On New Year's Eve, I posted on my personal Facebook page about my WholeLifeSisters account and my experiences with Whole30 (I'd previously kept it on the DL, although a few people who'd noticed my weight loss had asked and I'd shared with them).
Ironically, as I stumbled my way through my first trimester pretty much hating food in general, everyone I knew was telling me that they were trying the Whole30 for the first time after seeing my post. Obviously Whole30 has been life changing for me and I will never stop believing, but a couple people have told me that their January Whole30 didn't work, so here are my thoughts on what might be going on.
Case Study #1
Let's start with my nearest and dearest. My husband did Whole30 this month. At the end of day 30, he jumped on the scale (yes, at night, he's super cute). "I've lost 2 pounds," he reported glumly. Half awake I muttered from the bed, "you might have a different result in the morning." "Yeah, but I could lose 2 pounds in a week, easy. And I have a lot of weight to lose." The next morning he was a little better. He'd lost 5-6 pounds. But still. For a guy looking to lose 50-60 pounds, that seems like small potatoes. Especially for all the work that was involved. He's really been stepping up since we found out I'm pregnant, and he did 95% of his food prep on his own, while also getting our kids breakfast in the morning because I IS SO TIRED. So what gives? There are people on IG and FB reporting that they lost 12, 16, 20 POUNDS IN A SINGLE Whole30! If you lost 5 pounds or less, I can understand how you can feel robbed. Look, I have no idea what's with those people. Some of them may have come from more drastically different eating habits and their bodies just responded well to the change. Some people just have faster metabolisms. I dunno. But I will say PARTICULARLY IF YOU HAVE SIGNIFICANT WEIGHT TO LOSE, I would encourage you to take a very long view. Everyone professes to know that crash diets are not helpful or effective long term, but in practice we want the speed of crash diet results. That may not happen for you on the Whole30. It may take your body longer to heal some of the issues it's been struggling with and some of those issues may be higher priority than just sloughing off fat. This is why it's so important to trust the process. Also, many of us who've done longer stints of Whole30 have noticed a sweet spot that BEGINS around day 60. It's like you relax, your body relaxes, and that whole "lifestyle" thing everyone talks about starts becoming a reality. I worry about several people I see white knuckling their way through 30 days only to declare defeat that they're not miraculously a size 2 and then decide they need to fake shake their way to weightloss. My husband has not given up on Whole30 yet. As he was leaving for work he noted wryly that at this rate he only had 10 months to go. But honestly? Ten months is actually not bad for healthy, sustainable, significant weight loss.
When we started our Whole100 Annah announced on Instagram that we would not be weighing ourselves THE ENTIRE TIME and I was like, whoah, that was not in the contract! I wanted to weigh in at 30, 60, 75 days... But not weighing in all the time was the BEST decision ever. We both lost 20 pounds in the end. If I'd known I'd only lose 20 pounds in 100 days, I'm not sure I would have done it. I had about 40 pounds to lose, and I wanted to do it much faster. But I was pretty happy in the end with the way I looked and felt. Twenty pounds is better than nothing! So get comfy, people, and go long.
Case Study #2
A cute couple at my church told me they're doing Whole30 and ...they feel no different. Now these folks don't need to lose weight. They appear to me to have boundless energy. They're not aware of any health problems they might have; there was nothing they were trying to "fix." They just heard everyone talking about this miraculous, life changing program and they thought they'd give it a shot. If this is you, you might just be really healthy. I suspect these people eat really well most of the time. Sometimes people tell me that they love bread and desserts too much to do Whole30. When those people are in generally good health, I often notice that they don't really LOVE bread and sweets like I LOVE bread and sweets. Some people want a bite now and then, but if you watch them overall, they're eating tons of vegetables and their portions are always super reasonable. They have "the gift" and it's not even hard for them. If you eat half a cookie and then have to throw the rest away months later because you haven't touched them, you may also have the gift. In this case, I say that it's still good to have tried the Whole30 once with a proper reintroduction. If you have no food issues, you have no food issues. Go away and don't ever talk to me. (J/K, love you...XO)
BONUS RAMBLING
Like I mentioned, if you are white knuckling your way through 30 days, you are hyper focused on your waistline, you are comparing yourself to the Whole30 super star results posters, and you are not committed to really paying attention and learning how food affects your body but just thinking of Whole30 as a "cleanse" before you go on with your life, I think you're wasting your time. What I love about this program is that it takes the scientific research on what foods are best for your body and eliminates the foods that often tax people's bodies and says, hey, now do a personal experiment on yourself to see what works for your unique body chemistry and situation. And it does that while respecting the fact that food can be emotional and that some of the food issues we struggle with are coming from our own minds and some are actually being induced by the very food we eat and that can be all tangled up and difficult to figure out. And we're not all going to fit into color-coded portion control boxes. But I think the struggle is worth it.
