A Venture Into Whole 30 – Why Not?

I always vowed I would never go on a diet that didn’t allow for wine. Maybe not a LOT of wine, but wine in moderation. Life’s just better with red wine.

But here I am, at the end of Day 4 of the Whole 30 challenge. And it’s not so bad. And it’s not really a “diet”, meaning it’s not solely a weight loss plan. It’s an elimination diet for health reasons.

I was inspired by Swim Bike Mom, who had started a group on Facebook when she started Whole 30 inspiring others to train hard and eat clean. It really motivated me. I wasn’t interested in doing Whole 30 then, but I finally decided to give it a shot. This summer I had done a diet challenge contest and really liked how I felt physically and emotionally (in terms of habits) by having an external motivator to avoid added sugar and treats. After it was over, I kept losing weight by eating healthy and working out 6 days a week, and reached my goal weight. I felt awesome, but I was really sliding back into some bad habits (uh, hello – grabbing a cookie in the office kitchen every time I walked to the printer?!) and I had a few stomach aches recently. So I decided – why not? The basics are this:

Our Whole30 program, as outlined.

Eat real food – meat, seafood, eggs, tons of vegetables, some fruit, and plenty of good fats from fruits, oils, nuts and seeds. Eat foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable ingredients, or better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they’re totally natural and unprocessed. Don’t worry… these guidelines are outlined in extensive detail in our free shopping list.

More importantly, here’s what NOT to eat during the duration of your Whole30 program. Omitting all of these foods and beverages will help you regain your healthy metabolism, reduce systemic inflammation, and help you discover how these foods are truly impacting your health, fitness and quality of life.

• Do not consume added sugar of any kind, real or artificial. No maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, xylitol, stevia, 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 it should go without saying, but no tobaccoproducts of any sort, either.)

• Do not eat grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, sprouted grains and all of those gluten-free pseudo-grains like quinoa. Yes, we said corn… for the purposes of this program, corn is a grain! 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 such as cream, cheese (hard or soft), kefir, yogurt (even Greek), and sour cream… with the exception of clarified butter or ghee. (See below for details.)

• 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 eat white potatoes. This is somewhat arbitrary, but if we are trying to change your habits and improve the hormonal impact of your food choices, it’s best to leave white, red, purple, Yukon gold and fingerling potatoes off your plate.

And there’s some stuff about not weighing yourself (I still am) and not creating healthier versions of junk food. It’s about breaking bad habits and resetting your brain and your body.

Believe me, I’m not a Paleo devotee – my husband has been doing the Paleo/Primal thing for a couple years, and I am not a believer that it’s the end-all be-all way to eat. I like my carbs in moderation. And I wasn’t having trouble losing weight without eliminating them. And I don’t have a lot of the issues that the Paleo and Whole30 people describe when they suggest this way of eating might help health-wise, aside from lactose intolerance. But I was already eating pretty healthily, so it didn’t seem like such a huge leap for 30 days to clean up the diet and maybe lose a few more pounds. I was mostly interested in cutting the sugar and dairy rather than the grains.

So how’s it going? Great! I’m on Day 6 and feel very good, and I haven’t had any of the issues they describe in their Timeline of how you’ll feel on this diet. None.

I’ve been having fun cooking various vegetables, and kicking the sugar habit feels good.

I won’t log my food day-by-day but here’s a sampling of what I’ve been eating while on Whole 30 during the first week:

Red Curry chicken:

Lots of fresh vegetables:

I made my Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Figs recipe, a sweet potato, and some ground beef to mix with the leftover red curry sauce:

 

Roasted cauliflower that never made it off the pan and onto the table – we all snacked on it so quickly it was GONE before dinner was served. It even got a “mmmMMMM!” from the 1-year-old. Here’s all that was left by the time I grabbed my camera:

 

Salads with avocado and other veggies:

One of my favorite things to eat is sliced avocado, sliced cherry or grape tomatoes, drizzled with olive oil and some sea salt. It’s a great breakfast or snack!

So far the only downside is needing to cook so much with my busy schedule. And eating out – I had a great meal at a restaurant on Monday (grilled steak over a kale salad) but I’m simply not able to pack a lunch every single day at work and that leaves my only guaranteed non-dairy, non-gluten choice the Canteen salad bar. Fine, but this can get old after a while. So I’ve been packing up leftovers most days this week to keep variety going – it’s great for saving money but it requires some effort and time on my part.

Have you ever done the Whole 30 or tried the Paleo diet? What did you think?