What is the Whole 30 diet exactly?
The 4 basic guidelines are:
NO sugar
NO dairy
NO grains
NO legumes
The intention of the diet is to remove inflammatory foods that irritate your gut and unbalance your hormones (yes ladies). There are so many unhealthy compounds in our foods these days and we don’t even know it! Even the healthy eaters will be surprised at what is in their foods when they try this one. The diet also recommends avoiding MSG, sulfites and carrageenan and you are not allowed to recreate your favorite foods with different ingredients as the co-founder of the diet suggests doing that just makes us crave the real stuff even more. Ugh.
So, after reading about the diet and seeing my office manager’s success while on it, I decided to give it a try. I even convinced my parents to try it with me (which is pretty much a miracle). Here is what I ate and what my experience taught me about Whole 30.
The first week was pretty simple. It wasn’t easy but I could avoid the breads, rice, starches by not opening the pantry. You are allowed potatoes and sweet potatoes but I never ate them because I didn’t eat them before I started the diet.The only thing I allowed myself was raw almonds or Whole 30 approved almond butter. You cannot have peanut butter or any nut that comes in a pod so I stuck to almonds.
Breakfast: I would have 2-3 eggs every morning with organic olive oil, avocado and fresh salsa. That gave me the good fats I need to stay full longer and the homemade salsa added tons of flavor.
Lunch: on weekdays I would either eat a fresh chicken salad from Le Pain Quotidien with olive oil and vinegar dressing (always), no cheese, no bacon or...wild grilled salmon and a side salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, more avocado and the O/V dressing. Weekends I would go to a place like Sharkey's and get a naked chicken bowl with no rice, beans or dairy.
Snack: I would usually have almonds as a snack during the day or almond butter with an apple and that held me over for dinner but I did notice I was hungry earlier in the day for dinner.
Dinner: was usually fresh turkey patties with mustard, fresh turkey lettuce wraps with any veggies and mustard for flavor. Once a week I would have a small fillet or lean burger meat in a taco style lettuce wrap.
After doing Whole 30 for 30 here are the benefits I personally experienced and what I would recommend you do to get through Whole 30.
Benefits:
improved energy
better sleep
no digestive issues
smoother skin
weight loss
no joint pain
no headaches
My recommendations to make it easier:
1.) Food prep for the week. Make a general meal plan and prep the food for the week so you can throw your salads, meats, wraps together quickly and eat in less than 15 min. If you don’t do this you make it much harder because you will be tempted when you are hungry to grab whatever is close.
2.) Before you start get rid of the things in your fridge and pantry you can’t eat on Whole 30. It makes it much easier not to have the ice cream sitting in the freezer calling your name when you want something sweet. Give the food to your family or friends so you don’t waste it but get it out of your kitchen.
3.) They say you should not weigh yourself on the diet but I weighed myself every morning first thing. Although at the beginning you may not want to look down and SEE that number, as you go from week to week seeing progress on the scale motivated me to keep going. Some days it went up and some down but it kept me accountable to myself knowing I had to weigh myself the next morning.
Conclusion: At the end of the 30 days I lost 7 lbs., my Mom lost 11 lbs. and my Dad lost 15 lbs. (go fam!!) I know we all feel lighter, have flatter belly's and most importantly became acutely aware of all the sugar that is in the foods we eat! It really is in almost everything in the pantry and even in things like your pre-packaged meats, salad dressings, bacon etc. I know moving forward we all want to stick to the Whole 30 because we feel so much better. Our food choices are focused on fruits and vegetables and only fresh, fresh, fresh! No more packaged foods.
If you haven’t heard of or tried Whole 30 now is the perfect time since the kids are back in school and the holidays are just around the corner. I promise after 30 days it will even out your hormonal imbalances, improve your quality of sleep, help you lose the bloat, improve the look of your skin, AND you will lose weight! If all that can happen in 30 days, why not give it a try?
To your health!
XOXO,
TT
Comments