Why You Should Do a Whole 30

Thinking of doing a Whole30? I’m not going to lie—it’s challenging—yet so many people are giving it a try. You might wonder should you do a Whole30.

AUGUST 2024 UPDATE: There’s a brand new Whole30 book out and I’ve already got my copy and am having so much fun trying the new recipes.

I did my first complete Whole30 (read how it changed my life here) about 13 years ago when it was a new program. I went all in and signed up for support on the site. I read the forums and did my 30 days.

That experience changed how I ate forever, as it still forms the foundation of how I eat. Eventually I went on to lose weight and as I get older I am so thankful that I got started eating this way so long ago.

I’ve coached women on eating and other quality of life issues for five years now and I know absolutely you don’t have to eat like this all the time to lose or maintain your weight.

In fact, I recommend women eat foods they like. That being said, so much of what I learned about food came from Whole30 and I find so much of it still helpful.

But it’s never too late to get started!

We women usually only think about food in relation to losing or gaining weight. By midlife, we’ve messed up our brains, our bodies, and our metabolism.

Whole30 helps correct all of this!

As a well-beyond-midlife woman, I am planning to have the healthiest last part of my life possible. My nutrition is an essential part of this. So if you are curious, be sure to read this post to understand the benefits.

The Benefits of Doing a Whole30

There are so many benefits to completing a Whole 30 that I think most people could benefit from the experience.

It’s probably not too far off the mark to say most people do a Whole 30 because they feel desperate about their weight or health.

Maybe they feel sick and tired all the time. Maybe they cannot lose weight no matter what they do? It might be that they have digestive issues that just seem to get worse each year.

I did a Whole 30 because I had such a good result from giving up wheat and it made me curious what else I could improve.

For years I had horrible digestive issues and they all disappeared within a few days of eliminating all wheat from my diet. I am talking about symptoms that had been a problem for years simply going away.

It blew my mind and convinced me that diet and the food I ate was affecting me in more ways than simply weight.

I was curious about Whole 30 but the big list of no-no’s kept me from giving it a go for almost a year. I couldn’t quite figure out why you should do a Whole 30.

There are a couple of book links in this post for your convenience if you want to look into them on Amazon. They are affiliate links. I include them because they ARE the best way to learn about Whole 30.

What Do You Give Up on the Whole 30?

Before I get into the benefits, I want to talk about what scares people the most.

Back 14 years ago, my sister-in-law told me about this eating program she wanted to try. For her, giving up alcohol was the primary impediment to her doing the program.

Honestly, I wasn’t in love with that idea either!

For many people, all the food and drinks they give up can seem overwhelming. It’s overwhelming because most of us have used these foods as the basis for our diets so it seems impossible we could give them up.

However, while it seems like you will be deprived, the opposite happens. The world of real food opens up for you. You begin to taste food and enjoy vegetables again.

So, here is the basic list of what you don’t eat on the original Whole30. However, the new Whole30 book includes a plant-based version that is more inclusive. I haven’t delved into that part of the book yet, so in this post I am referring to the original Whole30, which is how they refer to it in the new book.

The original Whole 30 requires you to give up eating the following for an entire month: beans, all grains, alcohol, cheese and all other dairy, sugar, and artificial sweeteners.

At that time, I couldn’t imagine giving up my cream in my coffee or my artificial sweeteners.

And I had no idea what I would eat that would take the place of all those dietary staples.

Do You Lose Weight with Whole 30?

People often come to Whole 30 to lose weight. How can you not? You’re giving up sweets, breads, pastas, rice, tortillas, cheese, and alcohol. It’s seems like the weight will just drop off!

For some people, it does. For some, it doesn’t. Whole 30 is not a weight loss program. This is really important to realize. It doesn’t mean that you won’t lose weight but the primary purpose of the “30” is that it is a period of time where you retrain your brain and your body to eat and enjoy REAL food.

This is a huge deal!

