My Whole30: Why The Hell Did I Do This

note: This post was written in early July 2014, before I started my first Whole30. In case you’re not already familiar, The Whole30 is a 30 day elimination diet or nutritional “reset.” Meat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and oils are permitted. Added sugar, artificial sweetener, alcohol, grains, legumes, dairy, carrageenan, MSG, and sulfites are not. Learn more about Whole30 here.

Throughout my years in the food/fitness social media sphere, The Whole30 has come up on my radar a number of times. At first, I quickly dismissed it, as I do all other elimination diets. I’m not a bread binger by any means, but I like my gluten and non-gluten containing grains. And, full disclosure, I usually like my grains with some dairy. My go-to breakfast is overnight oats made with non-fat Greek yogurt, some fruit, and a splash of (carrageenan-containing) almond milk. I also drink socially, sweeten my (superfluous amounts of) coffee with Splenda, and dabble in every other food group and eating habit that Whole30 forbids (for at least a month).

My mantra has always been “everything in moderation,” and it’s one I share with anyone who asks. And trust me when I say that being a soon-to-be registered dietitian, everyone asks. At face value, my diet and lifestyle appear very healthy. My macros are balanced, I am calorie conscious, I work out 5-6 times a week. Yet, despite all of this, I’ve gained 10 pounds over the past year. (Some of this is muscle due to a serious increase in strength training, but some of it isn’t, as my ill-fitting clothes revealed.)

Remember the last time I gained 10 pounds? It was after my semester in Barcelona, when I drank wine like it was water, ate cheese like it was stalks of celery, stayed out until 4 in the morning, and felt like utter crap when all was said in done. So much so, in fact, that I started a little health and fitness blog called The Slender Student.

I’m not saying that I live and die by what the scale reads, but I do know that I just don’t feel quite like myself, mentally or physically, at this number. They say that desperate times call for desperate measures, and I’m all about being my own guinea pig in experiments of nutrition, so I read It Starts With Food, drank the Kool Aid, and here we are. And while I’m obviously crossing my fingers that I drop a few, if I start sleeping better, see my skin clearing up, and get rid of my knee/lower back pain, I wouldn’t hate that either.

Still to come on The Petite Professional: My Whole30: What I Ate, and My Whole30: Aftermath