CHAPTER 17:
PREFACE TO THE PROGRAM
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“Before I tell you what the Whole30 is, I would like to share my thoughts on what the Whole 30 is not. The Whole30 is not a diet. It is not a twenty-two-day program with eight cheat days (weekends) built in. It is not 30 days of restriction, to be followed by 335 days of gluttony. Here is what the Whole30 is. It is life-changing. It is the path to healing your insides. It is about eating real food and learning that what you put into your body actually matters. It is a test of the level of respect you have for this one body you were given. Simply put, if you follow it the way it was written, it works. If you don’t, it doesn’t. My only regret is that I waited so long to do it.”
—Tara O., Edwardsburg, Michigan
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Up until now, you’ve been somewhat passive in this relationship. We’ve been yapping our heads off, you’ve been patiently listening, and the flow has been mostly unidirectional. You’ve absorbed information from us, sure, but you haven’t really rolled up your sleeves and jumped into the conversation.
In the last chapter, we asked you to start contributing. We gave you our meal-planning template and encouraged you to start making some of your own decisions by customizing the size and contents of your meals. (Good work there.) But now, our relationship is at a turning point. We think you are ready to truly take charge of your own health, and your own nutrition program. We can’t do that for you. Frankly, we don’t want to do that for you.
We’re big fans of that whole “teach you how to fish” thing.
See, we’ve done as much as we can to educate you about foods that we believe are making you less healthy, and those that we think contribute to your health in a positive way. But at this point, it’s all just theory—pretty solid theory, based on reputable science and our own extensive experience, but theory nonetheless. The thing is, you are not represented in any of the scientific experiments we’ve referenced. And unfortunately, we’ve probably never met you, which means you personally are not a part of our experience, either.
Now, we can still make an educated guess as to what your optimal diet should look like going forward. And if you’re OK with us dictating what you can and can’t eat for the rest of your life, you can go ahead and skip this chapter. But we suspect that you’re not OK with that. We suspect that you’d like to know, definitively, how the foods you’ve been eating—particularly, the ones we’ve described as less healthy—are actually affecting your health. We suspect that you’d like to decide for yourself if including these less-than-healthy foods in your diet is worth it. We suspect that you’d prefer to make educated, informed decisions about your own diet for the rest of your life.
We don’t blame you. We want that for you too. But it means that you’re going to have to step up now. You’re ready. It’s time.
NO CHEATS. NO SLIPS. NO EXCUSES.
We’ll be honest—the Whole30 is strict. It demands a full thirty days, and requires that you radically alter your daily diet for the duration. The rules are clear, and do not allow for substitutions or exceptions. Believe us, if there were another way—a gentler way—to get the same degree of success, we’d put it out there. But the science and our experience show that “baby steps” and “moderation” simply aren’t effective at changing your habits long-term.
Despite what you may believe, habit research shows that dramatic changes are actually easier for us to manage, both physically and psychologically. Conscious decisions are made in the frontal lobe of the brain, and require active attention. But habits—automatic behaviors—take place in other parts of the brain, including the basal ganglia, and require much less cognitive effort.
SIGNAL, PLEASE
Remember when you learned to drive a car? In the beginning, you had to think about everything—which pedal was the gas, which lever was the turn signal, and what to do when the light turned yellow. But now, you drive practically on autopilot, without exerting effort thinking about your pedals, the steering wheel, or your signals. The act of driving has progressed from a series of conscious decisions to a habitual set of behaviors—you don’t have to think about it, it’s just what you do.
Behaviors (like dietary choices) that start out as effort can eventually become habit, as easy to maintain as it is to drive a car. But that requires consistency in your decision-making process, and dedication to making good choices until they become relatively effortless.
Making small changes or “baby-stepping” the process keeps every decision in the frontal lobe of your brain, in “effort” territory. Simply limiting added sugar (“I’m going to have only one sweet treat per day”) leads to incessant battles of willpower, continued cravings, and small sugar hits, which keep your brain focused on sugar. When faced with the offer of a cookie, your decision-making process is extensive, and painful: “Should I eat it? Is this what I want for my one treat? Maybe just today I’ll have two treats. …” But by committing to eliminate all added sugar, you’ve taken it out of the equation and made that decision more automatic, which makes it easier to continue that behavior until it becomes a habit. When faced with the same cookie offer, your decision-making process is easy: “Thanks, but I’m not eating sweets today.”
In addition, the only way this program will work is if you give it the full thirty days—no cheats, slips, or special-occasion foods or drinks. This isn’t us playing tough, or trying to make the Whole30 “hard-core.” The thirty-day no-cheat policy is based on science and our experience.
