It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (2 page)

If you’ve received this book as a gift, it means you are loved. Someone cares about you and your health so much that they are willing to facilitate your transformation and support you along the way. We think you’ll find our approach sensible, manageable, and, most important, immediately applicable to your situation, regardless of your age, health status, or habits. Use this book as a means to make permanent changes to your diet and lifestyle and jump-start your journey to optimal health. It is possible. The person who gave you this book believes in our methods—but more important, he or she believes in
you
.

And if at any point you begin to doubt your ability to make these changes in your own life, we want you to remember one very important thing:

You’ve already begun.

Because whatever you are seeking—improvement in energy, mood, focus, sleep, athletic performance, symptoms, medical conditions, body composition, or quality of life …

Your partners in health,

Dallas and Melissa Hartwig

“I read up on the Whole30 and decided to participate. I have type 2 diabetes and, after hearing about the side effects of the medicine I was taking, decided that I wanted to stop my meds. By the fifth day of my program, my blood sugar was in the normal range! I can’t
believe how fast it’s gone down with just the dietary changes
.
I completed my Whole30 and lost about six pounds … but the best part for me was feeling healthier, dropping a pant size, reducing my A1c levels by a point and a half, and being able to control my blood sugar! I’ve been off my diabetes medication since completing the program, and my doctor is very happy with the results.”

—Maricel B., Sugar Land, Texas

We have a theory about food that directly influences the rest of this book.

There is no food neutral; there is no food Switzerland—every single thing you put in your mouth is either making you
more
healthy or
less
healthy.

It should be simple then, right? Just eat the foods that make you more healthy.

Well, it is and it isn’t.

See, making good food choices isn’t just about knowing what’s healthy. If that was the case, we’d just give you a copy of our shopping list and send you on your merry way (shortest book ever!). No, the way we choose the foods we eat is much more complicated and nuanced than that.

Food is highly emotional, in ways that go far beyond your conscious awareness.

Food is sneaky, affecting you in subtle ways you would never connect to your diet.

And by any definition, today’s modern food landscape is enormously confusing.

So, it’s actually not that easy.

We’re going to share our views on food. We’ll share our personal experiences. We’ll give you testimonials from others who have changed their lives just by changing the food on their plate. And we’ll give you the science—the studies, experiments, and conclusions that form the basis for all of our recommendations.

And then we’ll say, “Don’t just take our word for it.”

We are going to teach you how to turn yourself into a scientific experiment of one, so you can figure out for yourself, once and for all, whether the foods you are eating are making you more healthy or less healthy. And that’s worth more than
any
scientific findings you read about—because there hasn’t been a single scientific experiment that includes
you
as a subject.

Until now.

When you complete our Whole30 program, you’ll see for
yourself
the effects of more healthy and less healthy foods. By the time the program is over, you’ll know in no uncertain terms which foods are improving the quality of your life and which are detracting from your health. In just thirty days, you will have gained that incredibly powerful knowledge. Why is this knowledge so valuable?

After implementing our program, you won’t have to wonder whether the foods you are eating are healthy for
you
. You’ll be able to make educated, informed food choices for the rest of your life. And you’ll know how to enjoy treats, sweets, and other “less healthy” foods in a way that is always moving you toward better health, fitness, and quality of life.

Sounds pretty amazing, doesn’t it? We don’t take the promise to change your life lightly.

Finally, by the time you turn the last page, you’ll know more than just why you should eat this way—you will know
how
to eat this way for the rest of your life. We’ll show you how to break free of unhealthy cravings, restore your body’s natural hunger mechanism, eat to satiety while still losing weight, and eliminate the symptoms of any number of lifestyle-related diseases and conditions—forever.

It starts with food.

Our story starts in 2006, when Dallas (a licensed physical therapist) was reading research relevant to his sister Amber’s rheumatoid arthritis. In Dallas’ own words:

I’ve always enjoyed life sciences, and as strange as it may sound, I actually think of scientific studies as “pleasure reading.” So it was not unusual for me to read an article in the
British Journal of Nutrition
about dietary factors that were of special relevance for individuals with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). I tried to keep up with current research about RA for my sister, but during that same period of time, I had been struggling with a stubborn case of tendonitis. My shoulder had been bothering me for almost eighteen months, partly because I played competitive volleyball and hadn’t let it rest long enough to fully heal after a minor injury. After I played at USAV Nationals, I swore that I would let my shoulder heal. And I did rest it, but it didn’t get better.

Being a physical therapist with a special interest in athletics, I knew a thing or two about facilitating the healing of connective tissue. I consulted with other therapists and two orthopedists and ended up getting a series of MRIs that revealed no structural damage to my shoulder. Something was promoting ongoing inflammation in my shoulder’s connective tissues, but I didn’t know what.

The research paper I was reading outlined a theory about how certain dietary proteins (in this case, those from legumes) may exacerbate rheumatoid arthritis by stimulating the immune system into over activity. I knew from my physiology training that abnormal immune activity was the root cause of chronic inflammation, so the idea that something I was eating might be contributing to the inflammation in my shoulder caught my attention. I decided to read more research from that paper’s lead author, Dr. Loren Cordain.

