The Whole Thing with Food - Whole30 Kick Off

Remember that crazy time last year when we got into all that calorie-counting and trying to eat healthy?

Well, that didn't work. We went back to our regular "almost-a-pack-of-Oreos-in-a-sitting"-old habits.

[Shocker.]

Nataliedee.com

Diet #1 -- a little refresher
I went into the whole deal about my concern with eating to run, and then we tried four weeks (here, here, here, and here) of quitting cold turkey and going straight to eating smart and eating better by counting calories. Overall, the month - intended to help us run faster by losing a few lbs and therefore carrying around less weight - was good enough, and it served its purpose of leaning us out a little. In other words, it was most definitely about weight loss. As an experiment. But, the downsides: I started smelling ammonia in my nose after workouts and runs. We were still pretty hungry after eating sometimes. We got sick of eating salads everyday. Oh, and it didn't last. No way I could keep that up... good riddance.

That month and our revelations were the tip of the iceberg for what I'm about to get into next.

Then this happened:
I was out on a group run a couple weeks ago with my friend, Ashley, and she told me she'd been eating differently since last November. Real, unprocessed foods. It was fascinating enough - I mean, we could all stand to eat clean. This we know. Then she told me she usually suffers awful seasonal allergies, and since she changed her eating habits, she hasn't had any allergies this season... and there have been times this year when it should have been really bad.

Could food really do all of this? Though I have two other friends who've been on this same eating plan for quite a while, this was the first time I had ever heard that this way of eating is NOT ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS. (Ben) Never dealing with allergies ever again? Now you have my attention.

source: afitmess.com

Ashley and her delicious instagram photos/hashtags led me to research more of this eating business, so I started by googling "Whole30." When I got to Whole9Life - the home of the Whole30 (the nutrition plan itself) - and found that everything I needed to know about it was right there (and free) on their website. It's not anything outrageous or left-field (i.e., eating a cookie diet), and seems pretty sound. I also verified - using Pinterest, of course, that there are good non-weird recipes out there.

What's the Whole30? Here's the 30-second elevator speech that sums it up perfectly in a few sentences from Whole9Life:

Source: whole9life

"We eat real food – meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruit, healthy oils, nuts and seeds. We choose foods that were raised, fed and grown naturally, and foods that are nutrient-dense, with lots of naturally occurring vitamins and minerals.

This is not a “diet” – we eat as much as we need to maintain strength, energy, activity levels and a healthy body weight. We aim for well-balanced nutrition, so we eat animals and a significant amount of plants.

Eating like this has helped us to look, feel, live and perform our best, and reduces our risk for a variety of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions."

Sounds easy enough. Sounds good enough! And sounds delicious!
After much more research, I was convinced to try it after reading blog posts by ultra runners who've said this way of eating real foods has been life-changing. (Which is probably why the Whole9 tagline is "Let Us Change Your Life"!)

   

I eat healthy enough. I'm fit enough. So why this? Why now?