First, just a tiny amount—in the case of folks with celiac disease, as little as ten milligrams (or about one-five-hundredth of a teaspoon)—of the inflammatory compounds found in off-plan foods may break the healing cycle. One bite of pizza, one splash of milk in your coffee, one brownie corner from your friend’s plate within the thirty-day period could short-circuit your “reset” button, forcing you to start the entire process over from day one. And we’re pretty sure that half a slice of pizza on day twenty-three isn’t going to be worth starting over!
CAT MATH
Think of it like this: You’re allergic to cats, and you own ten of them. One day, fed up with your allergies, you decide to get rid of nine of your cats. Will you feel better? Maybe a bit—maybe not so stuffy, itchy, or headachy. But will your allergies go away entirely? Not a chance, because you’re still living with a cat! Removing only some commonly problematic foods from your diet is like getting rid of nine of your cats—with even a little bit remaining in your diet, you can’t hope to be free of the negative effects it may be having.
In addition, most folks are trying to overcome ten, twenty, thirty years of less-than-healthy eating habits. Common sense should tell you that you cannot reasonably expect to make major improvements in your health with just a week or two of good, clean eating. Some research has shown that effectively establishing a new habit takes, on average, about two months—but may take as many as eight!
We based our program on the idea that thirty days is the minimum amount of time necessary to solidify a new habit. And in our experience, a full thirty days of our program is essential to give you a taste of “the magic”—that’s why we call it the Whole30. Many Whole30 participants report that their most significant transformations take place in the final few days of the program. Still others require a Whole45 or a Whole60 to firmly root their new habits, banish stubborn cravings, and allow their bodies extra time to heal. In any event, your health isn’t going to radically improve in less than 30 days—so we’ll start there.
Another tough-love point:
It’s only thirty days.
It’s for the only body you will ever have in this lifetime.
And you have no idea how powerful this program can be.
After only thirty days, you’ll know how those foods you used to eat work in your body—how they affect your energy levels, sleep, mood, and physical performance. You’ll know how your food choices were affecting your skin, your hair, your joints, and your digestive tract. You’ll learn how your diet played into your disease, medical condition, or hard-to-define collection of symptoms. In just thirty days, you will see for yourself, firsthand, how these things we’ve been talking about—an unhealthy psychological response, hormonal disruption, gut permeability, systemic inflammation—have been affecting you. And then you’ll know whether these foods truly make you less healthy, which will then give you the power to decide what you’re going to do about it.
It’s time to step up and do what’s right for you, and for your body, for the long-term.
It’s time for your Whole30.
WHAT IS THE WHOLE30?
The Whole30 is our unique program designed to change your life in thirty days. Think of it as a short-term nutritional reset, designed to help you restore a healthy metabolism, heal your digestive tract, calm systemic inflammation, and put an end to unhealthy cravings, habits, and relationships with food. The premise is simple.
Certain food groups (like sugar, grains, dairy, and legumes) are probably having a negative impact on your health and fitness without you even realizing it. Are your energy levels inconsistent or nonexistent? Do you have aches and pains that can’t be explained by overuse or injury? Is it almost impossible for you to lose weight no matter how hard you try? Do you have an undesirable health condition (like skin disruptions, digestive trouble, chronic pain, or infertility) that medication hasn’t alleviated? As you now know, these ailments are directly impacted by the foods you eat—even the “healthy” stuff.
WHAT IS NORMAL?
But wouldn’t you know if these foods were making you less healthy? Not necessarily. Say you’re allergic to a tree outside your bedroom window. Every morning, you wake up with itchy eyes, a runny nose, and a slight headache. But those symptoms eventually start to become your “norm.” You no longer notice the headache, runny nose, or itchy eyes, because that’s just your experience every single day. Then one day you go on vacation somewhere where there are none of those trees. The first morning you wake up, you’re clear-headed, your eyes are bright, and you couldn’t summon a sniffle if you tried to. You feel fantastic—and you become acutely aware of how terrible you used to feel. That’s kind of like what we’re trying to do for you here—remove all potential triggers, so you can be truly, honestly aware of what your life would be like without them.
So how do you know if (and how) these foods are affecting you?
Remove them from your diet completely.
Cut out all of the mind-messing, hormonally disruptive, gut-damaging, inflammatory food groups for an entire month. Let your body recover from whatever effects those foods may have been having on you. Break old cravings, compulsions, and unhealthy relationships with food. Push the “reset” button on your metabolism and systemic inflammation. 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.
The most important reason to commit to thirty days?
It can change your life.
We cannot possibly put enough emphasis on this simple fact—the next thirty days can CHANGE YOUR LIFE. It can change the way you think about food, it can change your tastes, it can change your habits and your cravings. It can permanently change the relationship you have with food … for the rest of your life. We know this because we did it, and tens of thousands of people have done it, and it changed our lives and their lives in a remarkable and surprising fashion.
Our program has two phases: elimination and reintroduction.