A Real Review of Whole30

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about my first week or so trying the Whole30 program. The TL;DR version of Whole30 is that it's a "reset" that promises to regulate your gut and digestive hormones, reduce inflammation, send "Tiger Blood" (their term, not mine) coursing through your veins by the last week, and basically change your entire life. Imagine Cinderella before and after her meeting with her fairy godmother, where Whole30 is the godmother. All you have to do is cut out grains, gluten, legumes, sugar and dairy and you'll be a princess heading for the ball. Even foods with minute amounts of this stuff are out. No sausage unless it's sugar free. No salad dressings unless you make them yourself. No non-dairy creamer. No sugar substitutes. No booze. No weighing yourself during the 30 days and no tracking your food. And if you screw up? It's back to day one.

I read the book from the program's creator at a delicate time. I'd just been at a family event and saw my future flash before my eyes. My uncles, to whom I bear a shocking resemblance, aren't in the best shape. Neither one can walk well and they both need help out of chairs. They're only in their mid-60s and their legs have sores on them. That combined with the fact that my mom has crippling osteoarthritis — and I've already been diagnosed with it in my knees and feet — means I freaked the hell out. I needed to get the numbers off the scale FAST so I could work at being more active without the pain that comes with being as heavy as I am. I got into a "desperate times call for desperate measures" mentality and decided that I'd try this month-long experiment. What's the worst that could happen from eating whole foods and protein for a month? (The short answer is lots of pooping and sweating.) But here's my take on it.

It's Really Hard

The book takes a no-BS approach to telling you to get over yourself. It's not hard, they claim. Brain surgery is hard. Not this. But I disagree. I spent most of my 30 days sick. "That's the low-carb flu!" HA! That's great. But at least the flu goes away after a few days. I spent a week in the bathroom. And after that, a week sweating and suffering through a sore throat and what felt like a cold. (Guess what? Apparently I'm allergic to almonds, a MAJOR component of the recommended diet. As soon as I stopped with the almonds, my snot level decreased dramatically.) My family made an unscheduled trip to the beach in the second week of my Whole30 to welcome my nephew home from the Persian Gulf, and it was nearly impossible to eat with my family, so I made concessions. The brats and kielbasa my dad brought with him were full of sugar and nitrates, but I ate them. I used real butter. I had a tipple of whiskey. I ate deli meat that had sugar in the brine. Shockingly, I did not die or gain weight. And I didn't reset to Day One, either. Because I'm a rebel.

Eating at restaurants required hours of forethought and menu-reading. In fact, I hated it so much that I only went out twice. (Once at home, once at the beach.) That means for 30 days, I cooked all my meals at home. It's super healthy, sure. But it's hard to come home after a trying day at work and make a full meal five days a week. I had some go-tos: turkey burgers, sweet potato "fries" in the air fryer, spinach, baked potatoes. Lots of salsa. Lunch meetings were a nightmare. Sandwiches all around me, loaded with cheese. And me with my Larabar to tide me over. 

And then there's my dislike of cruciferous veggies, which didn't disappear just because I was hungry. When you can't stomach broccoli, cauliflower, kale, Brussels sprouts and bitter greens, your veggie options are limited. It turns out I also don't like eggs when they're not covered in something that makes them taste NOT like eggs, so no easy hard boiled eggs with tuna on kale lunch options for me. (PS: I also hate cold tuna. Blech!) This program is a picky eater's worst nightmare. I made it work, but I ate the same things over and over again until I had such food ennui this past weekend that I barely ate at all. 

Which leads me to...

Food Becomes Awful and All Consuming

I didn't go one day without obsessing over food. At first, it was a fun experiment to see what I could use in place of breadcrumbs in a recipe, or how I could make a good pot roast without beef base. But the novelty wore off quickly and was instead replaced with unhealthy feelings about food. I thought of foods as strictly "compliant" or "non-compliant." "I can't eat that," "It's off limits," and "That's forbidden" went through my head all day. 

