- After going through all of this healing
of my relationship with food,
my thoughts about diets have changed a lot.
Is the Whole30 still a good idea?
And will I do it again?
Let's talk about it.
(upbeat music)
Welcome to the series, I'm Alyssia,
and I'm so glad you're here.
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if you haven't already.
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So today, we're talking about Whole30.
So what is it?
It's an elimination diet that removes certain foods
from your diet for 30 days.
There is no sugar, no alcohol, no legumes,
no grains, no gluten, no dairy.
- So you get nothing!
- It is supposed to be an opportunity to reset your body,
without inflammatory foods
and also test and see what resonates with your body.
That's what an elimination diet is essentially.
Now I have done it seven or eight times since 2018.
- Whoa.
- So I've done pretty much three per year
for the first couple of years.
Now, my first Whole30 ever,
remember a Whole30 is supposed to be 30 days,
my first one was like 86 days or something like that.
Um, yeah, I was really clinging to the rules.
I'm a rule follower and I became very afraid
of not having the Whole30 rules.
So for me, Whole30's always been actually kind of easy.
Like most people hear about it and they're like,
"Oh my god, eliminating all that stuff,
that's so restrictive."
But for some people like me, the rules are so comforting.
And in some ways it reinforced the negative mental
and food habits that I really needed to break.
Now at the same time,
I do think the Whole30 was a big factor
in healing my relationship with food.
So where do I stand now?
There are pros and cons, of course,
and I'm gonna talk about both.
So the pros, the main pro that I took from Whole30
is the food freedom concept,
which, you know, as you can tell,
food freedom is the name of this series,
even though this series has nothing to do with Whole30.
But this is where I first got it.
Melissa Urban, she is the founder of Whole30,
and she has a book called "Food Freedom Forever,"
which I highly recommend.
But really what I took from it
is I'm an adult, I can make decisions.
If I really want a cupcake,
do I need to eat it because it's sitting here
free in the break room?
I mean, I could go to the bakery
and get the most delicious cupcake at any time, right?
And it also, the food freedom concept,
helped me take the morality out of food.
I'm not a bad or good person based on what I eat.
My food, the food I put in my body,
doesn't define the type of person that I am, right?
So another pro of the Whole30
are what's called the NSVs, the non-scale victories.
And I love that they really emphasize
measuring success beyond the scale.
So non-scale victories,
they have a whole list of them
in the "Day by Day" journal and in "The Whole30" book.
But, essentially, things like,
you know, how does food make you feel,
and mentally, emotionally, and physically,
but what does it do to your body other than weight loss?
You know, one thing I always noticed with Whole30
is my teeth got whiter by the end of it.
I swear, it's so weird.
But every time I noticed it, and then I saw it in the NSVs,
and I was like, "What?
I'm not going crazy."
Physically, I think that the Whole30
really brings awareness.
I mean, there is added sugar and ingredients in everything.
And because so much is not allowed or not compliant,
or I think they changed the word.
It's not compliant now.
But it used to be, "This is Whole30 compliant,"
and now it's something else that I can't think of.
But, yeah, look it up actually.
(digital bytes whooshing)
Compatible.
We looked it up, it's not compliant anymore,
it's compatible.
But since so many ingredients are not Whole30 compatible,
you have to read the ingredients in literally everything,
'cause there's added sugar
in a bunch of preservatives and stuff.
And so I think that that awareness is really helpful.
I mean, people don't often realize how much stuff
is in the stuff we eat every single day.
So I think that physically that's a pro.
Also the fact that it is an elimination diet
can give us really great information about our bodies
and what resonates with us.
Another pro is I always feel really great in my body after.
I feel confident after,
'cause I fed it whole, clean foods for a full 30 days.
And I will say, I also appreciate
that Whole30 encourages us to eat more,
because you're not supposed to count calories.
You're not supposed to get caught up in your weight.
That's not what it's about.
And it really wants us to, you know, regulate our hormones,
eat three meals a day, and nourish our body.
So overall, those are what I'd say are the main pros.
The cons, my main con is that so much of Whole30
is outer wisdom at the surface.
And remember, if you don't know what I'm talking about,
inner or outer wisdom,
please watch these videos of this series in order,
because they do build off of each other.
Inner/outer wisdom was this Monday.
But we need that foundation of the inner wisdom first.
The ability to tune in helps us
make use of that outer wisdom.
So I think of Whole30 as an outer wisdom tool,
I needed inner wisdom first.
The other con that I found with Whole30
is you have to eat a lot of meat.
And I found, I noticed on Whole30,
everybody's like, "Oh, you know, you focus on your digestion
as a way to kind of gauge how your body's resonating."
And my digestion always struggled in Whole30.
And I found what I think was having so much meat.
So I was trying to eat less meat
and started eating more eggs,
which you can do Whole30 eating a lot of eggs.
But overall, I just think you don't need to eat
that much meat, personally.
