“About eight months ago, my husband’s health began to falter. At first, it was just superficial with skin inflammation and hair loss, but after a number of biopsies, cultures, and blood tests, the dermatologist uncovered extremely elevated liver enzymes, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. By this time, his ALT level was over 600. Three months of a low-fat diet did not help. After doing some research, we started the Whole30. We were hopeful that we’d see some improvement in his liver enzymes at his next doctor’s appointment, but we had no idea his ALT level would drop from 660 to 106 after only 23 days on the program! Even the doctor was surprised at the dramatic drop. This has saved my husband from a life of likely liver failure.”
—Rebecca C., city/state withheld
Simple! Just take our shopping list and cross off the foods to which you are allergic. Now, just meal plan from what’s left, choosing dishes that don’t use those ingredients, or recipes where it would be easy to leave that particular ingredient out. (For example, if you’re allergic to nuts, Melissa’s Chicken Hash would be delicious even without the walnuts.) The good news is that some people have reported a reversal of food allergies by healing their gut and calming their immune system with the Whole30. (Don’t try this at home, though—always reintroduce allergenic foods under the supervision of your health care provider.)
The “carb flu” (a period of headaches, fatigue, cravings, light-headedness, and “brain fog”) isn’t really a flu—it’s actually an energy issue. Your old diet included lots of carbohydrates from grains, legumes, added sugar, and processed foods. That carbohydrate digests into sugar in the body, and your body then used that sugar for energy. In fact, you got so good at using sugar to keep you running that your body became wholly dependent on it. Now, you start the Whole30. Your carbohydrate (sugar) intake is naturally lower because you’re eating vegetables and fruit instead of bread and cookies. Your body is no longer getting all that sugar it’s used to running on. So what happens? You run out of gas. Without all that sugar (energy), you get tired, you get headaches, your brain is foggy, and you’re hungry. So. Hungry. Mostly for sugar. Some describe it as “withdrawal,” and that wouldn’t be far off.
You now have another excellent energy source available to you—fat! Fat from your diet and body fat can also fuel you as you work, play with your kids, study, or run errands. The trouble is, your body doesn’t know how to use it, because you’ve been giving it so much sugar all the time. (Think of your body’s mitochondria—the powerhouses of your cells—like six-year-olds. If you give your six-year-old the choice between a candy bar and an avocado, which one will they pick? Candy, every single time.) If your body has sugar all the time, it’s going to preferentially run on sugar all the time. Only in the relative absence of all that sugar will it start running efficiently on fat as fuel.
In summary, your body isn’t getting the energy source it’s used to depending on, and not very good at running on the more stable energy source you’re giving it now. So for a few days (or maybe even a week), you’re stuck in this no-man’s land that feels like you’ve got the flu.
The good news is that this passes fast. The process of “fat adaptation” (being able to use body fat and dietary fat as fuel) begins in just a few days, although it will take a few weeks to fully ramp up. The good news is that you’ll start to feel better really soon (usually by Day 14), and those headaches will be a thing of the past.
✪Tip: Have a good plan for these first few days, because they can be rough. Take time off from the gym or your longer runs, go to bed early, make sure your pantry is clean (because you will be craving), and don’t skimp on the fat! Use our meal template to make sure you’re giving your body enough of the energy source it’s now being primed to use.
Any significant change to your diet can cause short-term changes to your digestive function. You can easily imagine how eating foods that harm your gut could mess up your digestion, but even removing these problematic foods can create issues, temporarily. It’s impossible to know for sure which dietary changes are responsible for which symptom during your Whole30, but it’s common to have periods of constipation, bloating, and/or diarrhea as your body adjusts to its new diet.
These short-term changes are not indications that eating nutrient-dense food is harmful to you! The vast majority of the time, these transitional issues sort themselves out within a few weeks, as your body adapts to the absence of problematic and/or inflammatory food components.