At this time in my life, I was eating a plant-based omnivorous diet—small amounts of meat and eggs and lots of grains, legumes, vegetables, fruit, and nuts. I thought, “If something I’m eating might be causing inflammation in my shoulder, why don’t I just avoid that food for a while and see what happens?” So I did. I cut out all legumes and grains, and six weeks later my shoulder pain was gone—eighteen months of pain and limited functionality gone in six weeks. That got my attention! (Six years later, I haven’t had a single twinge in my shoulder.)

I was eager to learn more about how diet affected inflammatory conditions like RA and tendonitis. I read Dr. Cordain’s book
The Paleo Diet
and everything else I could find on the topic of food-induced chronic inflammation. I was able to share what I’d learned with patients, friends, family, and Melissa. My sister eventually adopted our dietary guidelines, and almost all of her rheumatoid arthritis symptoms have disappeared.

So how did this experience lead us to create our Whole30 program? Fast-forward to April 2009 when, in Melissa’s own words:

Dallas’ shoulder was still pain-free, and we were both eating pretty well, but an aggressive training schedule, lack of sleep, and some serious stress (working full-time jobs while managing a fast-growing strength and conditioning facility) had both of us feeling kind of run-down. While eating lunch after a particularly grueling Olympic lifting session, I wondered aloud whether cleaning up our diets even more would make a difference in how we felt.

Remembering something we’d heard at a Robb Wolf seminar—you need at least thirty days of dedication to make a real difference—Dallas proposed that we adopt a 100 percent clean, no cheats, no slips Paleo diet for the next thirty days. We started hashing out our “rules,” and when we had a plan outlined, I asked when we should start. Dallas (with a devilish look in his eye) proposed that we start immediately. Now. Like, RIGHT now.

I looked longingly at my Thin Mints, sighed, and accepted his challenge.

During those thirty days, I went through a lot of ups and downs. It was easy. It was impossible. I was tired. I had boundless energy. I tossed and turned. I slept like a baby. But by the third week, something shifted. It was as dramatic as flipping a switch—and my life would never be the same.

My energy levels skyrocketed—and stabilized. I felt just as peppy at 6 a.m. as I did at noon as I did at 6 p.m. I started losing body fat without even trying. My performance in the gym, which had plateaued, suddenly started improving again. I was falling asleep easier, staying asleep longer, and waking up without an alarm clock. As the days went on, I realized just how not-great I’d been feeling, compared to how clean and fresh and amazing I was feeling now.

But the most remarkable thing was how this thirty-day adventure completely changed my relationship with food and eating.

I’d always had an unhealthy relationship with food. Food was my best friend and my worst enemy. It was punishment or reward, control or powerlessness. I went through stages of extreme dieting and extreme exercise. But after just thirty days on this new plan, my relationship with food was different. For the first time in my life, food made me feel good. (And not just the quick-and-dirty “good” that comes with the first few bites of ice cream, followed by a full day’s worth of guilt, shame, and anxiety. Wholesome good. Lasting good. Good good.)

My sugar cravings disappeared. The urge to eat junk food when I was upset, bored, angry, or frustrated just … vanished. My skin was clear, my hair was shiny, my stomach was flatter, and people said I was “glowing.” I had more energy, smiled more, was friendlier to co-workers. All of a sudden, I was indescribably happy.

The remarkable realization I had was that, after all of my complicated multi-step self-improvement initiatives, all I had to do was change the food I put on my plate. For thirty days, I ate nothing but food that made me healthier, as much as I wanted, no counting calories or measuring portions. And those thirty days changed my life in a very real, very positive way.

To this day, I have been able to maintain a healthy and satisfying relationship with food, eating, and my body… all because, for those thirty days, I changed what I put on my plate.

Dallas’ experience with his thirty days was no less eye-opening, and although he didn’t have the same emotional issues with food, this experiment brought to light the impact of removing
all
of the potentially harmful foods and beverages in his diet for an extended period of time.

We decided to share our experience with our blog readers in July 2009. We called the post “Change Your Life in 30 Days” and outlined the full rules of the program we had followed in April. We invited our readers to participate and asked them to let us know if they were on board.

We had no idea how many people would take us up on this challenge.

During that first iteration, several hundred people worked through our program and reported their results. We were thrilled to hear that most experienced the same kind of “miracles” we had—effortless weight loss, better sleep, consistent energy, improved mood, and increased athletic performance. Many reported the elimination of sugar cravings and a healthier relationship with food, allowing them to pass up desserts and sweets they used to find irresistible. But what impressed us the most were the number of people who told us the program had improved or completely eliminated their physical ailments. Seasonal allergies—gone. Asthma—not a single attack. Blood pressure—back to normal. Cholesterol—improved by an astonishing degree. Heartburn—vanquished. Stubborn tendonitis—healed. (OK, that one didn’t surprise us!)

Since that inception in July 2009, we’ve freely offered our Whole30 program on our Web site. The program has spread virally through word-of-mouth, and over the past three years, tens of thousands of people all around the world have completed the program and have reported that the Whole30 did, in fact, change their life.