CHAPTER 18:
THE WHOLE30:
PROCESS OF ELIMINATION
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“I have been a lifelong acute asthmatic. Hundreds of ER visits, hospitalizations, and so forth. It was around week two of my Whole30 when my miracle happened. I went out for a warm-up run—something I dread every day, and something I have never been able to do. But it was during this run where there was suddenly a feeling like I had the legs (and lungs) of a gazelle. I had never felt this in thirty-three years. So much so that I voluntarily went on another run … and another. Since the Whole30, I have been unmedicated for the first time in my life. I would normally have to take four or five control medications and use my inhaler multiple times a day. It is something miraculous to feel life as you have never known it.”
—Andrea B., Minneapolis, Minnesota
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THE WHOLE30? PROGRAM: ELIMINATION
Follow these guidelines for the entirety of your program. No cheats, no slips, no excuses.
YES: Eat foods that make you more healthy - meat, seafood and eggs, lots of vegetables, some fruit, and plenty of healthy fats.
NO: Do not consume any added sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes or dairy.
NO: Do not attempt to recreate junk foods or desserts by using “approved“ ingredients.
NO: Do not step on the scale for the entirety of your program.
YES: Eat foods that make you healthier—meat, seafood, eggs, lots of vegetables, some fruit, and plenty of healthy fats.
Eat foods with pronounceable ingredients, or, better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they are whole and unprocessed. It’s what we’ve already talked about—the things that should be on your plate, using the same meal planning recommendations we’ve just covered.
NO: Do not consume any of the following foods or beverages for the duration of your Whole30 program.
Added sugar of any kind, real or artificial. No table sugar, maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, Splenda, Equal, NutraSweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Read your labels, because food manufacturers sneak sugar into products in ways you might not recognize or even imagine.
Alcohol. In any form, not even for cooking. (And it should go without saying, but no tobacco products of any sort, either.)
Grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, amaranth, buckwheat, sprouted grains, and quinoa. This also includes all the forms in which wheat, corn, and rice are added to our foods: bran, germ, starch, and so on. Again, read your labels.
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 soy is sneaked into foods (like lecithin).
Dairy. This includes cow’s, goat’s, 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 and ghee. (Keep reading for details.)
White potatoes. If we are trying to change your habits, it’s best to leave white, red, purple, Yukon gold, and fingerling potatoes off your plate. There’s a world of new veggies waiting for you to make room for them!
DO YOU STILL SMOKE?
If you still smoke, you might be thinking, “There is no way I can quit smoking and make these dietary changes all at the same time.” And you might be right. If you feel like all of these changes are too overwhelming, then we’d encourage you to focus on getting rid of your tobacco habit first, and then come back to the Whole30. That’s not to say you can’t make some dietary improvements while you quit—many smokers report that taking better care of their health with diet and exercise makes it easier to stop smoking. But if you just can’t manage it all, the cigarettes should be your top priority. On the other hand, if you’ve been looking for a program to help you quit, the Whole30 may just be your ticket. Many former smokers have told us they used the Whole30 in part as a smoking-cessation program, and that eliminating sugar and other psychologically unhealthy foods at the same time made the process that much easier. Either way, we encourage you to seek help for your nicotine addiction, prioritize ditching the smokes, and take on the Whole30 as soon as you are ready.
NO: Do not try to recreate junk foods or desserts with “approved” ingredients.
This is a very important rule, mostly because we know you’re already thinking about how you can take the foods you used to eat and make them compliant with approved ingredients. “There must be a way to make Whole30-approved pizza/pancakes/brownies/ice cream. …” And a quick Internet search will bring up thousands of “Paleo” treat temptations.
Most people make this mistake during their first Whole30. But we know from experience that one of the fastest ways to negate the potential benefits of your program is to try to shove your old, unhealthy diet into a shiny, new Whole30 mold. Pizza, pancakes, brownies or ice cream are still junk food, even if they’re made from “healthier” ingredients. They’re still pushing more nutrient-dense foods off your plate. And their flavor, texture and taste aren’t generally as good as the “real thing,” which means they aren’t as rewarding—which makes you crave them even more. When it comes to the psychological hold certain foods have over us, the whole (muffin) is far more than just the sum of its parts (ingredients).
Do you really want to spend the entirety of your Whole30 focusing on all the stuff you can’t have, and eating the same kinds of foods you’ve been eating all along? If you come out of the program under the shadow of the same habits, patterns, and food choices you had when you started, what are your chances for long-term, life-changing success? After all, those very same habits, patterns, and food choices are what got you into trouble in the first place!