Chronic stress also has direct effects on your digestion and can contribute to indigestion and bloating, especially if you are eating more nutritious protein sources and natural fats than you historically have. The great news is that eating nutritious foods during your Whole30 and the benefits that provides (sleeping better, having more energy, and feeling more self-confident) is a big step toward reducing a chronic stress response, and helping your digestion get back on track.
✪Tip: There is a small subset of people who, due to the consequences of their long-term dietary choices and the current condition of their digestive tract, may not tolerate even “healthy” foods very well. These mostly involve fiber-rich and/or starchy foods, typically vegetables and fruit. Cooking your vegetables well and introducing new foods in small amounts over time often helps. In addition, as we already mentioned, nutrition is not the only factor in digestive health. If you continue to struggle with your digestion even after your Whole30 is over, it’s time to recruit a professional to evaluate your diet in conjunction with your lifestyle and current health markers. (See Resources.)
This answer largely has to do with how your immune system works, and how your immune system “learns” from repeated exposure to potentially problematic foods (or in the case of leaky gut, foods that cross the gut barrier when they shouldn’t). If your immune system has formed antibodies against certain foods, it will take several weeks with no exposure to those foods to allow the levels of antibodies to significantly decrease.
If you’ve “dosed” yourself with a lot of foods that trigger these immune system antibodies just prior to your Whole30, there’s often a worsening of inflammatory symptoms between weeks two and three of your program. (Yes, there’s a bit of a delayed response here—it has to do with the way these antibodies and their “triggers” bond and stimulate an immune response over time.) That means your pizza-beer-ice-cream bender the night before your Whole30 could come back to bite you in the gut (and everywhere else in the body) halfway through your program.
As the timeline on this type of a reaction is fairly consistent person-to-person, the good news is that symptoms almost always improve around the third or fourth week, but only if you’ve maintained zero exposure to potential triggers (that is, stayed 100 percent committed to the Whole30 guidelines). We told you to take this whole “no slips, no cheats, no excuses” advice seriously.
In summary, going on a binge with unhealthy foods right before your Whole30 may seriously hamper how good you feel once you’re on the program, and may actually make the symptoms or condition you are hoping to improve worse before they get better. Please, don’t go junk-food-crazy the day before you begin. (And if you do, don’t say we didn’t warn you.)
This can tie in with the previous “medical symptom” question, since inflammation directly contributes to fatigue and malaise. However, a more common explanation is that you are simply not eating enough nutritious food—particularly carbohydrates. We see this especially with active individuals (those who exercise or participate in sports). You’re taking our “fill your plate with veggies” to heart, and those veggies are nutrient-dense for sure, but broccoli, spinach, asparagus, and kale won’t effectively fuel those exercise sessions. Eventually, your low-carb choices catch up with you, and you start to slow down. A lot.
The good news is that it’s easy to tell if this is your situation. Eat more carbs! Immediately make it a point to add carb-dense vegetables and fruit to every meal. Have a bowl of berries and a banana with your frittata for breakfast, a baked sweet potato and an apple with your protein salad for lunch, and butternut squash soup and a salad with sliced pears as your dinner sides. You should feel better immediately, and be back to your Tiger Blood self by tomorrow. (Now, keep it up! Your body obviously needs more carbohydrates than you’ve been giving it.)
This may also happen if you’re hesitant to add enough natural fats to your meals. (Not enough fat means not enough calories, which means not enough energy.) Review our meal template and make sure you are getting enough energy from nutrient-dense food (protein, carbohydrate, and fat) to fuel your everyday activities and exercise.
Finally, if you’re trying to implement other high-tech nutrition strategies into your Whole30 (like intermittent fasting or carb-cycling) please, just stop. Changing too many things at once means you’ll never know what behavior is responsible for which result, and the Whole30 is meant to stand alone as a learning experience and an elimination protocol. Save the other experiments for after your Whole30 is over, when you’ll be better able to evaluate their impact on your health, energy levels, and body composition.
