Should You Try the Whole30 Diet?
The elimination diet claims to change your body shape without exercising or restricting calories. What’s the catch? (Photo by Getty Images)
Melissa Hartwig knows it looks hard: Eliminating all traces of grains, dairy, sugar and legumes for 30 whole days. That means no sandwiches, no yogurt, no pizza, no peanut butter, no chips, no cereal, no hummus, no cheese – the list goes on – for an entire month.
And no, this isn’t a liquid diet: You can’t mask your misery with a single drop of alcohol, either. For many, this all spells no fun.
But Hartwig, a sports nutritionist in Salt Lake City and co-founder of the Whole30 program, insists you’ve done harder things. “Birthing a baby, losing a parent, beating cancer – that’s hard,” she says.
The Whole30 challenge, on the other hand, asks you to cut out major food groups including grains and dairy for 30 days. You won’t count calories or step on a scale, and you’ll only exercise if you’re an overachiever. The claim? You’ll watch the pounds melt away, your body shape transform and your relationship with food change – forever, the founders say.
Related: 5 Scary Health Conditions Your Dentist Can Spot
When it’s over, slowly reintroduce the foods you’ve eliminated to figure out which are responsible for what ails you – be it low energy, bad mood or poor sleep. Successful Whole30 dieters have even reported that the program treats more severe conditions, including diabetes, fibromyalgia and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, according to the Whole30 website.
Easy enough?
Xavier Hernandez thinks so. Inspired by a friend and an article about the process of achieving your goals, the 27-year-old government relations representative at the United States Postal Service in the District of Columbia tried the challenge in September 2013 and liked it so much he did it again in January – and didn’t stop until his birthday in late May. All in all, he lost more than 50 pounds.
“That article and the Whole30, they completely changed my life – the way I approach everything, the way I approach dieting, the way I approach working out,” he says. “Also committing: Being able to say, ‘Look, I committed for something for 30 days … and look at the difference.”
What You Can Eat: Meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, nuts or seeds.
What You Can’t Eat: Sugar (including artificial sweeteners, honey and agave), alcohol, grains (including oats, corn, rice and quinoa), legumes (including beans, chickpeas and peanuts), dairy.
#Whole30
The Whole30 program has been around since 2009, when Hartwig and her husband, physical therapist and sports nutritionist Dallas Hartwig, launched the health website and consulting company Whole9. The method gained steam when the pair published “It Starts With Food,” a book outlining the diet and the science behind it, in 2012. But Melissa Hartwig says the challenge really took off this past year, in large part thanks to social media, which allows dieters to post their before-and-after photos and encourage and connect with one another.
“They share photos of their #Whole30 meals, their ‘nonscale victories’ and their results, which gets friends and family interested in the program, too,” says Melissa Hartwig, whose next book, “The Whole30: The 30-Day Guide to Total Health and Food Freedom,” also co-authored with her husband, comes out in April.
Seeing the dramatic weight-loss effects of the challenge on a friend’s Instagram account was what inspired Ruthy Taylor, a 36-year-old blogger at Discovery Street and mother of two in Tacoma, Washington, and her husband to give the diet a try. “These are my friends – I know their lifestyle. If they can do this, we can do this,” thought Taylor, who started the challenge last week.
So far, so good.
“Midday I’m usually dead, I’m ready for a nap, I’m exhausted – and I just haven’t felt that way,” says Taylor, whose kids are 2 years and 4 months old. “My kid is still waking up through the night, and I still have a needy toddler, and I just feel like I have so much more energy – and so does my husband. We both feel really great. And only three days in, it’s shocking.”
Too Good to Be True?
Few can argue against Whole30’s emphasis on proteins, vegetables and unprocessed foods at the expense of avoiding added sugars and alcohol. Still, the diet has its downsides, says Joan Salge Blake, a registered dietitian in Boston and spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
“Whenever you start eliminating food groups, you’re going to be cutting calories – and that is really what this all comes down to,” she says. Like most short-term diets, once the program is over, the pounds will come back on, Blake suspects.
What’s more, some of the food groups the Whole30 eliminates are important components of a healthy diet. Dairy products like skim milk and yogurt, for example, are packed with calcium, vitamin D and protein, while legumes such as beans and chickpeas are great, inexpensive plant-based sources of protein.
Together, these food groups can help fight off chronic diseases such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer and stroke, says Blake, a clinical associate professor at Boston University’s Sargent College of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences.
“We want to kill two birds with one stone here: We want to lose some weight, but we want to make sure at the same time we’re eating foods on a healthy diet that can also help us fight those chronic diseases,” she says. (Blake also warns that any drastic diet change can alter the way the body processes medications, so it’s important to tell your doctor about your diet plans so he or she can adjust your doses accordingly.)
Others worry that the challenge – which requires dieters to start over at day one if they consume even an accidental granule of sugar or a drop of milk – promotes a risky all-or-nothing mentality toward weight loss.
“Nobody is perfect with eating, and a little bit of derailment does not really cause a major wreck,” says Leslie Bonci, director of sports nutrition at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center’s Center for Sports Medicine, where she consults with collegiate and professional sports teams. “So when people set themselves up with that kind of a mindset, that’s destined for failure.”
She’d prefer people take the “best of the diet” by upping their veggie and protein intake, while still allowing room for nutrient-rich legumes, whole grains and dairy. “My goal is always sustainability,” Bonci says. “So whatever it is that somebody does, I would like it to be 365 days, not just 30, and that’s really where I think it becomes a little bit too extreme.”
Practically, the diet can be tricky. It’s tough to eat out – “There are a lot of places that you don’t know how they prepare their food, and then you kind of shoot yourself in the foot,” Hernandez says. And not everyone has the time or resources to shop for and prepare three meals a day for themselves and their families.
Meal planning was what Taylor was most anxious about before starting the challenge. But, she says, “It’s surprisingly easier than not doing it.” Rather than scrambling to throw something together at the last minute or just ordering pizza, Taylor now cooks big portions of a protein – think beef in a crockpot or baked chicken thighs – on weekends and pairs them with different veggies throughout the week.
One of the best parts? The meals fill her up. “This doesn’t feel like a diet – it doesn’t feel like I’m robing myself of anything,” Taylor says. “I feel like this is how eating is supposed to be.”
Your Next Read: Is Charcoal The New Detoxing Miracle?