Eating real food is what will set you up for a LIFETIME of success and ultimately achieving a healthy weight.

It’s probably hard to imagine a time when you can just live in peace with food. It will be a part of your life but it won’t consume your life.

Instead of being an enemy that you have to fight off, you get to just enjoy eating. And even better, the people in your life will enjoy eating with you too.

I was married when I did my first Whole 30 and while my husband didn’t agree with eating this way, but he did love eating meals with me because they were so delicious.

Five years later, when my fiancée joins me for dinner, he  thoroughly loves the food and is amazed that food can be this good.

Folks, I am not an amazing cook. But real food combined with healthy fats does taste amazing.

Will I Feel Deprived Doing a Whole 30?

So, the first thing to wrap your brain around is that you will not feel hungry. If you do feel hungry, you simply are not eating enough and you need to eat more.

That is so simple, yet it goes against every diet-brainwashing thought we’ve learned over the years. When you are hungry–eat more!

But we’re supposed to be hungry! How will we lose weight if we’re not hungry? For this thirty days, let yourself experience the feeling of being comfortable and eating enough, while at the same time not feeling guilty about it.

Because of our eating habits, you probably will feel deprived on some level because of something you were eating before but you aren’t during your Whole 30. However, it will not be because you are hungry!

Why You Should do a Whole 30

When I finally read the book, It Starts with Food, I began to understand that the things I thought were good for me truly were not.

In fact, many common foods are quite dangerous to our health. Worse, most people avoid foods that are actually good for them.

It helped me have the motivation to complete a Whole 30 once I knew the reasons behind each thing I was asked to give up for a month.

Some things I gave up forever because at the end of the month, I knew that I didn’t ever want them in my body again. Other things, I continue to have only once in a while.

Yet, I love and enjoy food in a way that I never was able to before completing a Whole 30. I look and feel better than ever. And that is why I recommend looking into Whole 30.

The Benefits of Doing a Whole 30

What are the Benefits of Doing a Whole30? There are way more benefits than I’m going to list here but these are some of the primary benefits I experienced. Whole30 isn’t the solution to every problem you have; though it may seem that way at times.

Eliminate Your Addiction to Sugar

For many people, sugar is a real addiction. We know it’s bad for us but we still can’t resist all the treats out there. When I did my Whole 30, I wasn’t eating a lot of sugar but I was eating all the new artificial and natural sweeteners. I was definitely keeping my sweet tooth alive and well.

After Whole 30, not only was I not eating sugar; I was able to give up all artificial sweeteners forever. This allows me to go through life without craving candy, ice-cream, cookies, pancakes, or any other sweet treat.

For the most part, I don’t have to use any willpower to avoid them—they simply don’t appeal to me the way they did before.

This is important not just for weight management but because sugar and foods that act like sugar keep your fat-metabolizing hormones messed up as well as keeping your blood sugar levels high putting you at risk for diabetes and other diseases.

You Don’t Need to Snack Anymore

Before Whole 30, I needed snacks in the morning, afternoon, and evenings. It seemed that I was always hungry. After Whole 30, I ate three meals a day with no snacking and no hunger in-between.

It’s wonderful not to have to worry about getting hungry between meals. I don’t have to have snacks prepared or handy. It’s just not an issue!

Eating enough protein, health fat, and your veggies keeps you satiated easily for hours. While it might feel weird at first having enough fat at a meal to do that; it pays off because you really do end up eating less throughout the day.

As a life coach, I work with a lot of clients who want to lose weight. The thing that helps the most is learning to eat enough at meals, so that they don’t snack for hunger reasons during the day.

Coaching is what helps with the emotional reasons but eliminating actual hunger as a reason to snack is a HUGE help.

Your Energy Stays Consistent

Because you aren’t eating sugar or grains, while at the same time you are eating real food with plenty of healthy fats, your energy stays stable throughout the day. You don’t have the ups and downs that come with overeating snacks and junk food.