✪Tip: This is more a reminder than a tip: the Whole30 is not a quick-fix weight-loss program. If you’re purposefully restricting calories, carbohydrates, or fat during your Whole30, you will (ironically) only make it harder for you to achieve success with your Whole30 and with long-term body composition management. Just follow the plan and trust that it will work for you, as it has for hundreds of thousands of people just like you.
Having trouble falling asleep is typically a different issue than waking up in the middle of the night, which is different than waking up very early in the morning and not being able to go back to sleep. The issue most likely to be directly related to your Whole30 is waking up in the middle of the night. If you were sleeping fairly well before your Whole30, but during the program find yourself popping your eyes open at 2 a.m., it’s most likely due to blood sugar volatility. (Your body’s still not very good managing your blood sugar, leading to blood sugar highs and lows, even in the middle of the night.) Eating a snack-sized portion of protein like eggs, chicken, or salmon about an hour before bed helps to stabilize blood sugar levels over the nighttime hours. (While we don’t typically recommend eating shortly before bed, this is a strategy that helps during your transition period.) Try it consistently for a week, then see if you’re able to sleep more restfully without your pre-bed snack.
If this doesn’t help, or if your sleep issues involve being “tired but wired” in the evenings or waking up too early in the morning, here’s some bad news: We’re going to take away your coffee. If you are still consuming any caffeine, these sleep troubles are a good indication that it’s time give it up, at least for a few weeks. Stubborn sleep issues can be exacerbated by even small amounts of caffeine many hours before bed. While it’s not an official Whole30 rule, you asked us how you could sleep better, so we’re telling you. (Are you sorry you asked?)
✪Tip: Nutrition is not the only factor in determining sleep quality. In fact, poor sleep during your Whole30 isn’t necessarily because of your current nutrition choices. Are you worried about finances or an upcoming work project? Do you do intense exercise or run late in the evening? Are you on your computer or smartphone just before bed, or watch TV as you fall asleep? These things can all negatively impact sleep quality. Visit www.w30.co/w30sleep for suggestions on how to improve your sleep.
This is common in the first week for reasons we’ve already explained. If you’re in your first ten days of Whole30, don’t expect to set any personal bests or enter any big races. In fact, now may be a good time to take a week off, or spend a week focusing on low-intensity activity, skill work, and recovery.
If your energy has improved overall but you still struggle with your runs, workouts, or games, we bet you’re not eating enough carbohydrate (or simply enough food overall). We love that you’re eating so much broccoli, asparagus, and spinach, but that’s not going to fuel those hard runs very effectively—high-intensity exercise demands carbohydrates. If you’re very active, you have to purposefully incorporate starchy vegetables (potatoes, winter squashes, taro, or yuca) and a variety of fruits into your daily diet to ensure your energy stores are well maintained.
In addition, you may notice other benefits before you notice performance gains. Keep an eye on other fitness-related happenings and know that more restful sleep, less muscle soreness, greater mobility, less joint pain, and faster recovery from a tough workout is the Whole30 working its magic, and will translate into improved performance soon enough.
Before we answer this, we have a question for you: Why are you on the scale? The Whole30 rules explicitly state that you are not to step on the scale during your program, and this is exactly why! You become so focused on that numerical read-out that you don’t pay attention to any other aspect of your program. Scale weight tells you almost nothing about your overall health, and the Whole30 isn’t a weight-loss diet—it’s designed to jump-start optimal health for the rest of your life. So please, give yourself a much-needed, long-overdue, well-deserved break from a preoccupation with body weight and focus on health instead. Turn to the list of Non-Scale Victories, take note of the things that are working better, and trust that with improved health comes natural, sustainable, effortless weight loss. (Now please get off the scale.)
✪Tip: In a recent survey of more than 1,600 Whole30 participants, 96 percent reported having lost weight and/or improved their body composition. The majority lost between 6 and 15 pounds in just 30 days. So there you go—proof that weight loss is built right into the program, without your having to think about it.
