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I had probably dreamed about a week or so: a nice plate of nachos covered with cheese, which I dreamed promptly and which I devoured with happiness. I woke up panicked, horrified to realize that I was gone "out of the blue" and that I had to start all over again, as if I was coming back to life in a twisted nutritional video game. When I woke up and got out of sleep, I was relieved when I realized that no nachos had been eaten. But the lingering malaise stayed with me. The nachos have made me happy. Now, they had become the literal nightmare fuel.
The "recurring nightmares of food" would occur three or four times within 30 days each time I made Whole30. They seemed to me to indicate a deeper and more delicate problem. What I experienced psychologically on Whole30 did not only seem to exacerbate my already difficult relationship with food, but also to draw my attention to some new food-related anxieties.
Growing up, I have, like many of us, struggled with my own body image and, as a result, I flirted from time to time trying to lose weight in high school and at school. # 39; university.
I sometimes had a bad body, but I also love eating, which naturally gave rise to a complicated relationship with food. At that time, my diet idea was simply "eat less", I had rarely focused my attention on what I also ate how much. Food was therefore a simple matter of quantity and not quality: my meals were smaller, but mostly remained the same. Maybe with a little less bread. (At the age of low carb, I reached adulthood.) By the time I stumbled on the Whole30, I had never followed a formal diet before, and I had never taken worth avoiding whole food groups. The experience has given me a new lens through which I can see (and worry about) the foods that I have eaten.
I started my first tour with Whole30 in 2011 after seeing a flyer in a grocery store. My sedentary and food-focused day job at the time made me feel gloomy. Every day, I met restaurateurs and I almost always ended up eating with them or going back to the office with several boxes of food to take away.
The marketing language of the program – like "the next 30 days will change your life" – is considered weird and a little retro, but I enjoyed seeing how the diet was presented as a global wellness initiative rather that as a quick weight loss program: 30 days to avoid a multitude of food groups, not as a way to eat forever, but as a short and intensive method of "reset" the body and possibly even cancel years of bad habits. In other words, I thought that 30 days later I would be renewed – a new beginning. A few days later, I spent $ 39 for the 85-page PDF Success Guide, a detailed e-book that explained in detail the logic of the program, offered grocery lists and recipes, as well as than all the rice, pasta and beans. in my kitchen at a local pantry. (I purchased this PDF file in 2011, but it seems that many of the documents it contains are now available as free PDF files on Whole30's website, as well as in the company's 2014 book. It starts with the food.)
Whole30 is meant to be used for 30 days, a sort of elimination diet that you undertake to educate yourself about how certain foods affect you. This is not a way of eating for the rest of your life – the principles of post-complete life30 are to determine what works best for your body and to adapt accordingly. As founders say"We created this program to be Whole30, not for Whole365," although they also say that it's beneficial to carry out several Whole30 cycles periodically. In my case, I envisioned this plan as an occasional "reset" to which I could turn when I felt that my own eating habits had deviated.
Sometimes, during a Whole30 cycle, I lost a little weight. But more durable than fugitives a few pounds lost (and later, found) was the impact that eating seemed to have on a set of restrictive binary rules, as well as my relationship with the foods I ate – and, in addition, those that I was eating. avoided. It was not so bad: for the first time in my life, I made a conscientious effort to read the ingredient labels, avoid sugar, drink alcohol, and pay close attention to what I ate. But I also spent an unprecedented time researching, dissecting, planning, and strategizing for everything I would eat. Micro-management in my own kitchen has helped me feel in control, but restaurants, social gatherings, work outs and road trips have become chaotic battlegrounds. At work, I lied to the restorers who enthusiastically stuffed their polystyrene boxes, telling them that I had already eaten that day or that I had just conquered a virus of the same year. 39; stomach. The plan seemed too difficult to explain, too demanding in terms of maintenance, too complex – I thought it would be impossible to make anyone understand why I could not take their vegetable wrapper or their bowl of vegetables roasted with farro because I observed what I eat. I guess at a certain level, I knew that I was ambivalent about the diet I was following and that, furthermore, I was aware that food had taken over me. . I thought and constantly worried about my meals.
Some people are doing well with rigidity. For me, rigidity seems to create conditions that amplify my own anxieties.
Many of us who participated in Whole30 have encountered the practical problems of the program, which they may have complained about, whose structure and mind mimic the elimination regimes that patients undergo under medical supervision to determine food allergies. Cereals, legumes, soy, sugar, alcohol and dairy products are prohibited. Oatmeal, brown rice or quinoa: on the outside. Greek yogurt: Nope. A sauteed vegetable and cooked in peanut oil: Nope (the program prohibits legumes, such as chickpeas, edamame or peanuts, in any form whatsoever). Whole30 dictates 30 full days without any of these products, no excuses.
In Whole30's directions, all you need is a straw, peanut, or splash of coffee to save days or weeks of hard work and start over. There is little room for error, because one of the principles of the plan is that even a small amount of an "inflammatory food" can "break the healing cycle." As the founders, Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, have written in the 2011 edition of their success guide: "Unless you physically stumble and your face does fall into a box of donuts, it there is no "slip". It's always a choice, so do not do it. Formulate it as if you had an accident. (I contacted Dallas and Melissa Hartwig via the contact address for media inquiries listed. on their website to ask them for a comment but did not get an answer.)