Separately, I want to at least acknowledge
Melissa Urban, formerly Melissa Hartwig, as a person,
she's the person who started Whole30, and her growth.
I mean, I've watched her on social media,
and through the Whole30 community,
and brand the past few years,
and the tone of the brand has really evolved.
I mean, it was pretty like harsh,
like bootcamp style.
Like, "This isn't hard.
You know what's hard? Cancer's hard."
All that kind of like just really intense tone
didn't resonate with me.
I don't know, I just thought it was a little bit much.
But what I've seen with her
is as she's grown into herself
and done so much of her own personal work,
she's shifted the tone of the brand
to be much more compassionate,
and open-hearted, and welcoming.
And I just appreciate that so much.
And she's really been an inspirational figure for me
in sharing my relationship with food and what's evolved.
I mean, Mind Over Munch is,
you know, completely different now
than it was a couple of years ago.
And seeing people like her and the way that, you know,
she's so attached to her brand,
the way she's let it evolved with her,
has inspired me to do the same.
So I really appreciate and admire her.
Overall, is the Whole30 a good idea?
I think it depends on you.
If your inner wisdom is strong, I would say yes.
Remember, outer wisdom is important and it can help us
if it's on top of a foundation of inner wisdom.
I think that knowledge is powerful.
Knowledge is outer wisdom.
Learning to read labels, gaining nutrition knowledge,
these are all tools that can help us.
But remember that graph about the people
who had more knowledge, you know,
their BMI's went down
only if their emotional intelligence was high,
only if they could manage their emotions.
So we need that inner wisdom foundation first.
If you go to Whole30, depending on the outer wisdom,
then it might reinforce your existing habits
and it could be worth saying,
"Okay, I'm gonna come back to the Whole30
once I have some more inner wisdom foundation."
Now at the same time, I say that hesitatingly,
because I was doing Whole30
while I was also building my inner wisdom.
You know, this isn't like a linear path, only you know.
You have to see yourself clearly
and be honest with yourself.
So I would just ask, "Is the Whole30 calling to you?
Is something about it resonating?"
If so, ask "Why?"
Now some alarms to look out for,
if you're like, "I wanna lose weight.
I want a quick fix.
In 30 days, I wanna have my dream body.
Or I wanna eat as much food as I want
and I don't wanna have to think about it.
Or I love rules," right?
Those are all alarms
that we might be clinging to some outer wisdom.
Versus an approach where,
"Oh, I feel connected to myself,
but I really want to listen to my body more deeply."
And then the Whole30 becomes a way
to tune into inner wisdom too.
If you choose to do it,
my recommendation would be
get "The Whole30 Day by Day" journal.
Keeping track of the non-scale victories
was really big for me.
Journaling every day, paying attention to what's happening.
I noticed the times I did Whole30,
where I actually paid attention
and wrote down the changes in my body,
the changes in, you know, my mind, my emotions,
then I benefited from it more.
But if I just tuned out and, you know, followed the rules,
then my body, I might look at myself
and feel a little slimmer by the end of it,
but I didn't really take something from it.
So bring mindfulness to the experience.
In some ways, I do think that the Whole30
inadvertently promotes mindfulness.
It does encourage you to take it one day at a time.
But, inevitably, it is a 30 day diet,
so it's hard to stay present now
because we're still thinking about an end goal.
So I would just say, let the inner wisdom be the driver,
and the outer wisdom be the passenger.
Will I do it again?
Maybe, but only from a foundation of inner wisdom.
And I will have tools set up
to make sure I'm seeing clearly along the way
and noticing if I'm clinging to any outer wisdom.
So just, like I said at the beginning of the series,
notice attachments.
You don't have to necessarily do anything about it,
just notice it.
Also important, our bodies are always changing.
What we're gonna need is gonna be different
on different days, different times of the year,
different times of our life.
A Whole30 might give insight
and feedback about what that is.
Keep in mind, that will be what it is now,
it'll be different a year from now.
What I found is I mostly know now,
as I've learned to listen and trust my inner wisdom,
I don't need the outer wisdom as much if at all.
You know the nutrition knowledge,
getting caught up in all the details of all of that,
it was actually just adding more stress
which was making it impossible
for me to make peace with food.
And once I felt peaceful and less stress,
then the rest started to fall into place.
Okay, so that's it for today.
Share your thoughts in the comments.
What was your Whole30 experience?
And how did your level of inner or outer wisdom
affect the experience?
Also, if you know someone who's, you know,
unsure about Whole30 or considering it,
I'd appreciate it if you'd share this video
or any video in the series that you think would resonate.
Also, if you'd like to support this series,
there is a donation page linked below.
You can also support us by signing up
for the "Mind Over Meal Prep" course,
which is still open through next week.
Thank you so much, have a wonderful weekend.
We'll be back on Monday.
And remember, it's all a matter of Mind Over Munch.
(upbeat music)