Use the Whole30 to change your habits, alter your patterns, break unhealthy cravings, and create a new, healthy relationship with food. Starve the sugar dragon once and for all! You won’t be sorry, as those new habits and patterns will stay with you for the rest of your life.
NO: Do not step on the scale or take any body measurements for the duration of the program.
This one may be the hardest rule of all and requires another dose of tough love.
We don’t care if you lose weight during your Whole30.
We know you care, though, and we do care about you. So, please, hear us out.
The Whole30 isn’t just another weight-loss diet. The program is designed to jump-start optimal health for the rest of your life. We tell people to get off the scale altogether for the first thirty days because scale weight tells you almost nothing about your overall health—and is one of the fastest ways to lose motivation, even if you thought you were making great progress in other areas. (“I only lost half a pound today—this program isn’t working at all!”)
Scale weight fluctuates. It doesn’t reflect improvements in your health. And it’s one of the parties holding you hostage to your unhealthy relationship with food. So give yourself a long-overdue, well-deserved break from your preoccupation with body weight. You deserve it.
However, because we know weight loss is important to you—and because we get that there’s a connection between a more pleasing physique and motivation to maintain your new, healthy habits—we’re going to let you in on a secret: Our nutrition plan will improve your overall health, and that is almost always reflected in an improvement in body composition. Which means that if you focus on eating better, sleeping better, and making yourself healthier … your shape will have no choice but to shift. Yes, automatically. But it doesn’t work the other way around.
You can achieve short-term weight loss by taking some drastic steps (like eating a super low calorie diet plus doing two hours of cardio a day), but that’s not going to make you healthier, nor is it sustainable long term. So trust us, and be patient. We’ll get you there the healthy way—the right way—and you’ll be able to maintain the new, improved you for the rest of your life.
OUR SURVEY
In a 2011 survey of more than 1,000 Whole30 participants, 95 percent reported having lost weight and/or improved their body composition. The majority lost between six and fifteen pounds in just thirty days. So, there you go—proof that weight loss is built right into the program, without your having to think about it.
The Whole30 is about so much more than just weight loss, and if you focus on the small picture, like body composition, you’ll miss out on the big picture—the dramatic and lifelong benefits the plan has to offer. But simply by doing the Whole30, you’ll probably lose weight anyway. So why waste brain cells obsessing about something you don’t need to obsess about? *
THE FINE PRINT
These items, even though they don’t all necessarily meet the strictest criteria for the Whole30, are allowed. Including them should not have a negative impact on your results.
YES: Feel free to include these foods as part of your varied healthy-eating plan.
Clarified butter and ghee. Clarified butter and ghee are the only dairy products allowed. Plain old butter is not, as it contains milk proteins.
Fruit juice as a sweetener. Some products use orange or apple juice as a sweetener. We have to draw the line somewhere, so we’re OK with a small amount of fruit juice as an added ingredient.
Certain legumes. Specifically, green beans, sugar snap peas, and snow peas.
Vinegar. Most varieties of vinegar, including white, balsamic, apple cider, red wine, and rice, are allowed. But vinegars with added sugar or sulfites, and malt vinegar (which generally contains gluten), are not.
Processed foods. Minimally processed foods like canned coconut milk, applesauce, tomato sauce, chicken broth, or canned olives are all acceptable—but avoid anything with MSG, sulfites, or carrageenan: these additives all have potentially nasty side effects.
WHY THESE THREE?
While we’d prefer that none of your foods contain additives, we’re singling out MSG, sulfites, and carrageenan for very good reasons. Monosodium glutamate (MSG), a common flavor enhancer in many processed foods, is known to have neurotoxic effects and is also linked to obesity by promoting leptin resistance. In fact, MSG is used to induce obesity in lab rats! Sulfites occur naturally in many foods and beverages and are a byproduct of fermentation, so they are found in most wines, as well as balsamic and red wine vinegars. They are also added to processed foods to increase shelf life, preserve color, and inhibit microbial growth. Sulfites can cause significant dermatological, pulmonary, gastrointestinal, and cardiovascular symptoms in sensitive people. Carrageenan is a concentrated seaweed extract used to thicken processed foods and is found in everything from deli meat to yogurt to chocolate. Carrageenan is inflammatory if it gets into the body, which could happen if you have increased gut permeability. (Carrageenan is actually used to create inflammation in lab animals.) Furthermore, in the digestive process, carrageenan may be broken down into components that can cross even a healthy gut barrier.
READY TO START?
