- I know someone's gonna enjoy that,
but I don't get to enjoy that.
It's officially 2020 (party horn blowing)
and a new year is upon us,
so everybody's looking to try out
a new diet, a new challenge,
and I did exactly that for the last 30 days with Whole30.
No added sugar, no grains, no legumes, no dairy,
no alcohol, no measurements, no MSG or sulfites,
and no fake junk food with approved ingredients.
It's really a short list,
but if you really dive in a look at the rules,
each one technically eliminates whole food groups.
And boy, was it a challenge for me.
(ominous music)
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I think it's for Whole30. (lips bopping)
(light music)
The original plan was to start Whole30
immediately after my birthday, which falls on November 12th.
Just turned 30, by the way,
and that was a big occasion to celebrate.
So I don't wanna be following any restrictive diets
in that moment, you know what I'm sayin'?
A little sweets never hurt nobody.
Cookies and cream milkshake!
But then, I began having some serious second thoughts.
(police siren wailing)
But Doctor Mike, you always said
elimination diets are no good!
They can fuel eating disorders
and even nutritional deficiencies at times.
And now you're gonna do it yourself and endorse it?
No!
This is not an endorsement.
This is.
This is not an endorsement of Whole30 for everybody.
It's not a universal recommendation.
In fact, there are very few universal recommendations
that doctors give to their patients.
Whole30 is something I wanted to try.
I wanted to see how my body responded to it.
If you want a video talking about
the true pros and cons from the scientific angle of Whole30,
that's linked down below.
(light music)
The rules of Whole30, a lot of them make sense to me,
and I was fine following them.
But there were a few that I knew
were gonna be problematic right off the bat,
and those two are no grains and no dairy.
I can cut out bread.
That's not a problem, I've done that before
when I was gluten sensitive in the past.
I've overcome that.
But the fact that I have to give up brown rice, quinoa,
things that I eat, part of a healthy diet.
My sushi, that's, you know what I eat,
that's like my go-to meal,
so I was gonna be suffering without having rice.
And then to not have cheese?
Cheese, cheese, it's what makes the world go round.
It's like my favorite thing, even in salads,
you need to put a little blue cheese crumble in there
to make it taste good.
So I knew right away that that was gonna be a problem.
What I tried to do was to plan a little bit more thoroughly.
Figure out what places I can still eat in,
but just make sure that my food was still Whole30 approved.
For example, on a work day.
All right, my usual midday work meal is Chipotle.
And I initially thought I couldn't have Chipotle on Whole30,
but boy, was I wrong.
All I had to do was take out the rice and beans,
and I'm good to go.
Oh, and the cheese obviously, I love cheese.
So what do I have in my bowl?
Salad bowl, double the meat chicken, mild salsa, guacamole,
and the fajita vegetables.
Sounds yummy!
(light music)
Boy, did I make a mistake giving up sweets
during the sweetest time of the year!
Oh, I'm trying to start my first day of Whole30,
and then what is this?
What is this?
And then, what is this? (woman laughing)
It's ridiculous in here!
Holidays, birthdays, retirements.
There were cakes and chocolate bars everywhere!
Part of trying to give something up,
your success depends on getting away from those things.
I made sure that I didn't have any sweets in my house
so I couldn't cheat.
But constantly being met with sweets galore in the hospital,
that was a serious challenge for me,
and I was like, "Oh my God, am I gonna give in?"
But for some reason having those rules
made it a little bit easier,
because I just deferred to the rules.
As opposed to like, "No, I really shouldn't."
(light music)
Boy, I missed something big.
What holiday falls from the middle of November
to the middle of December?
Thanksgiving.
How'd I not think this through?
And on top of it, I was invited
to an amazing Thanksgiving Greek dinner.
And if you've never had a Greek dinner. (lips smooching)
The Whole30 struggle is real at a Greek Thanksgiving.
Do you agree?
- Oh yeah. - It's not like my
sous-vide cooking days,
so not too long ago, it's much, much better than that.
Basically, all I could put on my plate
was the turkey and some peas.
'Cause anything else had cheese on it
or some kind of grain,
and I was just sitting there unhappily.
Everyone looked at me like I was crazy.
You know that scene from "My Big Fat Greek Wedding"?
- What do you mean he don't eat no meat?
- "What do you mean you don't eat no rice?
"Oh, it's okay, we have cake!"
I'm like, "No!"
Do you know how bad I wanna eat this right now?
(light music)
One of the rules of Whole30 is that you can't drink alcohol.
To me, not a big deal, not a bing drinker anyway.
I'll have a glass of wine or a drink here and there
for celebratory purposes.
But now, I went to Miami for Art Basel.
If you don't know what Art Basel is,
it's like a fancy-schmancy art event
where it's a ton of exhibits in Miami.
Great weather, great people, everyone's happy,
people are having drinks.
If you've never been to Miami,
a big part of the celebrations during Art Basel
is to go out at night.
I've never really gone out to night clubs
without having at least one drink.
It's not about getting drunk for me.
It's just about, you know, having a drink and loosening up.
But being out with 2 Chainz on top of you singing,
and I'm there just drinking water,
everyone felt like I was a buzzkill at this thing.
"Mike, have a drink with us," you know,
"Cheers, cheers, cheers," and I would be cheersing water,
and people would get offended.
I was able to withstand that.
But I could easily see
how if you're trying to follow Whole30,
the peer pressure can really motivate someone to cheat.
(light music)
I was movin', I was groovin',
I was startin' to feel good on Whole30.