• Create a healthy relationship with food and adopt good habits.
  I eat to run, and run to eat, and it creates a never-ending cycle. I want to see it in a more positive way - food as fuel. I am also pretty bad about eating when I'm bored; I can eat healthy all day long, but when evening comes, I eat my dinner, and then I have a post-dinner snack/dessert, and then another one, and another one, and another one, and then maybe a jar of frosting for good measure.... not healthy.
• Kick the sugar, carbs, and junk food binges.
  It all started with a day when I sat down with a bag of chips, and next thing I knew, I'd finished just about the whole bag on my own. Same thing applies with cookies, dessert, candy, and lots of other junk food. It became a nightly ritual to sit down in front of the TV with a bag of pretzels & a bowl full of chocolate and eat it until I felt like I was going to explode. I usually have a bag of gummy worms, Twizzlers, or Sour Patch kids in the front seat when I'm on road trips for work. All of these habits = not normal!
• Food slump.
  It happened again. Same old, same old. I ran out of things to cook.... so I just stopped cooking and eating out of a box/bag. I'd love some inspiration and hope to try new things.
• Lactose intolerance.
  On top the bag-of-chips episode, a few weeks before I decided to jump in, I had a sudden onset of lactose intolerance. I usually have a 1/2 cup of skim milk with my cereal, or a little bit of greek yogurt every few days, and suddenly - for no apparent reason - my stomach couldn't even tolerate this little dairy*. It was almost unexplainable, like a switch had suddenly flipped.
  *Switching to organic milk was a huge help! 
• Allergies.
  I don't have allergies (that I'm aware of), but Ben's nearly always having some kind of allergic response, in varying degrees of severity... a condition he's had to manage his entire life. (Let him tell you about the allergy-free room he slept in as a kid - cot, blanket, pillow. That's it.) If I have good results from this experiment, this could be just as good to alleviate Ben's symptoms!
• Nutrients from food. I'm not against vitamin supplements, but I also like the idea of getting my nutrients from food. It seems they're best absorbed in the body like this vs. in pill form. I've always wanted to try, and the philosophy of eating this way (note: I will never call this a diet. It's not.) supports that.
• Other surprises
  I don't really know exactly how food affects me, so I can't wait to be surprised to find out how my body responds to changes in my eating habits. I'm not thinking this is a magic pill for everything that ails me, but I'd love to see if this encourages any improvement on these fronts:
• Acne
• Memory
• Extreme tiredness/food coma-ness
• Foggy feelings on runs
• Dry skin
• Plantar fasciitis
• Vitamin B12 deficiency & anemia
• Sleeping and waking up
• Better running!

nataliedee.com

Challenges and Concerns:

• Quitting cold turkey -- I've tried giving up snacking and sugar multiple times, and it never sticks. I have crazy sugar cravings and awful snacking habits, I'll admit it.
• I expect to be hungry -- Eating salads all the time last year left me so hungry, it was just up to me and my willpower not to keep eating despite that.
• Events and travel -- I'm on the road a lot, and I especially have a lot going on in the next 30 days (weddings, road trips, air travel, work travel....)
• The South Beach crash -- Have I told you about the time I tried South Beach? It was capital-H Horrible. Consistently feeling awful while running is such a defeating feeling and a blow to my confidence. I really don't want to set myself up to experience that- not even for a week!

What I like About the Whole30:

• Unlimited vegetables.
  Portion sizes are not a problem - you just eat until you're full.
• Sound nutritional principles.
  It's about choosing the right mix of food - protein, healthy fat, and vegetables. No elimination of important nutrients/food groups. In fact, it's all about getting nutrients from food and not forcing the body work too hard to get it.
• No weighing on the scale.
  In fact, it's prohibited! (Same with body fat measurements and the like) 
• This is not about weight loss.
  I may be overly critical of fad diets, especially because - in my short experience with South Beach - they never seem to stick long-term. This has the potential to be a sustainable one, because it focuses on the psychological (relationships with food) and the physiological (making you feel better by making good food choices). I really love that this has nothing to do with weight loss but overall health; for that reason, and to get started on the right foot, I will never call this a diet.
• Overall health.
  With my eating habits, I always wonder if I'm a skinny-fat-person... fit on the outside, not-100%-healthy on the inside. This could change that! And because there's no expectation to continue this forever and ever (an exit strategy is detailed in the plan), it seems sustainable. I like.
• Support, evidence, and information.
  Everything you need to know is available on their website, whole9life.com, but there's more technical information (which answers why food does these things to us) in the book, "It Starts With Food." The website also has forums, planned Whole30 start dates, daily emails and tips, and a community of people who've asked/experienced/completed the same thing.

So for the next 30 days, I'll be taking notes and telling you about this ultimate experiment**!

If you feel like it's time to hit the reset button on your eating habits, try this Whole30 Challenge with me! Start now. This instant. Click here for the details, a shopping list, and a meal planning template.

**I'm actually almost 2 weeks in, but just really slow to tell you about it! Go figure.