If this is your context, our first tip may seem obvious, but we really do need to explain this—eat more. You may think you’re eating plenty, but you could still be under-fed. Swapping out grains and sugary refined foods for vegetables and fruits puts you at a serious caloric deficit. You’ve got to make those calories up somewhere—namely, healthy fats and starchy vegetables. But if you’ve been a little fat-phobic, adding as much fat as you need to maintain a healthy body weight may be scary. On the other hand, if you’re a little carb-phobic (because someone told you consuming carbohydrates would make you fat and diabetic), you may be limiting potatoes, winter squashes, and fruit on purpose. If you’re already at the lean or downright skinny end of the body composition spectrum, you can’t afford to subsist on leafy greens and low-carb veggies alone.
Make sure you’re eating at least three meals a day, even if you feel like skipping meals. If you find you’re hungry between meals, have a snack—ideally including a decent amount of protein and fat. (Snacking on just an apple isn’t doing much for your cause.) Eat more fat, meeting or exceeding the higher end of the fat recommendations in our meal template. Eat more carbs; don’t fill up on bowls of salad and platefuls of broccoli, leaving less room in your belly for meat and fat. Eat more protein, prioritizing protein-dense meat like steak over lower protein items like eggs. And don’t even think about intermittent fasting. Do we really need to explain this one?
Other lifestyle factors, like training, recovery, and stress, also play directly into your ability to maintain or gain weight. If you’re running ten miles a day, sleeping six hours a night, and are chronically stressed with work, school, family, or financial worries, your diet may not be the biggest factor in maintaining muscle mass. (Plus, again . . . coffee. Caffeine is an appetite suppressant, so it is not your friend if getting enough nutritious food into your body is a challenge.) Consider asking a functional medicine practitioner to analyze factors like your stress hormones, thyroid function, and gut health to help you address your weight management from a big-picture perspective. (See the appendix for resources.)
It can be, especially in the beginning, but it’s hard to say exactly why. Could be sodium-related: When you cut out all the processed foods, you also cut out a significant amount of sodium from your daily diet. Sodium helps your body retain water, so moving to a whole foods–based low-sodium diet may cause your body to make some adjustments to your intake. It may be that you’ve eliminated non-compliant beverages from your diet (like juices or soda) and haven’t replaced those liquids with water. In addition, changes in both dietary intake and metabolism of carbohydrates and fats may lead to a short-term drop in how much water your body is storing. Oh, and if you’re not eating as many vegetables and fruit (“wet” foods) as we encourage, you may be missing out on hydration there, too. Regardless of why it’s happening, listen to your body here. Make a conscious effort to drink more water and compliant beverages throughout the day, eat your veggies, and please add some table salt and/or sea salt to your cooking or food. And don’t worry—the body will generally sort its water balance out quickly, so you shouldn’t have to carry that gallon jug around for long.
Step one: take a deep breath. First, let’s figure out if you’re craving, or just hungry. Here’s our favorite trick: Ask yourself, “Am I hungry enough to eat steamed fish and broccoli?” (If that would never sound appealing, pick another straightforward protein source, like hard-boiled eggs.) If the answer is yes, then you are legitimately hungry! Time to eat your next meal, or grab a snack to tide you over.
If the answer is, “No, but I’d eat (fill in crunchy/salty/sweet food here)” then it’s confirmed: you’re having a craving—but there is no need to panic. Based on studies of smokers resisting the urge to light up, the average craving lasts just three to five minutes. Your brain will be screaming that you really need sugar, but if you can distract yourself briefly, you’ll find that craving will pass. So go for a quick walk, phone a friend, check the sports scores, or throw in a load of laundry—whatever it takes to get you through. Whew.