I was even getting proud telling people like,
"Oh no, no rice for me, just sashimi."
Or whatever it is I was eating.
But then disaster struck.
Again, probably due to poor planning,
but it was a true disaster.
Went to the gym a few times,
and my bench started going down, which makes no sense.
Normally, when I'm working out, I'm benching like 225, 255.
225 was becoming a huge challenge for me.
When I stepped onto the basketball court,
after one game, I felt like I was exhausted.
It made no sense to me.
It's not because I turned 30!
It's probably because I was undereating my calories.
When you do an elimination diet like Whole30,
it's very easy to under eat calories.
This is probably why a lot of people lose weight.
But now myself being an athlete,
I needed to plan for that, I should have thought more ahead.
To make sure that I can still perform
(imitates net swishing) on the court and in the gym, bah!
(light music)
Once I threw in some extra calories, things improved a lot.
I was having less cravings, performing better in the gym.
Actually, my body probably looked the best
that it's looked in some time following this
because I did a lot of caloric restriction, unintentionally,
and then kept working out, and then up my protein.
Just got back from the gym,
so I need my little post workout meal.
Whole30 approved, we got Wild Planet,
a little grilled chicken, oops, I spilled some.
I was even already so used to the eating habits,
like of things I could and couldn't eat,
then when I would go out to eat with somebody,
they would get an awesome little bun cake,
or some rice, something that looks delicious.
I wasn't even stressing it anymore.
Once you get out of old habits, and you develop new ones,
it's not that big of a deal.
I was actually feeling really good and proud of myself
that I was getting to the end.
(light music)
Now when you hit your 30-day mark, it's not over.
You then enter the phase of reintroduction of the foods
one by one to see how they would affect your body.
Because the whole premise of this
is not only to develop a better relationship with foods,
but it's also to see if those foods
negatively affect your body.
It's just like the claim of Whole30
that I'm not a huge fan of, it's not really scientific.
Like if you put in legumes on the first day,
then two days later, added sugars,
then two days after that, grains, it's not scientific.
If we're doing a proper elimination challenge
in the medical setting, we do a 90-day elimination.
We keep a strict log of symptoms.
We then do a reintroduction one at a time
to see if and when symptoms return.
I can put in legumes on day one,
day two, I can put in grains,
and then have symptoms on day six,
and it could be due to any one of those.
It's not very scientific,
'cause you don't know what's happening there.
(light music)
If you followed my previous 30-day challenges,
you know that my digestive system becomes an absolute mess.
I mean, bloating, diarrhea.
Whenever I make any kind of drastic changes,
and believe me, this was a drastic change.
When I began that reintroduction phase,
everything went back to normal.
I mean, yes, I included more vegetables in my diet,
but by doing so, everything returned back to normal
and I started feeling good again.
I just think that these major, drastic changes
when you're already eating healthy
probably aren't great for your microbiome
and your overall gut health.
So I find out when I eat my normal diet
that's right for my body and my athletic needs,
it works best for me, but with more vegetables.
Something I noticed was that I was struggling
to get my fiber from my meals.
Because normally, I would eat things like black beans,
at least three, four times a week, brown rice.
And when I had to eliminate all those,
I had to find replacement sources.
And yeah, vegetables, fruits, there's stuff in there.
I think if I was to do it again,
I would probably supplement with something
just to make sure I get enough fiber.
(light music)
One of the main questions people asked me
when I was almost at the end of Whole30
was how did my body change?
Well, I definitely saw some weight loss,
but remember, part of the rules are no measurements.
I didn't weigh myself.
What I did notice was that my clothes
were fitting a lot more loose,
my pants were a little baggier.
Even my watch started sort of hanging on my hand.
Maybe I was losing muscle 'cause I was undereating calories,
but there's definitely ways you can mitigate all of that
depending on what your goals are.
That's why my recommendation
is to never just do these on a whim.
Talk to a nutritionist, a registered dietician,
a physician, somebody that can give you some guidance
on what you should be doing.
In fact, my whole gripe with Whole30
is that it really encourages people to do this on a whim.
They're like, "Oh, if you're fatigued,
"try this, it may help."
It's true, it may help,
especially if you're eating a ton of junk food.
But what if you have a vitamin D deficiency
that you're not aware of,
and then you do Whole30, you don't eat dairy,
and that worsens your vitamin D deficiency.
Or you're anemic or something.
I mean, there's so many reasons
why people can have symptoms.
That's exactly the reason why you should be evaluated
before you start a drastic elimination diet like this.
That's not knocking Whole30, that's just spitting facts.
At the end of the day,
nutritional advice should be individualized,
but it's a very restrictive diet,
it can cause some serious problems.
There's definitely some research showing
that there's some crossover with eating disorders,
and most the time, it's unnecessary.
I just feel that there's other ways
of getting someone to eat healthy
than to give them a strict list of eight things to do.
And eliminating some foods
that I think are otherwise healthy.
Why would you eliminate certain foods like black beans
that can be so healthy to the majority of people?
A lot of it doesn't make sense.
But look, if you want a challenge for yourself,
like I did, and you wanna do it the safe way,
make sure you talk to a nutritionist or a doctor,
and you do it the smart way.
Huge thank you to Thrive Market for sponsoring this video
and making healthy eating affordable.
Link's in my bio, click it, sign up,
get the 12-month package, it's only five bucks a month.
If you wanna see my other 30-day challenges
and a green tea video, click on this playlist right here.
(light music)