Your food nourishes you and you feel good throughout your day.

You Can Lose Weight

Because you lose cravings and you aren’t at the mercy of snacks and addictive foods, you eat what you need. I was able to lose weight by eating lighter in the evening and walking and keeping more active.

Because I wasn’t dieting or restricting my eating, the weight came off naturally and has stayed off.

Your Skin Looks Better

It can be tempting to want to cut down on healthy fats to lose weight because that’s what we’ve been told to do for years.

However, I believe that eating healthy fats while eliminating sugar and foods that act like sugar are the secret to my young-looking skin. I don’t have wrinkles and my cheeks are filled out.

We’ve all seen people lose weight and for some reason their skin just doesn’t look right. But with Whole 30, you are eating a ton of beautiful produce and eating healthy fats and my skin loves this!

13 years later, these good habits have me looking better than ever and people keep commenting and asking what I am doing. I’ve even been accused of doing Botox. No hate there, but I haven’t ever.

At age 62, my skin looks pretty good. Whole30 is a big part of that. If you want to know all my secrets you can read about them in How to Improve Your Skin Naturally.

You Learn to Love Real Food

There are things that I never eat now that I used to eat all the time: cereal, sandwiches, artificial sweeteners, low-fat things, canola oil. There are things I eat rarely: corn, beans, cheese, and sugar. Things that used to be a common part of my diet don’t even look like real food to me.

It’s common for me to have vegetables with all three meals! While I do eat meat, I definitely don’t overdo it. I make sure I eat enough fat that all my vegetables tasted delicious.

Food Becomes Your Friend

For so many years people have feared things like eggs, butter, meat, and coconut oil. In their place, we started eating fake eggs, low-fat everything, artificial sweeteners, margarine, and only a few types of meat.

This has not been a good thing. We eat in huge quantities foods that make us crave even more of these fake foods. As a result, rates of obesity, diabetes, and other diseases have been steadily going up as well as affecting people at younger and younger ages.

Most families eat a few fast food meals a week as well as filling up their shopping carts full of “healthy” and not-so-healthy snacks. We eat on the run or at our desks. We buy packaged crackers and a diet soda and call it lunch.

And because our cravings, our weight, and our health feels out of our control—we actually fear food.

Whole 30 teaches you a way to eat that allows you to trust food again. Food becomes nutritious and something you can consciously make decisions about. You can even have a treat, knowing that you will not need to eat an entire cake, pizza, or pint of ice-cream.

Food finally becomes your friend not your enemy!

You Sleep Better

Who doesn’t need to sleep better in midlife?

Do the Benefits Last?

Many of them do. I’ve eaten primarily this way for 13 years now. Because I was able to maintain good habits for so long, I’ve not ever done a second Whole 30. I didn’t go back to the way I ate before.

In a way, I’m lucky because I am so sensitive to wheat that I have to avoid it. Wheat products are extremely addicting. Since I don’t indulge in wheat, I just don’t get started with those cravings.

In the past few months though, with a desk job, I’ve noticed that I’m consuming more sugar and that has been increasing almost without me noticing it. So, I am being more deliberate about that and avoiding the obvious culprits such as candy and cookies.

That’s real-life folks—there are a lot of choices to make about food and even when we know better sometimes we reach for the less-than-great choices when we’re busy and stressed.

But I can confidently say that I don’t fear food, even that pesky sugar. Because I know it’s addictive and easy to consume without much effort, I know that for a while, I need to be extra careful.

That’s the true benefit of Whole 30, in that we have a handle on food addictions and we get the experience of how great we can feel, simply by eating real food, in the right quantities, and at the right time.

Be sure to visit the Whole 30 website

For lots of great information about Whole 30 or pick up It Starts with Food that has the best explanation of Whole 30 and all the benefits. This Whole 30 book is a favorite of mine too—everything I’ve made has tasted delicious!