The "no apology" approach could be a motivation for some. But for me, it seemed almost militaristic, as if I was told that I would be "good". I found myself keeping the worry of not spoiling everything. I now saw the food on a binary basis rather than a specter, and suddenly the wheat toast, brown rice and miso appeared on the same side as the frozen donuts and the Twinkies. According to one dietitian, emphasizing "respect" can be one of the most harmful long-term aspects of rigid diets. Emily Fonnesbeck. "You become terrified of eating anything on the" bad "list because you have been scared by total compliance," she says. "Eating" on the plan then creates a feeling of intense guilt for the damage done to your body.
Whenever I did Whole30, that kind of philosophy really took root in my mind. That's not to say that Whole30 alone is responsible for my difficult relationship with food. As I mentioned, I had already tried dieting before. But aside from that, the idea that food can be good or bad is all around us; Whole30 is just one example of the ubiquitous messages of dietary culture on foods. It took me years to get away from the idea that the food was pure or impure; and that every meal was a test of my virtue and commitment.
Some diets, including Whole30, can make us think about nutrition and macronutrients, they do not necessarily teach us how to forge and maintain healthy, lasting and real relationships with food, says Jill Lewis, LCSW, licensed psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of eating disorders. (It is important to note that the founders say this Whole30 "will restore a healthy emotional relationship with food and with your body". And for some people, it seems to be able to do exactly that. But for many people, building a healthier relationship with food is not necessarily about the nutritional quality of what you eat, but about your relationship to hunger, fullness, nutrition, your body. , etc.).
"Regardless of the type of diet, there is a sense of deprivation," she says. "As soon as we put our body in a state of deprivation, we really think of everything we do not receive. We are obsessed with this. We are consumed by this. And no matter, at some point we will overcompensate by leaning on it. "
Structure your eating around what you can not having can create a vicious and unsustainable cycle for most people.
"We were conditioned to believe that a healthy diet equals a restrictive diet and I could not disagree more with it," adds Fonnesbeck, who defends intuitive food principles for his clientele. "A healthy diet is flexible and encompbades a wide variety of foods.This definition is important for many reasons, including the fact that a flexible approach to nutrition means a healthy approach to life. . "
Some people find solace and security in the black-and-white mentality imposed by structured regimes, Lewis adds, "but the reality is that our lives and our world are gray." The strict binary of approved foods equates to good and unapproved foods Equalizing the harm does not always work for everyone because we do not base our diet decisions on nutrition and nutrition. How bad can it be to eat a piece of cake at your best friend's wedding or to take the injera that a restaurateur offers you at a meeting? Everything starts to feel like a minefield.
In this way of thinking, "everything becomes good or bad, even the way you think about yourself," says Lewis. Nachos are bad; therefore, I felt that I was, by extension, intrinsically bad for eating and enjoying them (even during my sleep).
By the end of the Whole30 program, the program's authors advise practitioners to slowly reintroduce previously banned food groups one by one to isolate and monitor their effects. Everyone has a different experience in making diets like these. For some people, maybe it's really about "reinventing" your lifestyle or "starting to eat better", as its founders describe in the book. The features of the site testimonials people who give Whole30 a life-changing and improved health.
For me, however, it seemed to exacerbate an already difficult relationship with food and add a few minor neuroses to the pile. Being able to eat what I wanted after a month, structuring my lifestyle by avoiding certain foods, which I recognized as bad for me, felt like a time bomb had been thrown on my lap. I found myself stuck in a loop seeing the food through the lens that I had adopted during the program, long after I stopped following its methodology. In short, what was supposed to be healthy for my body hurt my brain, and it's not worth it for me. Lewis says it succinctly: "Even if you have the impression of 'eating healthy', if your mind and body are not aligned, something is wrong." As a result, a good guideline, by Fonnesbeck: "If that As you do your physical health has a negative impact on your mental health, so she is no longer healthy. "
These days, I try to look for foods that make me feel good – a category that of course includes things like leafy greens and lean proteins, but also, without a doubt, sourdough toast buttered.
It took me a long time before I could use flour in a recipe without grinning or feeling as if I were breaking a rule. It took even longer to enjoy a bowl of pasta at dinner without feeling guilty. I'm proud to announce that I always eat foods that were once forbidden: udon, farro, steel-cut oatmeal and Greek yogurt are staple foods in my kitchen. I have proudly and lovingly grown a whole shelf of canned beans. Last year, I bought a sourdough bread roll for the first time at the Farmer's Market, and then I went back almost every Sunday to buy more, because the joy she I was getting far exceeded the persistent feeling of doing something wrong.
I'm still not sure I can ever completely get rid of the idea that some food groups are all good or all bad. And to be clear, it's not something that Whole30 tells me or taught me directly. It's really the entire food culture that is to blame for the way many of us think and relate to food and diet. In fact, nothing in the world is so black and white. The key, says Lewis, fades to gray: allow you to be flexible, respect your own desires, eat cake at your friend's wedding if you wish. To sleep, maybe dream of a giant plate of nachos.
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