Here’s what not to do: reach for a Whole30-compliant sweet treat to satisfy your sugar craving. If you’re used to something sweet every day at 3 p.m., your brain has come to expect that reward. But your brain doesn’t know the difference between a candy bar and a dried fruit-and-nut bar. All your brain knows is that it’s 3 p.m., and here comes the sweet reward! This behavior doesn’t help you change your habits—it actually reinforces them. Remember, every time you resist a craving, your Sugar Dragon gets a little less fiery, so don’t use fruit or nut butters as a sugar crutch.
✪Tip: Do you find yourself prowling through your pantry after dinner looking for “a little something?” We’ve been so conditioned to eat dessert, and while subbing your ice cream for a bowl of blueberries in coconut milk is a healthier choice, you’re still giving your brain that after-dinner treat. One lovely post-dinner ritual that won’t feed your Sugar Dragon is brewing a cup of rooibos herbal tea. It’s naturally decaffeinated, has a naturally sweet taste, but isn’t anything like the treats you’re craving, so it won’t act as a “sugar crutch.”
There are other food groups that may potentially be inflammatory or digestively disruptive. Two of the most common are high-FODMAP foods and high-histamine foods.
FODMAPs: This stands for Fermentable Oligosaccharides, Disaccharides, Monosaccharides, and Polyols—a collection of fermentable carbohydrates and sugar alcohols found in various foods, like grains, beans, vegetables and fruits. FODMAPs include fructose (found in various amounts in all fruit), lactose (found in dairy), fructans (found in wheat, garlic, onion, artichoke, asparagus, and the sweetener agave), galactans (found in legumes, cabbage, and Brussels sprouts), and polyols (found in many fruits like apples, pears, and peaches; and sweeteners like sorbitol or xylitol). These FODMAPS are not well absorbed, and can “feed” bacteria in the intestinal tract when eaten in excess. In sensitive individuals, this fermentation causes gas, bloating, cramping, and digestive distress, unbalances your gut bacterial population, and promotes systemic inflammation.
High-histamine foods: Certain foods either contain a naturally occurring chemical called “histamine,” or stimulates the body’s own natural release of the chemical. Histamine is also released in the body as part of an allergic reaction, causing the typical allergy symptoms, like itching, sneezing, wheezing, and swelling. (Many over-the-counter allergy medications contain an antihistamine.) When sensitive people eat too many histamine-rich foods, they may suffer allergy-like symptoms such as headaches, rashes, hives, itching, gastro-intestinal upset, asthma, or eczema. This is called histamine intolerance.
Your digestive distress may also be the result of an undiagnosed food sensitivity (or multiple sensitivities) not included on this list. If you’ve been following the Whole30 protocol for 60 days and are still experiencing digestive issues or other immune-related symptoms, it’s time to work with a functional medicine practitioner (see Resources) to help you build a treatment plan (including diagnostic lab work and supplementation) that will work for your particular condition or symptoms.
✪Tip: A food journal can also help you identify potentially “healthy” foods that may be triggering unpleasant symptoms. Write down all the foods in your meals and snacks for a week, and note the severity and type of symptoms you experience after each to try to pinpoint the culprit(s). This information will be especially helpful if you choose to work with an expert. If you want to experiment with a low-FODMAP or low-histamine diet on top of your Whole30 elimination, you can download customized shopping lists at www.whole30.com/pdf-downloads.
You may have wanted to see improvements in a particular area (a medical condition, athletic improvement, a specific area of your body composition, or your hot flashes), but on Day 30, you’re just not seeing it, and you’re really disappointed. We understand, and we’re really sorry. While the program works amazingly well for the vast majority of people who take it on, the Whole30 isn’t perfect (no diet is, universally), and it doesn’t fix everything for everyone.
The one thing we want you to take away from this experience is that if the Whole30 didn’t work for you, you are not a failure, and there is nothing wrong with you. We hope by now you recognize the other benefits of the program (the things that did improve for you), and can see all the progress you’ve made over the last 30 days. Take a minute to be proud of yourself, and celebrate how far you’ve come!
Now, let’s talk about why the Whole30 may not have worked as well for you as you had hoped, in whatever area you hoped to see improvements: