Confession: I have never been overweight.
Now you’re rolling your eyes, about to text the friend who recommended this book, “OMG what could this lady POSSIBLY know about feeling out of control and desperate for freedom?” Please don’t, not yet. Trust me when I say I have fought my fair share of battles.
Hi. My name is Melissa, and I am a drug addict. (“Hi, Melissa.”)
You probably weren’t expecting that, were you?
I started using drugs my freshman year of college; a year later, I was legitimately addicted. For the next five years, I hung out with a bad crowd and made bad decisions; I lived on coffee, sugar, and desperation. I wasn’t sleeping, I wasn’t eating, my behavior became increasingly erratic, and it wasn’t long before family and friends were officially fed up.
Eventually, so was I. And thanks to the support of people who loved me, counseling, and therapy, I got clean. But I knew that in order to stay that way, I’d need to change every aspect of my day-to-day existence—friends, clothing, music, hangouts, and habits—and most important, change the way I thought about myself.
I adopted a growth mind-set: an optimistic outlook in which I believed that my personal traits were transformable, not fixed. (More on this on page 104.) I mantra’d nonstop that I was a good person, a worthy person, a healthy person. I began running and going to the gym. I changed my diet to include more low-fat health foods, salads, and protein shakes. I made like-minded friends who didn’t use drugs or drink excessively. I found a new job, and was quickly promoted to manager of a small department. I tentatively started rebuilding trust with my family.
It wasn’t all sunshine, rainbows, and ponies, however. Underneath it all, I still struggled . . . just not with drugs.
I was eating a healthier diet overall, but subconsciously using food to distract, numb, or punish myself. I lived alone: the perfect breeding ground for weighing, measuring, and tracking every bite that went into my mouth, all in the virtuous pursuit of health. I would ruthlessly restrict all sweets when I needed an extra sense of control, yet turn around and secretly reward myself with junk food I told myself I had earned after a few “good” days. I bounced between these two places for years, never quite settling into a healthy balance or questioning my belief that when I ate well, I was “good” and when I didn’t, I was “bad.” I overtrained, replacing my total commitment to drugs with total commitment to exercise. I got pretty skinny and was tired all the time, totally obsessed with every perceived ounce of fat on my body. But everyone told me I looked amazing and applauded my dedication, so I high-fived myself for turning my life around and swore I’d tighten up my diet even more.
I wasn’t using, but this wasn’t healthy. I just didn’t realize it.
In April 2009, after yet another grueling training session, I was eating lunch with Dallas (who eventually became my Whole30 cofounder). He had been considering the idea of taking on a short-term, squeaky-clean diet as a challenge and asked if I wanted to try it with him for 30 days, just to see what would happen.
I was crushing some Thin Mints at the time, because we had just finished exercising, and I deserved them.
“Yeah, yeah, sure,” I mumbled through a mouthful of cookies. “When should we start?”
“How about right now?” he said, part question, part dare. I rolled my eyes, handed the rest of my Thin Mints to a friend, and began. I agreed only to see if changing my diet would help my athletic performance. Never in a million years did I suspect that the experience would completely transform how I felt about food and my body. That self-created 30-day diet experiment turned out to be the very first Whole30.
In those 30 days, I became aware of how often I was using food as punishment or reward. Without access to the carb-dense processed foods I had relied on, I was forced to find other ways to self-soothe, comfort myself, and relieve anxiety. I learned how some of the “healthy” foods I’d been eating were having an adverse impact on my health, mood, and self-confidence. (Hello, midmorning snack of low-fat yogurt, eight almonds, and half a whole-grain blueberry muffin.) And I finally acknowledged the subtle ways I had replaced drugs with food, using sugar and treats to numb or distract myself instead of acknowledging and working through my feelings.
The Whole30 changed my life and brought me to a truly healthy relationship with food and my body—a relationship I’ve been able to maintain ever since. As of today, I’ve been clean for over 16 years and living in food freedom for more than seven.
My guess is that if you chose this book for yourself, you fall into one of two relationships with food. The first is a serious love-hate connection: You’re stuck in a cycle of overconsumption, momentary relief, self-loathing, and shame, followed by (inexplicably) craving more of the very thing that’s destroying your health, relationships, and self-worth. You hide your behaviors, lie to yourself and others about your habits, and believe you are alone in your struggles. You feel powerless over food.
But maybe this isn’t your context. Maybe you aren’t overly preoccupied with food, and don’t consider your pantry a war zone. People in the second category may read this and think, “I’m not that bad. This program isn’t for me.” I assure you, it is. Here’s the thing: You don’t have to hit rock bottom to want to improve your health, habits, or relationship with food. Do you have some food habits you’d rather not continue? Do your food choices sometimes slip so far away from you that you feel embarrassed? Do you yo-yo between eating “pretty healthy” and “not so healthy,” unable to find a middle ground? (I won’t even bother asking you if you’re happy with your waistline, because that’s not the point.)
Food freedom isn’t just for those who need rescuing from the throes of sugar addiction. It’s for anyone who wants to create a truly healthy relationship with food, built on habits that last a lifetime. And you certainly don’t have to be locked in a bathroom with a box of powdered donuts to want that.
And don’t forget, I’m right there with you.
I’ve had Whole30ers comment on advice I’ve posted on social media, “Please. Look at you. It’s easy for you to say, you have no idea what it’s like.” But I do, because I’ve been where you are. My history, combined with my personal experience with the Whole30 program, has given me a unique understanding of addictions, fixations, and unhealthy relationships with food; something you can’t see when you look at my photo on the back of this book. Of course, drugs and food aren’t exactly the same—most people’s soda habit wouldn’t require a rehabilitation clinic to kick. But the consequences of feeling out of control, whether it’s with drugs or food, are actually quite similar.
Like many Whole30 followers, I’d also attempted just about every diet out there before finding a program that actually fit, so we have that in common, too. I tried Atkins, the Zone, one that involved a horrid concoction of “detox” ingredients three times a day, and a few bodybuilding diets that demanded I prioritize shakes and pills over real food. I never needed to lose weight, but once I started exercising, I was forever trying to “lean out,” and when you have a dysfunctional relationship with food, eating too much one day often leads to calorie restriction the next. (Paying penance for my dietary sins, as if my food choices were a moral failing. This was what I used to believe.) My relationships with food and my body were unhealthy, counterproductive, and could basically be summed up with the sad face + thumbs-down emojis.
That’s how I know that diets don’t work—well, that, and the dozens of scientific studies that definitively conclude that dieting (calorie restriction) doesn’t succeed in the long term for either weight loss or getting healthier. Every time I tried a new diet, I’d stick to it for a while, then fall off the wagon hard. I’d come out the other side feeling like a failure for my lack of willpower, then go eat some comfort food just to make myself feel better.
It wasn’t my fault—and if this sounds like your story, it isn’t your fault, either. Dieting is not the answer, yet we continue to fall victim to the cycle, seeking quick fix after quick fix because it is the only thing we know how to do.
Maybe that’s the problem.
It’s time to develop a healthy relationship with the very thing holding you hostage. It’s time to turn cravings, addictions, and yo-yo patterns into a healthy, balanced relationship; staying happy, healthy, and in-control while allowing yourself the pleasure and reward of worth-it foods. It’s time to lose the guilt, lose the powerlessness, lose the idea of food (or you) being “good” or “bad” based on what’s on your plate or the number that shows up on your scale.
The Food Freedom plan is not based on a diet at all, because diets can’t give you freedom.