Whole30 guidelines in Whole 30/post w30 eating

It occurred to me that I never talked about the program rules specifically, all in one place, or why exactly I’m doing this. So I thought I’d share some information about the program in case anyone was interested/thinking about doing their own W30/thinking I’m an insane crazy person torturing myself for no reason.

First of all, it’s a strict elimination diet that is not really meant to be sustained forever. Even the people behind the program, Melissa and Dallas, say that they don’t expect anyone to eat this way for the rest of their lives, and they don’t themselves. This is directly from the website:

“Certain food groups … could be having a negative impact on your health and fitness without you even realizing it. Are your energy levels inconsistent or non-existent? Do you have aches and pains that can’t be explained by over-use or injury? Are you having a hard time losing weight no matter how hard you try? Do you have some sort of condition (like skin issues, digestive ailments, seasonal allergies or fertility issues) that medication hasn’t helped? These symptoms may be directly related to the foods you eat – even the “healthy” stuff. So how do you know if (and how) these foods are affecting you?

Strip them from your diet completely. … Push the “reset” button with your metabolism, systemic inflammation, and the downstream effects of the food choices you’ve been making. Learn once and for all how the foods you’ve been eating are actually affecting your day to day life, and your long term health.”

(You can also go straight to the source here.)

The book, It Starts with Food, outlines how/why certain foods negatively effect your system, and more importantly how they all work together for a negative impact (showing why it might not work to just eliminate one food group). The idea is that if you eliminate all of the worst offenders, you can follow a reintroduction plan at the end of the program to test the effects of each group separately.

For me, I have a few different things going on that made me interested in this program. First is my psychological relationship with food. I’m a binger, pure and simple. I’m hoping if I can change my emotional connection to food, I might finally get a handle on things and also break my sugar addiction. Second is headaches/migraines. I know one of my migraine triggers is an issue that’s happening in my neck, but I can tell when I’m having those headaches and it doesn’t nearly account for all of them. I don’t fully believe that I’ll find a food trigger, but I’m hoping. Third is some digestive issues. Mine have been getting worse lately (mainly painful gas, but also way too many loose BMs going on). It might be my lack of a gallbladder finally catching up with me, but it may not. I’m also really close to cutting dairy out of my life before I started but kept getting stuck on the ‘I need cheese to survive’ mindset, so I’m hoping this will help show me that I can survive without cheese. Last is an issue with eczema on my hands.

These are the NO foods/food groups:

• No added sugar, real or artificial. Their explanation for this is that sugar=sugar=sugar. Your mind and body can’t tell the difference between raw honey and granulated sugar. The book also talks a lot about the freakish sweetness of artificial sweeteners and how it destroys our ability to taste real flavors. (Also, in one of my favorite tidbits, it points out that after it’s processed, splenda more closely resembles pesticides than table sugar.) I’m certain I’ll go back to using honey and honey-like things after this is done, but I appreciate what the complete cut is doing for my body, mind, and taste buds.

• No alcohol, even for cooking. This has a lot to do with the sugars in alcohol, but also for the toxic effects.

• No grains. (wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, sprouted grains and all gluten-free pseudo-grains like quinoa. This also includes all the ways we add wheat, corn and rice into our foods in the form of bran, germ, starch and so on.)

• No legumes. This includes peanuts (which aren’t actually a nut) and soy. I remember someone being surprised by this when I first started talking about the program. The short explanation is that legumes fail two of Melissa’s four good food standards: support a healthy gut and support immune function/minimize inflammation.

• No dairy, with the exception of clarified butter/ghee (when you clarify butter, you remove all the dairy proteins/solids and are just left with the fat, which is considered a healthy fat).

• No carrageenan, MSG, or sulfites.

• Do not recreate treats, baked goods, or junk foods with approved ingredients. The thought behind this rule is that recreating the junk foods that you used to eat does nothing to change your relationship with food (ex: your brain is still getting a pancake for breakfast, even if it’s paleo). Again, this would be one of those things that’s specific to the elimination part of this diet. It’s extreme, but not meant to be sustained forever and ever. It’s specifically geared towards changing your relationship with food and rewiring your brain. Kind of like sugar=sugar=sugar.

• No taking measurements or stepping on the scale. This is to keep the focus on food and your relationship with food rather than weight loss because that’s not what it’s about. And I get it. I think if I was weighing in, this would turn into a crash diet mentality rather than what’s my relationship with what I put on my plate mentality.

• Don’t drink your fruit (try to stay away from juice, even if it’s 100% fruit, juicing anything because all the fiber is removed, and smoothies, even green because most smoothies have many many servings of fruit and don’t do a whole lot to fill you up)

• No seed oils. There’s a bunch of info about this in the book. One of the big things I took away from this is while we hear a lot about omega 3 fatty acids, we don’t hear a whole lot about omega 6 fatty acids which can actually be bad for you and seed oils have a lot of 6. And they’re everywhere.

So what can I eat? Meat, eggs, veggies, healthy fats, some fruit. Caffeine in moderation and all before noon. The shopping list outlines what some of those healthy things look like. When I first considered the program, before reading the book, my big thought was where are my calories coming from if not from grains (without eating a freakish amount of protein)?! The answer? Healthy fats. Which requires you to conquer fat-phobia. The book goes into how this should not throw your cholesterol through the roof.

These are their good food standards (foods go on the no list if they fail any of the standards):

1. A healthy psychological response

2. A healthy hormonal response

3. Support a healthy gut

4. Support immune function and reduce inflammation

Links:
The Whole30 website
It Starts With Food (note: there are a couple ISWF cookbooks that appear when searching that are NOT affiliated with the program, as far as I can tell. Melissa and Dallas are releasing another book this year called The Whole30)

I don’t know if that helps any of you at all, but there’s a little primer on the program! It actually was a nice boost for me to type it all out. A good almosthalfway reminder. :) I also promise that at some point in the near future I’ll write about something that isn’t Whole30 related. This is just really helping to keep me on track.

Last updated January 11, 2015