- I wanna try Whole30 myself for the next month.
Hey guys, welcome to another diet review.
You've seen me cover intermitting fasting,
keto, well now it's time for me to cover another
incredibly popular diet.
This time were taking on Whole30.
Are you ready?
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All right, let's talk Whole30.
Many people call this a diet,
and I feel that's like somewhat of a misnomer.
I think it should be called the Whole30 challenge or
a Whole30 reset because what it does is
it eliminates certain food groups very strictly
for the first 30 days,
and then allows you to gradually reintroduce them back
into your diet and
see how they affect your body.
There are eight hard and fast rules that you have to
follow religiously during Whole30.
If you break one of these rules and slip up,
you have to restart the 30 day cycle,
because as the founders describe in their book,
it's not just the reset of the diet you eat.
It's an elimination diet and if you reintroduce
one of the foods in prematurely,
that's gonna skew the results and you won't learn as
much from the 30-day period.
Don't consume any added sugars or sweeteners,
artificial or otherwise.
Do not consumer alcohol in any form.
Do not eat grains.
This includes wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn,
rice, quinoa, and buckwheat.
Do not eat legumes.
This includes beans of all kinds,
peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts.
This also includes all forms of soy,
soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh.
No go on dairy.
This includes cow's, goat's, or sheep's milk products
such as milk, cream, cheese, kefir, yogurt, sour cream,
ice cream, and frozen yogurt.
The only exceptions are clarified butter or ghee.
No consumption of carrageenans, sulfites, or MSG.
Do not try and recreate baked goods, treats, or junk foods
with approved ingredients.
You can't weigh yourself or take measurements of any kind.
This means no calorie counting as well.
While there are claims of improved athletic performance,
sleep, fat loss, improved cognition,
decreased food cravings,
the majority of the claims really center around the fact
that you're gonna have an improved relationship with food,
that you'll have understanding of how food
affects your body, what works, what doesn't,
and because of that, your ultimately gonna
be a healthier person.
I thought it would be beneficial to do what I like
about Whole30 and then state my concerns,
and after that I'll give you an overall
guidance on what I would recommend to a patient,
generally speaking if they're sitting in front of me.
My favorite thing about Whole30 is that it
absolutely makes you swear off sugary, over processed,
junk food.
Now if you watch any piece of my content,
this is the first piece of advice I'd give to anybody,
because if you can eliminate that alone,
you're gonna see tremendous health benefits,
and if I'm gonna give a little spoiler here,
I think a lot of the benefits of Whole30
come from just eliminating that.
It certainly can help with weight loss because
if your gonna go on an elimination diet where you're
you're taking foods out,
especially foods that are quite unhealthy and
contribute to obesity.
Odds are you're gonna be losing weight as a result.
It puts a focus on real and whole foods because
often times when were dieting,
we're trying to find short cuts and ways that we
can still eat foods that are unhealthy and over processed.
This really makes you focus and eat vegetables, plant-based
foods, and that seems to be at the core of Whole30.
I love that it takes the focus away from weighing
yourself every single day.
I have to many patients that get over zeroed in
on these numbers,
and forget that eating well is not just about
losing weight, but it's also about being healthy,
and if we get to focused on the numbers,
we can often times neglect other factors of our
diets that can contribute to health problems.
It can increase consumer competency.
What I mean is that your gonna more away of what
ingredients are found in your foods.
For example, many people don't know that sugar
is found in ketchup.
Therefor, ketchup is not a Whole30 approved food.
Knowing those little insights and tidbits,
can go a long way even if you don't follow
Whole30 for the rest of your life.
It can change your eating habits for the better
by increasing your awareness of how food integrates
into your lifestyle.
For example, if your coming home every night
and you're having two glasses wine to decompress.
After doing Whole30 you may find a different,
maybe even healthier, alternative way to decompress
without needing alcohol.
In addition, it highlight how certain food choices
can affect your cravings.
It's that gut-brain connection we sometimes talk about
where if you eat a lot of sugary foods,
it's actually gonna encourage you to eat more of that.
There's actually a great study that I covered on my
YouTube channel about how processed foods can
affect the amount of calories you take in
throughout the day.
That's definitely gonna be dropped down below in my
description, so check that one out.
Here's my first and main concern with Whole30,
I think it puts an over-emphasis on anecdotal evidence
of people who've had tremendous success with
the Whole30 platform.
The next 30 days will change your life.
They will change the way you think about food, they
will change your taste, it will change your habits and
your cravings,
it will restore healthy emotional relationships with food
and with your body,
the physical benefits of Whole30 are profound,
a full 96% 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, mental clarity, and a return
to a healthy digestive system,
improved athletic performance, and a sunnier disposition.
I know way doubt that there were these benefits in
some of the people that have done Whole30.
