Diving Into Whole30
If you haven’t heard of the Whole30 diet then you might be living under a rock but that’s okay! We’re here to bring you out from under that rock and introduce you to this full body cleansing diet. Do you want to stop drinking alcohol and cut all sugar, grains, beans, peanuts, and dairy from your plate for a month? Then the Whole30 diet is for you. Read on to learn the ins and outs of this popular diet:
What is Whole30?
Whole30 is a 30-day clean-eating plan designed to clean up your eating habits by cutting out foods that might be having a negative impact on your health (a.k.a. making you feel crappy). Yes, we're talking about the foods that are super hard to give up: dairy, sugar, grains, legumes, and alcohol. Committing to the Whole30 is breaking up with the booze-filled, dessert-every-night, carb-fueled diet that we've been following for the past month, and instead, swiping right for clean proteins and vegetables. Let's go into that a little more.
How Does it work?
Yes: Eat real food. Eat moderate portions of meat, seafood, and eggs; lots of vegetables; some fruit; plenty of natural fats; and herbs, spices, and seasonings. Eat foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable ingredients, or better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they’re whole and unprocessed.
No: Avoid for 30 days.
Do not consume added sugar, real or artificial. No maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, date syrup, stevia, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, xylitol, etc. Read your labels, because companies sneak sugar into products in ways you might not recognize.
Do not consume alcohol, in any form, not even for cooking. (And ideally, no tobacco products of any sort, either.)
Do not eat grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, sprouted grains, and all gluten-free pseudo-cereals like quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat. 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. Again, read your labels.
Do not eat legumes. This includes beans of all kinds (black, red, pinto, navy, white, kidney, lima, fava, etc.), peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts. No peanut butter, either. This also includes all forms of soy – soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and all the ways we sneak soy into foods (like lecithin).
Do not eat dairy. This includes cow, goat, or sheep’s milk products like milk, cream, cheese, kefir, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, or frozen yogurt.
Do not consume carrageenan, MSG, or sulfites. If these ingredients appear in any form on the label of your processed food or beverage, it’s out for the Whole30.
Do not consume 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 totally missing the point of the Whole30, and will compromise your life-changing results. These are the same foods that got you into health-trouble in the first place—and a pancake is still a pancake, even if it’s made with coconut flour.
Do not step on the scale or take any body measurements for 30 days. The Whole30 is about so much more than weight loss, and to focus only on body composition means you’ll overlook all of the other dramatic, lifelong benefits this plan has to offer. So, no weighing yourself, analyzing body fat, or taking comparative measurements during your Whole30. (We do encourage you to weigh yourself before and after, so you can see one of the more tangible results of your efforts when your program is over.)
Your only job during the Whole30 is to focus on making good food choices. You don’t need to weigh or measure, you don’t need to count calories, you don’t need to purchase everything organic, grass-fed, pastured, or local. Just figure out how to stick to the Whole30 rules in any setting, around every special circumstance, under any amount of stress… for 30 straight days. Your only job? Eat. Good. Food.
Conclusion
The program cannot possibly put enough emphasis on this simple fact—the next 30 days will change your life. It will change the way you think about food. It will change your tastes. It will change your habits and your cravings. It will restore a healthy emotional relationship with food, and with your body. It has the potential to change the way you eat for the rest of your life. Millions of people have completed this diet, and claim that it has changed their lives in a dramatic and permanent fashion. The only caveat to this diet is that if you aren’t mentally prepared to take the diet seriously then you will most certainly fail which could send you spiraling into a more unhealthy.
Sources:
https://whole30.com/whole30-program-rules/
https://greatist.com/eat/whole30-beginners-guide
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/health-fitness/a8562904/whole30-worst-diet/
