Whole30: That's All Folks!

Whole30: That’s All Folks!


It’s true, I am no longer doing Whole30 as of Friday. I finished about two weeks and decided to stop early. Now before you start thinking I “gave up”, let me tell you why.

1. I didn’t feel that is was benefitting me in the ways I expected it to and hoped that it would. Yes, some days I did feel like I had more energy and was less “groggy”, but other days I felt achey and exhausted. I didn’t see any changes to my complexion and my digestion was, ya know, about the same. I usually sleep well in general, so the only changes there that I noticed were some occasional dreams that were unusual. I would say overall I did feel generally better from day to day, but it wasn’t quite as spectacular as I was hoping. I did, however, lose 5 pounds – go me!

2. Since I was considering cutting this little adventure short, I went back to the Whole30 website and looked over the program. From what I can infer, I should have actually been eating grass-fed meat which makes a LOT of sense. It seemed odd to me that I could eat things like bacon and pork as part of a sort of cleanse. We can’t afford to buy and eat grass-fed meet as the norm, but it may explain why I wasn’t seeing the effects I hoped to see.

3. My goal in doing Whole30 was to gain awareness. I wanted to be aware of what I was eating and aware of how it affects my body. I wanted to learn how to use whole foods to create nutritious meals and wanted to train my body to gain nutrients from foods that are healthy. After two weeks of Whole30, I feel like I completed that goal. Matt and I talked about how we wanted to eat generally speaking – after completing Whole30 I had planned to add in some whole grains, legumes, some dairy (not a lot), and to decrease the amount of meat I was eating. After looking over the two weeks I completed of Whole30, we decided to just go ahead and start.

I want to have a healthy lifestyle and I want to put healthy foods into my body on a daily basis. Yes, for special occasions or here and there, I will eat the “unhealthy” foods. My sister-in-law, Amanda, mentioned 80/20 this weekend – eating healthy 80% of the time and eating maybe not-so-healthy 20% of the time. I think that is what I would like my diet to look like – but I want the “healthy” part to be full of whole foods – loaded with colorful fruits and veggies, lean meats, and whole grains & sprinkled with some low-fat dairy.

I hope that you won’t judge me for giving up Whole30 half way through! Based on my own experience, I wanted to go ahead with the lifestyle I felt was more healthy and fitting for us. Whole30 definitely showed me a lot about how I want to eat and how to prepare the whole foods to make delicious meals. It helped me reach my goal of becoming more aware of what I am putting into my body and more aware of how my body responds to it. Woo!