Now that you have the elements of the plan, you need to know how to implement them. It’s simple, actually.
Start now. Today. This minute.
Block out thirty days on your calendar. Clean out your pantry. Plan a week’s worth of meals with the help of our Meal Map in Appendix A. Take our shopping list to your local grocery store, health-food store, or farmers’ market and stock up on ingredients for all the yummy meals you’ll be making. And then … go. Just start! Don’t put this off, not for one more day. If you give yourself excuses to delay, you may never begin.
Do it now.
Your only job for the next thirty days will be to focus on making good food choices. You won’t need to weigh or measure, you won’t need to count calories, you won’t need to stress about whether you’re doing it “perfectly.” Just figure out how to stick to the Whole30 regardless of the circumstances, in the face of any amount of stress, for the next thirty days.
Your only job? Eat. Good. Food.
WHAT TO EXPECT
We won’t lie—things will probably get worse before they get better. Here’s a general template for what to expect, based on the feedback we’ve received from thousands of Whole30 participants.
Days 1 to 7: The first week will be tough as your body heals and adjusts to this new way of eating and your brain wraps itself around going without all its habitual sweet tastes and sugar-driven energy spikes. In addition, the reward, pleasure, and emotional connections to supernormally stimulating, nutrient-poor foods will take a lot longer to overcome, so the cravings can be intense. In fact, many Whole30 participants have reported craving-driven dreams about off-plan foods—some so intensely real, they wake up feeling guilty. Talk about an unhealthy psychological response!
Since you’ve removed many of the dense carbohydrates from your diet (like sugars, grains, and legumes), your body can no longer rely on those sugars as a primary energy source. That often leads to “withdrawal” symptoms like headaches, lethargy, and crankiness—the “carb flu”—as your body adjusts to its new fuel source. Ease off your physical activity this week—don’t take part in any big races or events, and don’t expect to set any personal bests in the gym. Your body is desperately trying to recalibrate during this first critical week, so give it the time, space, and rest it needs to do so.
You may see a significant change in your body as you shed excess water weight and the incumbent bloating. Don’t get too excited: This probably doesn’t represent much true fat loss—it’s just your body’s way of letting go of some of the physical effects of your old way of eating.
Days 8 to 14: Most people report that their “carb flu” symptoms are gone by the very end of the second week. During this week, most people report falling asleep faster, sleeping better, and more consistent energy levels. At this point, your body is already more efficient at using fat (dietary and body fat) as fuel. Once your metabolism has become “fat adapted,” you’ll notice that your energy levels are much more stable than they ever were with processed foods and an incessant influx of sugar.
However, although you are starting to feel better, the healing process takes much longer than a week or two. Digestive distress is common and may take a few months to completely resolve. The inflammation-causing foods you’ve been eating have been like sandpaper in your digestive tract for all the years you’ve been eating them. Remove all of them, and your digestive tract starts to heal—but the healing process can be unpleasant. Constipation or diarrhea, cramps, bloating, gas, and general discomfort are common, and are all a normal part of the process, as your intestinal lining starts to repair itself, some gut bacteria die off, and the extra-thick protective layer of mucosal lining starts to slough off.
If you’ve dramatically increased your fruit and vegetable intake, that could also be playing a role in your digestive distress. Try eating more cooked vegetables than raw and having more frequent, smaller servings of fruit throughout the day, as opposed to one or two larger serving. In addition, if you’re relying too heavily on nuts and seeds, you may find digestive relief from swapping those out for fats like avocado, coconut, and olive oil.
We know this part isn’t fun, but ride it out. It gets better quickly, we promise, and once your digestive tract has healed, it will be happier—and healthier—than it has been in years.
Days 15 to 30: Much of what happens during the second half of your Whole30 depends on your health history and habits. You may notice improvement in ailments—skin clearing up, allergies diminishing, joints no longer aching. Most people are sleeping well and are energetic and attentive throughout their day. Your gym or sports performance may take an upturn, and you may find that your mental focus and physical coordination are better. And you’ll probably notice that your clothes are fitting differently by this point, too.
Your taste buds should also be waking up right about now, allowing you to truly appreciate the flavors found in the fresh foods you’re eating. But you may also be getting a little bored with your food if you relied on the same basic “go-to” meals for the first two weeks. Time to revisit our Meal Map and try something new!
