The Shrubbloggers » Whole30 Redux: Days 1, 2, and 3

I’ve written before about losing a bunch of weight on a low-carb paleo diet, and kept a detailed blog journal of last year’s successful Whole30x2 journey (starting here; ending here), in which I maintained a strict variant of paleo for 60 days and reported my thoughts and progress along the way.

NOTE: For those of you who arrived at this post as a link from Michael Hull’s NAIKI blog entry, you should know that I object to his characterization of my experience as a failure of the Whole30 program rather than as my own personal failure that has nothing whatsoever to do with the merits of Whole30. This characterization makes me skeptical of his interpretative treatment of other sources, as well.

My objections are detailed in a public thread on his Facebook wall, and here are the basics again:

I understand why you linked to my blog entry, but I think you drew the wrong lesson from it.

Whole30 provided an experiential baseline for food choices that inarguably made me feel great and improve body composition. If, several months later, I start doing the opposite of what I learned in that program — indulging in gluttonous amounts of pizza, doughnuts, ice cream, etc. — and continue doing so even as I detect myself feeling worse and regaining fat, that can’t be an indictment of a program that showed me I feel better without those things in the first place. If anything, it demonstrates how powerful a lifetime of pathological junk food addiction can be.

Whole30 doesn’t purport to prevent you from making bad choices for the rest of your life, only to show you that you can abstain from those bad choices and to allow you to feel the positive consequences so it’s easier to understand the difference in how you’ll feel the next time you’re tempted.

It’s as though you’re suggesting that because someone gains muscle mass in a weightlifting program then later quits and lives a sedentary life, losing their physique in the process, this somehow suggests that weightlifting isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be. A personal failure to continue doing things that have previously provided a demonstrable benefit isn’t an indictment of having done those things in the first place.

I’m saying that my own experience is not a suitable example for whatever case you’re building. I made an extended series of terrible choices that had nothing to do with Whole30 or their post-program transition plan. I knew exactly what the consequences would be, and I did it anyway. Whole30 is not implicated in that.

I felt great, I lost weight, and I learned which foods gave me the most stable energy and satiety over time. When the program came to a close, I experimented with adding dairy back into my diet, then gradually some other foods. Subtle variations as a continually evolving test.

As I should have known from past experience, once I started allowing any exceptions, their frequency and variety grew. My biggest tool in successfully maintaining fidelity to any diet is to maintain a continual attitude about off-limits items: “That’s not food.” It might as well be made of plastic.

It’s difficult to convince yourself of the pretense that something isn’t really food, though, if you just ate some a couple of days ago. Exceptions destroy my psychological edge.

That’s how, in August, I went completely off both the paleo and low-carb rails. It started with some Jamaican goat curry — and I decided to eat it as is, rice, beans, and all, as a once-in-a-blue-moon indulgence. I’d never had it before, so I figured I’d try the complete dish then go back to eating correctly.

Then the rationalizations started. As long as I’d already indulged a little, I decided, I’d also pick up a big bag of Grandma Utz kettle chips cooked in lard. After all, potatoes are kind of primal, and hey — lard! One big bag led to a second. That second bag led to a bag of a new test flavor of Lay’s bacon mac & cheese potato chips. The ingredients on this bag were a nightmare — all kinds of wrong oils and sugars and maltodextrin, etc. But as long as I’d temporarily indulged, what’s a little more?

Then on a Friday night, as I was heading home around 2:30 a.m. after a midnight movie, I had a low blood sugar crash. I hadn’t had one of those in forever, but eating a ton of potato chips spiked my insulin and it came crashing down late that night. I know how all this works, and I’d had it under control for a long time, but… I happened to pass by a Krispy Kreme with the “hot now” sign lit up.

The rationalizations ran through my mind in a flurry. I hadn’t had a doughnut in a long, long time, and I may not have another one for the rest of my life, but I needed to boost my blood sugar right now and I’d already made some bad food choices, so what’s one more? I ate eight doughnuts before heading to bed and four more when I woke up. This started a weekend bender that included two extra-large pizzas and another dozen doughnuts.

I already knew how terrible it would make me feel, and how fleeting the satisfaction actually is from eating that kind of junk — and the weekend was a vivid reminder. I felt bloated, sore, sluggish, lethargic. Even so, I soon caught myself thinking about Googling for lists of the best doughnut shops in the D.C. area. Like a junkie, all the terrible compulsive habits of my past were suddenly haunting me again.

I buddied up with another former Whole30 program participant for a month or so of mutual online encouragement, but that didn’t last. Although it never again got quite as bad as that initial weekend, I was soon indulging every week or two in something or other, especially on trips away from home. Deep-dish pizza in Chicago, cannoli and gelato in Philly, salty oats cookies at Teaism, periodic trips to the gluten-free bakery in Mt. Vernon in at least a half-hearted stab at less-bad wheat-free junk food.

I’ve still been mostly paleo between these increasing bouts of indulgence, but — long story short — I ultimately regained 47 pounds between August and April. When I happened to comment on my friend Bob Ewing’s Whole30 Facebook photo this past Friday, though, he invited me to join his team, which had just started its month-long venture two days earlier. So, I signed up. No time like the present to do what you already think is right, right?

I won’t have homework this time around, but if I think of anything to say I’ll be sure to write it down as I go. Weigh-in on the morning of day 1: 344 pounds. I’ll weigh in again after 30 days, and will almost certainly re-up for another 30 days after that.

I stopped by Costco the other day to stock up:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends.

Here are my food photos for days 1, 2, and 3:

Saturday, April 18

Breakfast: 11:37 a.m. | organic ground beef, sweet potatoes, eggs, red palm oil, ghee, herbs & spices

I ate half (pictured) and saved the other half for later.

Dinner: 5:15 p.m. | same as breakfast

Sunday, April 19

Breakfast: 2:39 p.m. | wild-caught salmon, sweet potatoes, eggs, baby kale, red palm oil, herbs & spices

I ate half (pictured) and saved the other half for later.

Dinner: 7:45 p.m. | same as breakfast

Monday, April 20

Breakfast: 8:20 a.m. | organic ground beef, eggs, baby kale, herbs & spices

I ate half (pictured) and saved the other half for later.

Lunch: 1:44 p.m. | prosciutto, chipotle SeaSnax, Nuttzo nut butter, 5,000 IU Vitamin D capsule, Calcium/Magnesium/Zinc caplet, 5mg Vitamin K₂ capsule, 1,000 mg fermented cod liver oil capsules

Dinner: 10:20 p.m. | same as breakfast