But not really. I did, in fact, learn something.
Whole30
30 days without any grains, dairy, legumes, soy, sugar in any form, including honey, sucralose, or stevia. No alcohol. No flour. No food analogues. You are allowed just meat, fish, fresh vegetables, fruits, water, and nuts. However, check the ingredients since many nuts have sugar or dextrose or rice bran added. Which are not allowed. There are pretty much no bottled salad dressings allowed. You eat three meals a day, no snacking. Unless you add pre and post workout meals.
Whole30 has been all the rage the past few years. It is basically an extreme form of the Paleo lifestyle and you follow it for just 30 days to kind of reset your body and relationship with food. It is the ultimate elimination diet. Then you slowly add foods back, one at a time and analyze the effects.
A lot of people do a Whole30 to springboard into Paleo. Some do it for weight loss. Some do it because they have autoimmune issues, allergies, diabetes, or some related malady and a Whole30 will give them insight on how to manage their health. Some people, like myself, just enjoy an interest in bio-hacking and find the results fascinating.
I had many reasons to try a Whole30. I have a bunch of food intolerances that I can never seem to fully identify. I love the bio-hacking aspect. I like to see how different things affect my gym time and body composition.
Whole30 has phases of side effects like any elimination diet, where people often go through low-carb flu and the like. Many people cave half way through and have to start over. If you “cheat”, you start over. I already eat about 85% Paleo, so I did not suffer any low-carb flu, or brain fog. Although, I also did not have the tiger blood phase they talk about on the Whole30 website either. I just sort of hummed along.
My Whole30 Experience
- Day 1-4 – were super easy.
- Day 5 – craving chocolate, which was weird since I didn’t eat much chocolate anyway.
- Day 7 – I want to eat a billion calories. I am doing a hardcore powerlifting program at this point in time, so I don’t think this is odd.
- Day 9 -I’m bored and need new meal ideas. This was my own fault due to lack of planning. We are only eating from our freezer reserve and the garden.
- Day 13 – I broke out in acne, but it was hormones.
- Day 14-15 – Sick with horrible acidy stomachache. Barely ate. This is not Whole30 related. We all ended up getting the flu.
- Day 20-24 – I barely ate at all. I’m having trouble getting in enough calories for my strength training. I miss protein shakes. I’m still queasy from the flu.
- Day 24 – I gorged on nuts and fruit to stop the body aches. Between being sick and not getting magnesium, I am not feeling so hot.
- Day 26-30 – I pigged out. As it turns out, training hard at the gym and arriving upon that time of the month, makes a person hungry.
Afterwards.
You are supposed to have a plan for afterwards. A specific plan for reintroducing things slowly. I kind of failed at this part. Just a little bit.
I tried stevia and still hate it. It tasted like bug repellent. I have tried it several times and just don’t get why people like it. Splenda is still my sweetener of choice, but I use only a fraction of what I used to use. So, I consider that a win. I used to put three packets of Splenda in my cup of coffee, but now one is plenty.
Whole30 and metformin is a rough ride. That medication with that many veggies is bowel hell. If you are on metformin, you know what I mean. I take it for PCOS.
I’m incorporating my splenda, dairy, and whey back in. Which means I’m going back to my normal 90% primal/paleo lifestyle.
The first day I had splenda and whole milk in my coffee, I bloated up horribly and felt nauseated. I think it is actually the milk.
At the end, I was down five pounds. Then I let bits of dairy and corn based additives creep back in and now I am back up six pounds and my joints are in pain. Clearly this is water retention and inflammation. I measure my food each day and record it in MyFitnessPal, so I know I have not eaten enough extra calories to have gained weight. Especially, when it was six pounds in two weeks. The obvious choice is to go back to dairy free and keep an eye on the additives. I know this is a good idea, I just find it very difficult to get enough protein for my training without dairy.
Here is something funny. My body is going through the same hormonal storm it went through in January of 2011 when I went Primal/Paleo the first time. What is the common denominator? Potatoes, starches, tubers, etc. Every time I remove legumes and replace them with starches of the potato and tuber variety, my body goes haywire and gains a ton of bloat and my hormones go nuts. It is like my estradiol and prolactin dramatically increase. Right now, we have a bunch of winter squash from the garden, so I will avoid all other starches and see what happens. I know we don’t really need starch, but my lifts are just more awesome with it.
So after all of that, my Whole30 was not very ground breaking or astounding. I have no great revelation. But, I was also not coming from a place too far from the Whole9 lifestyle anyway. I did love how I didn’t retain any water on Whole30. I also found I needed to eat more fruit than normal or my blood pressure and heart rate would dip down too far, but that is an ongoing issue for me.
Bonus: I purchased a spiralizer and used the zillion zucchinis in our garden to make zoodles. Even my zucchini hating husband admits he doesn’t mind zoodles. Win!