During this time, you also may start thinking, “I’m really feeling better now—two weeks is probably enough.” We call this the “bright, shiny toy” mentality—the novelty of the program has worn off, but you’re still two weeks away from completion. Time to snap to attention—don’t get lazy or let your guard down! Now is the perfect time to experiment with new foods, new spices and herbs, and more exotic dishes—and draft a few strategies to combat the sugar dragon when it unexpectedly roars back to life in your brain. (And, we’re sorry to say, it probably will.)
Even if you haven’t achieved all the results you’d hoped to by the twenty-ninth day, hang on: you cannot reasonably expect to completely reverse decades of poor eating habits in just thirty days. At some point, we promise … the magic will happen. In the meantime, be patient, don’t ease up on your hard-won discipline, and focus on all the things that have improved in your life since starting the Whole30—that should supply all the motivation you need to keep up the good work. But we’ll caution you now …
There is no magic number.
You don’t have to abandon your efforts just because you’ve done your thirty days. If after a month, your tastes have yet to change, if you’re still craving all your “old” foods, if you’re still a slave to the sugar dragon, or if you haven’t noticed a significant improvement in a particular factor that was important to you at the beginning of this program ... please consider sticking with the Whole30 for a little while longer. You’ve already put in thirty long, hard days of reconditioning your body and your brain. And we bet that if you’re feeling a little frustrated right now, it’s because you’re trying to counteract the effects of twenty or thirty years of less-than-stellar eating habits. That damage doesn’t miraculously come undone in a month.
STICK WITH IT
For some, a Whole45 or even a Whole60 is necessary to get the job done, and we believe that the results you are hoping for will appear, if you can be patient for just a little bit longer. Your body is slowly reverting to a healthy hunger cycle and metabolism, and to having a happy (intact) gut, reduced systemic inflammation, and a balanced immune system. And as this happens, you will notice a reduction in cravings, a shift in body composition, an improvement in energy, and a reduction in symptoms—but it takes longer for some people than for others.
So stick with it, for as long as it takes. You owe it to yourself, and you owe it to your body. But let’s also address one really important point right here.
This is not just about your body. This is also about resetting your brain.
If there is one thing we’ve learned from our clients’ Whole30 experiences and our own, it’s this: Food is emotional. It’s comfort, it’s celebration, it’s punishment, and it’s reward. Food is often the only thing people come together over. It’s used to establish common ground, form a bond, smooth over rough personal interactions. And you cannot take that aspect out of this equation.
So if you’re still feeling the same way about food after your initial thirty days, if that relationship is still too dysfunctional to feel healthy ... hang in a little longer. Allow your body and your mind to catch up to this new way of eating, this new way of being. This thirty-day program is the kindest thing you’ve done for your body in a long time, and your brain simply may not know what to do with that. Be patient, embrace the intention and spirit of the program, and allow those new habits, patterns, relationships, and tastes to change right along with the changes you are seeing with your body.
IT’S FOR YOUR OWN GOOD
Now ... for those of you who are thinking about taking on this life-changing challenge but aren’t sure you can actually pull it off, cheat-free, for a full thirty days, for those of you who really want to do this, but just need a little extra motivation—here comes the famous Whole30 tough love in a few talking points.
It is not hard. Please don’t tell us this program is hard. Quitting heroin is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Birthing a baby is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You have no excuse not to complete the program as written. It’s only thirty days, and it’s for the most important health cause on earth—the only physical body you will ever have in this lifetime.
Don’t even consider the possibility of a “slip.” Unless you physically trip and your face lands in a box of doughnuts, there is no such thing as a “slip.” You make a choice to eat something unhealthy. It is always a choice. So don’t talk as if you had an accident. Own it. Commit to the program 100 percent for the full thirty days. Don’t give yourself an excuse to fail before you have even started.
You never, ever, ever have to eat anything you don’t want to eat. You’re all big boys and girls. Toughen up. Learn to say no (or make your mom proud and say, “No, thank you”). Learn to stick up for yourself. Just because it’s your sister’s birthday, or your best friend’s wedding, or your company picnic does not mean you have to eat anything. It’s always a choice, and we would hope that you stopped succumbing to peer pressure in seventh grade.
You can do this. You’ve come too far to back out now. You want to do this. You need to do this. And we know that you can do this. So stop thinking, and start doing. Right now, this very minute, tell someone that you are starting the Whole30. Tell your spouse, tell your best friend, post it on our Facebook page, and prove to yourself that you are committed to your health.
There—that wasn’t so bad, was it?
And before you know it, you’ll be done with the first part of your program. Hooray! So go do your Whole30 (or Whole45, or Whole60 …), and then come back here when you’re ready for the next phase. (Or for all of you overachievers, keep on reading and get a sneak preview.)