The Whole30 Experience

     Hey Dads and Moms, it's been a while since the last post. Life has  been pretty crazy with a work schedule change, the new baby and the big kid out for the summer. Anyway this is what been going on, The Whole30! 

     So continuing the #phatguyfitness get down the Wicked Wahine and I tried The Whole 30. Now we first came across this way of eating by way of our friend. She was posting food on Instagram and using #whole30 to tag her food. So the food she was posting wasn't diet like food. It was real food like ribs, chicken, hearty looking salads, etc. So the wife inquired about it and our friend gave us a quick run-down of what it was about and I was immediately dispatched to the local Barnes and Noble ( Yes we still have one out here) to purchase the book.

     This is the first time I've heard of these authors but apparently their first book is "It starts with FOOD". Now I've read 3 other health and fitness books cover to cover and they all preach that same philosophy. The main issue I had or should I say we (the wife and I ) had is how boring the food was. We love food and it was hard to eat a plain chicken breast greens and brown rice all the time. Another reason those other eating styles didn't work was some of the foods were high glycemic, which would spike my blood sugar. It was hard trying to find the balance that would allow us to have good food yet still be "diet friendly" and be diabetic friendly. 

     So now enter The Whole 30, I'm not going to give all the rules / details etc. You can go directly to their website to check those out for free. www.whole30.com. So lets get this out of the way, yes their are a set of rules and yes it's a very restrictive way of eating. Basically it's a body reset that takes as many additives, preservatives and added sugar out of your diet, it holds you accountable by your own will and doesn't "sugar" coat anything. Haha get it?! Sugar coat!! Okay, that was corny, whatever!

      Just like any other diet, food prep is a major tool for success. Luckily I had major support as it was the Wicked Wahine's idea. It's also easier to not have to cook 2 or 3 types of meals because not every family member is participating. So since we were on the same page, it made the food prep aspect easier to deal with. As you can see, the dishes don't look plain at all. Most were prepared in bulk or a few days before. The book included recipes and the food itself was not only good looking but good tasting. Of course Mellanee went off the book on some of the recipes as she always does to make things interesting but still staying within confines of the rules. 

      Like I said earlier this way of eating is very restrictive. You have to give up a lot of your everyday foods and look at the ingredients list. See if the food company added any form of sugar under a different name, made sure there were no preservatives or additives at all. Eating out is out of the question unless you want to be that person that asks a million questions about how they prepare food. Your favorite donuts? GONE! Pizza? GONE Glass of Milk? GONE! Don't lose all hope though because if you stick with the program all your invested time and effort will pay off on the back end. Now my personal pay off is being down approx 10 lbs and my clothes are looser. I wish I did a waist measurement before we started, so I can't tell you how many inches I lost. The major win for me was my glucose numbers haven't been this low consistently EVER!! To me that is my number 1 payoff. The book states that for each person you will have to look for your personal win. Some is weight loss, clearer skin, loss of inches, better GI system etc. 

      All in all we had our challenges through the whole experience but we did manage to get through. I did experience my "AH-Ha" moment with my lower Blood Glucose numbers, so the initial investment did pay-off. Now we enter into the introduction phase of the program where you start to re-introduce things back into your diet. Generally people go to an 80/20 diet, where you eat healthy 80% of the time but allow themselves 20% to splurge or eat not so healthy. We are still trying to figure out whats going to work for us in the long run but it was a good experience. Where we go from here, I know if we use the Whole 30 as a baseline we'll be heading in the correct direction.

#Whole30 #dadlife #phatguyfitness