Think of the Whole30 like pushing the reset button with your health, your habits, and your relationship with food.
The premise is simple: Certain food groups (like sugar, grains, dairy, and legumes) could be having a negative impact on your body composition, health, and quality of life without you even realizing it. Are your energy levels inconsistent or nonexistent? Do you have aches and pains that can’t be explained by over-use or injury? Are you having a hard time losing weight no matter how hard you try? Do you have some sort of condition (like skin issues, digestive ailments, seasonal allergies, or chronic fatigue) that medication hasn’t helped? These symptoms may be directly related to the foods you eat—even the “healthy” stuff.
So how do you know if (and how) these foods are affecting you? Eliminate them from your diet completely. Cut out all the psychologically unhealthy, hormone-unbalancing, gut-disrupting, inflammatory food groups for a full 30 days. Let your body heal and recover from whatever effects those foods may be causing. Push the reset button on your metabolism, systemic inflammation, and the downstream physical and psychological effects of the food choices you’ve been making. Learn how the foods you’ve been eating are actually affecting your day-to-day life, long-term health, body composition, and relationship with food.
For a full 30 days, you’ll completely eliminate the foods that scientific literature and my clinical experience have shown to be the most commonly problematic in one of four areas—your cravings, metabolism, digestion, and immune system. During the elimination period, you’ll completely eliminate these foods for a set period of time, experiencing what life is like without these commonly problematic triggers while paying careful attention to improvements in energy, sleep, digestion, mood, attention span, self-confidence, cravings, chronic pain or fatigue, athletic performance and recovery, and any number of symptoms or medical conditions. This elimination period will give you a new “normal”—a healthy baseline where, in all likelihood, you will look, feel, and live better than you ever imagined you could.
At the end of the 30 days, you’ll then carefully and systematically reintroduce those foods you’ve been missing, again paying attention to any changes in your experience. Do your two p.m. energy slumps return? Does your stomach bloat? Does your face break out, your joints swell, your pain return? Does your Sugar Dragon rear his ugly head? The reintroduction period teaches you how specific foods are having a negative impact on you, and exactly how these foods are making you look and feel less than your best.
Put it all together, and for the first time in your life, you’ll be able to make educated decisions about when, how often, and in what amount you can include these “less healthy” foods in your daily diet in a way that feels balanced and sustainable, but still keeps you looking feeling as awesome as you now know you can look and feel.
I cannot possibly put enough emphasis on this simple fact—the next 30 days will change your life. They will change the way you think about food, they will change your tastes, they will change your habits and your cravings. It will restore a healthy emotional relationship with food, and with your body. It has the potential to change the way you eat for the rest of your life. I know this because I did it, and millions of thousands of people have done it since, and it changed my lives (and their lives) in a dramatic and permanent fashion.
The physical benefits of the Whole30 are profound. A full 96 percent of participants lose weight and improve their body composition without counting or restricting calories. Also commonly reported? Consistently high energy levels, better sleep, improved focus and mental clarity, a return to healthy digestive function, improved athletic performance, and a sunnier disposition. (Yes, many Whole30 graduates say they felt “strangely happy” during and after their program.)
The psychological benefits of the Whole30 may be even more dramatic. Through the program, participants report effectively changing long-standing, unhealthy habits related to food, developing a healthier body image, and dramatically reducing or eliminating cravings, particularly for sugar and carbohydrates. The words so many Whole30 participants use to describe this place?
“Food freedom.”
Finally, testimonials from thousands of Whole30 participants document the improvement or “curing” of any number of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions.
• high blood pressure • high cholesterol • type 1 diabetes • type 2 diabetes • asthma • allergies • sinus infections • hives • skin conditions • endometriosis • PCOS • infertility • migraines • depression • bipolar disorder • heartburn • GERD • arthritis • joint pain • ADHD • thyroid dysfunction • Lyme disease • fibromyalgia • chronic fatigue • lupus • leaky gut syndrome • Crohn’s • IBS • celiac disease • diverticulitis • ulcerative colitis