To make this promise that this is gonna happen
to almost everybody that does it,
I don't like over-promising results to my patients
because I think that ultimately provides them a disservice.
It makes them believe that this is the miracle cure-all
thing that they've been waiting for,
and in some cases it is,
it may be true.
Someone who has been eating junk food their whole life,
has disordered digestive system because they've
been eating this junk,
this can help and this can change their life,
but to make it seem like no matter who you are
this is gonna change your life,
I think it's a bit of an over-statement.
As a practicing physician, I know that patients
who are suffering with diseases are
really susceptible to any kind of marketing hype
that's promising them a cure for their illness's.
On the cover of this book it says,
more significant, many people have reported the magical
elimination of a variety of symptoms, diseases, and
conditions in just 30 days,
and they go onto list a whole host of conditions
including eczema, psoriasis, chronic fatigue, asthma,
sinus infections, allergies, migraines, acid reflex,
Crohn's, celiac, IBS, bipolar disorder, depression,
Lyme's disease, endometriosis, PCOS, and even autism.
They don't out right state that Whole30 is the
cure for any of these conditions because
then they would be in legal trouble,
but the fact that they're even conflating the possibility
that Whole30 can be a treatment for autism or a cure
for autism,
I think that borderline is a little bit ridiculous and
again is doing a disservice to our patients.
What I think is quite interesting is that some of
the symptoms that Whole30 aims to remove,
can actually be caused by a nutritional deficiency,
and Whole30 on its own can exacerbate some of
these nutritional deficiencies.
For example, imagine I have a patient who's
chronically fatigued and having difficulty with
energy levels and sleep so on so fourth,
and I find that there Vitamin D deficient,
that they have a very low Vitamin D level.
Now, eliminating all types of dairy will certainly
exacerbate that condition,
but had I not run these tests beforehand and the
patient went on Whole30 without consulting me first,
think about the negative outcomes that could have occurred.
Putting junk and processed foods aside for a moment,
the foods that you're eliminating while on Whole30,
can be problematic to some people,
but for most, eliminating them will yield no benefit
and in actually some cases can fuel nutritional
deficiencies or even exacerbate medical problems.
Something else that's problematic is that Whole30
tries very hard to be a proper elimination diet,
which is the gold standard that doctors use trying
to identify food sensitivities,
but while it comes close,
it's not exactly accurate.
For example, if were gonna do a restrictive diet
of any sort,
we would do it for 90 days because that's
how long it takes for the immune system to sort of
shut down its response.
On top of that, I rarely jump to saying
let's eliminate everything and see what sticks.
It's kind of a shock on approach that may work in
some instances, but may also make my patient's
life so much more problematic than it needs to be,
and in their reintroduction protocol within the book,
they say to introduce foods every two, three days,
but then they go on to say to contradict themselves,
that you may have a negative reaction a week later.
So, at that point you've already introduced three foods.
How do you know which one is causing a negative reaction?
It really becomes problematic that this is not done
in a systemic way like we would do in a medical center,
and finally I'm not a huge fan of restrictive diets
like this because generally you they don't have long-term
success rates and I fear that there could be psychological
problems that develop when you say to yourself,
you absolutely can't have a single cookie or your a failure.
I mean, that sort of anxiety is not good for anybody,
especially those who are prone to disordered eating.
So, what's my overall take on this Whole30 challenge?
I think it's quite interesting.
I think it's cool to be able to give yourself a
test of will power for thirty days.
I am the main proponent of removing junk food,
processed food, increasing whole foods in your diet, so
I totally agree with Whole30 on that.
However, if I have a patient that's having some sort of
symptoms that their concerned about,
I wouldn't jump to giving them a restrictive diet
to figure out if it's the result of food
sensitivities without doing some testing first.
So my recommendation,
if your having some sort of weird symptoms going on
and you're considering Whole30,
pump the brakes a little bit.
Ask your doctor, talked to a registered dietician,
is this right for you, have you checked
everything else that can be contributing to
your symptoms?
Once you do that and you have the all clear from
a registered health professional,
by all means check it out and let me know how it goes.
Whole30 isn't for everybody and it's not perfect,
but there's some certain core principles within
Whole30 that are absolutely ideal for everybody,
and I think by following it, learning a little bit more
about our own bodies,
that can actually do some good,
so I'm a fan.
I wanna try Whole30 myself for the next month.
I'm gonna do exactly as it says,
follow those eight principles,
and I'm gonna vlog along the way letting you know
how my little journey is going.
Are you excited?
If you're excited,
definitely let me know down below in the comments.
If you have any outstanding questions,
ask them down below.
As you know, I'm very active in the comment section
and if you want to check out a really cool video,
click right here.
As always,
stay happy and healthy.
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