main goal.
The Whole30 team did a really great job of ensuring the focus of the programme isn’t on appearance through the rules they’ve put in place. Most people completely overlook these really important aspects of a true Whole30. To do a Whole30 accurately, the rules stipulate that you:
- Do not step on a scale or weigh yourself for the entire 30 days.
- Do not measure any parts of your body during the 30 days.
- Do not weigh or measure or restrict any of the approved food items for the 30 days.
- Do not count one single calorie or macro for the entire 30 days.
When you remove these common “dieting” behaviours from the way that we live + eat, food becomes less about how you look and more about how you feel.
“The premise is simple—change your health (tastes, blood sugar regulation, hormonal balance, digestion, immune system), habits (how you reward, self-soothe, comfort, and show love to yourself), and emotional relationship with food (losing cravings, attachments to, and dysfunctional thoughts around food), and a healthy body composition has to follow. It HAS to. But it doesn’t work the other way around.” A-freaking-men.
What do you eat on the Whole30?
There are many different ways to approach Whole30 eating, but the Whole30 team have put it really simply + effectively:
” Eat real food. Eat meat, seafood, and eggs; vegetables and fruit; natural fats; and herbs, spices, and seasonings. Eat foods with a simple or recognizable list of ingredients, or no ingredients at all because they’re whole and unprocessed.
On the flip side, these are the potentially problematic foods that are excluded from your diet for 30 days:
- Added sugar, real or artificial.
- Alcohol, in any form, not even for cooking.
- Grains.
- Legumes.
- Dairy.
- Carrageenan, MSG, or sulfites.
- Baked goods, junk foods, or treats with “approved” ingredients.* *Recreating or buying sweets, treats, and foods-with-no-brakes (even if the ingredients are technically compliant) is missing the point of the Whole30, and won’t lead to habit change. These are the same foods that got you into health-and-craving trouble in the first place—and a pancake is still a pancake, even if it’s made with coconut flour.“
Why are you doing it…again?
The reality is, I’m a mostly healthy eater. If you follow along with my regular recipes here or over on instagram, you’ll know that I genuinely love cooking + creating healthy food + moving my body. It’s just a part of who I am!
That being said, I also have loved living in my food freedom. Since my Whole30 last year, I’ve added maple syrup to my coffee with abandon, spooned nut butter straight from the jar after dinner + plowed through a few too many pints of ice cream in recent weeks. Also, can we talk about what happens to all of my leftover baking escapades? I’ve been making my way through a freezer full of cookie dough, that’s what. And really, it doesn’t bother me. I haven’t felt ill (except with the ice cream, ha!) even with the rapid increase in sugar.
However, I have hated the fact that I’m not eating mindfully at all. I’m snacking all day, when I’m not even hungry. I reach for dessert after dinner just because we always have something sweet. I’m feeling relatively out of touch with my hunger queues, my fullness signals + what is actually fueling me. When I’m bored, I eat. When I’m tired, I eat. When I’m lonely, I eat. I went through an entire Costco sized jar of almond butter last week alone in mindless spoonfuls. That, I don’t love.
And so, I’m tackling my second Whole30 for a lot more emotional reasons than physical ones. Do I hope I sleep a bit better? Duh. Would clearer skin be nice? Sure, I’ll take it. But largely, I’m interested in getting in touch with the unhealthy ways I’m using food to cope with my regular life + recentering my eating habits around the values that I hold dear – REAL, good food + enough of it.
I’m not taking before or after photos or weighing myself. Heck, I haven’t weighed myself in months. I really don’t believe it’s an accurate representation of my health or wellbeing. I care where my mind is at + that’s my motivation for Whole30 Round 2.
Whole30 Friendly Recipes
Just in case you get inspired to give your own Whole30 a try (or even just one meal!) here are some recipes to get you started:
Whole30 Chorizo + Butternut Squash Crustless Quiche
Paleo Honey Mustard Salmon
Whole30 Greek Sausage Sheet Pan Dinner
Whole30 Beef + Broccoli
Paleo Breakfast Power Bowls
Whole30 Chicken Cacciatore
As always, I’d love to know what you guys think of posts like these. Are any of you embarking on a September Whole30? Let me know in the comments below if you’d be interested in hearing an update at the end of the 30 days! You can follow along with my Whole30 journey over on instagram or find all sorts of recipes to try on Pinterest.
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