By a stroke of luck (that at the time felt like bad luck, but was really good), I found myself in a hotel room one night, completely ravenous. I was going to lose my shit. I'd been hungry all day. I had fruit salad for breakfast and grilled chicken for dinner. Lunch wasn't an option because I was on the USMC's schedule. I was so hungry that I felt faint. My sister, also on a restrictive diet (but not as restrictive as mine), was across the hall. I banged on her door. "I need snacks. I need snacks so bad or I'm going to that McD's across the parking lot. I'm so hungry." She shoved a bag of rosemary and olive oil hummus chips into my hands and I ate the ENTIRE bag. They were my salvation — a much healthier option than chicken nuggets and fries — but the rice and chickpea flours in the ingredients made them "forbidden." I posted something about it on a food group I belong to, and I mentioned Whole30 and being so hungry all the time. Someone, who I think meant well, said I should never be hungry and I must be doing it wrong.

That's when I realized I was in a food cult.

All the rhetoric around the program is propaganda and pseudoscience. The references in the book are in the very back appendix instead of in context, so you don't think to check them. You've already been wooed by the big, bold promises. And when you're like me (fat and tired), you fall for them. Mom blogs have nothing on the program's forum pages. So judgmental. So shame-filled. There is no positive reinforcement in Whole30. Only guilt. "You can go back to eating rice again, but why would you!" For real? I'd go back to it so I don't have constant diarrhea. That's why. 

I also started tracking what I ate, and it turns out I was eating about a thousand calories a day. Yikes! Once I realized that, I added in more calorie-dense foods. It slowed my weight loss, but I didn't feel like I'd fall over walking from my living room to the porch anymore. And yeah, I hopped on the scale every day. Because if I hadn't seen some kind of positive results in the first weeks -- when I was pooping, sweating, bleeding (hello whacked out hormones) and exhausted -- I would have quit. 

Let's Talk About My Results

Despite how awful and cult-like and pseudosciencey I think the program is, my type A personality made me see it through to the bitter end. Do I have better skin, more energy, less joint pain and shinier hair? I do not. Do I have regular, predictable bowel movements? Nope. Is Tiger Blood running through my veins? Am I sleeping better? No and no. Instead, I discovered a mild almond allergy I hadn't known about (useful, I guess, although my non-Whole30 life involved very few nuts). I will admit that my blood pressure dropped well into the normal range. (It used to hang out around 118/84, now it's 107/74. My "I'm terrified of going to the doctor" BP was only 126/84 a few weeks ago. That's unheard of.) My resting pulse went from about 80 down to 67. I've lost 12 pounds, which ain't too shabby. I don't think any of that is from Whole30 magic, though. I think it's because I eliminated refined sugars and starches and junk food from my diet. I certainly wouldn't have lost weight as quickly without Whole30. But maybe I could have avoided all the sweating and pooping with something less drastic.

I've ragged on Whole30 quite a bit, but the one positive is that it does make you aware of how much crap you eat every single day. My love for American cheese runs deep and wide, but it's loaded with awfulness and shouldn't be an everyday food for me. Things you think are healthy (beef stock comes to mind) are full of hidden sugars. Diet soda is like crack -- I've been off the sauce for 30 days and I'm still craving it. And I've never really tasted whiskey in the way I did when I had bourbon at the beach. It was so sweet, nutty and richly caramely. It's never tasted so good to me before. (And I love bourbon. So that's saying something.)

Whole30 isn't meant to be a long-term thing, hence the "30." You spend a week or so after Day 30 reintroducing legumes, non-glutenous grains, dairy and gluten back into your diet (in that order) to see how you react. I'm on legume day and I ate peanut butter this morning and IT WAS DELIGHTFUL. I may eat a bowl of peas for dinner. Thursday, I have a date with some brown rice. Saturday, me and parmesan cheese are getting the band back together. Monday, toast. 

And then I'll see what happens. I think I'll stay off the junk, the sweets and the white pasta to try to keep this weight-loss train on the tracks. If Whole30 taught me anything, though, it's that there's no fairy godmother who can make me healthy overnight. You have to be your own fairy godmother. 

Now someone pass the peas.