Whole 30: The Basics

Today is my first day of my Whole 30 experiment. So let me give you a quick rundown of what the next 30 days will look like. But before I do this, let me tell you in very unscientific terms the reasons why I’m doing this. If you really want to learn more about how this works and the specifics of the program I highly recommend 2 books, both by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig: “It Starts With Food” and “The Whole30: The 30-Day guide to Total Health and Food Freedom.” You can also visit the Whole 30 website. Here I'm simply giving you my big picture understanding after reading those two books.

Burn fat not carbs
A few years ago, when I did the Optifast diet and lost over 100 lb it became very clear to me that my body has an amazing capacity to survive with very few carb calories while at the same time fueling itself with the considerable fat stores that I’ve accumulated. That diet restricted me to 800 calories a day, mostly from protein with a few carb calories. During that time, I never felt hungry. At some point early on, my body switched from burning readily available glucose which it burns more easily to burning fat. The problem is that as long as there is a source of glucose the body prefers it. The Whole 30 eliminates that source of fuel to force the body to burn fat. Having said this, the Hartwigs take great pains to state that the Whole 30 is not meant to be a weight loss diet, but as a way of assessing how different types of food impact your health.

Why is it called the Whole 30?
It’s called the Whole 30 because:

1. It’s a 30 day full commitment.
2. It emphasizes eating whole food. The elimination of highly processed food and ingredients is key to improving health.

What are the rules?
These are the rules I will be following for the next 30 days:
A. The following are OUT:

1. No added sugar, real, or artificial of any kind.
2. No alcohol, not even for cooking.
3. No grains, whole or otherwise and no derivative of grains.
4. No legumes (beans) of any kind with the following exceptions: green beans, sugar snap peas, green beans.
5. No dairy. Including cheese.
6. No MSG

B. The following are IN:

1. Meat, seafood and eggs.
2. Lots of vegetables
3. Some fruit
4. Plenty of natural fats

These are more or less the rules.

What Happens After 30 Days?
​So, after thirty days of the program there are a few options:

1. Slow re-introduction process: where you re-introduce each eliminated food group 1 at a time and going back to Whole 30 for a couple of days in order to gauge the impact of each food group to your body. So, for example: On day 31 I might reintroduce grains and have oatmeal for breakfast, corn tortillas at lunch and rice at dinner. Then go back to Whole 30 for a couple of days while I asses the impact of those foods. The idea is that with that info you can decide how much and how often to have some of those foods.
2. Stay using the Whole 30 and eat foods from the “no” list as situations arise with an effort to staying Whole 30 most of the time.
3. If you like how you feel doing the Whole 30 and want to continue it for another 30, 60 or more days you can do that as well.

I’ll asses which path to take when I get there.

My Plan of Action
Because of my travel schedule and even my day to day schedule when I’m home makes it challenging to cook every day, I’m relying on a couple of services: Model Meals, which provides ready made packaged meals that are Whole 30 complaint. The other service is called Real Plans, which provides a calendar of daily meals that you can easily modify. Once you choose the meals you want to have it creates a shopping list. I also use Amazon Fresh, so I take the shopping list, add the items to Amazon Fresh, and a couple of days later my groceries arrive to my door.

Today is a long day of travel from Kailua-Kona to Honolulu and then to San Diego. Day 1 starts tomorrow.

#NoShortcuts #FindTime #NoExcuses