Whole30

I’m on my final day of a 30-day trial of the Whole30 diet, and it looks like I’m going to cross this one off the list of promising regimes that don’t deliver. I don’t feel any better, have no more energy, am in no less pain, and assess my mood and mental function as unchanged. It fell far short of any of the optimistic assurances like “this will change your life” or “the way you think about food.” I haven’t compared my before and after measurements yet, but expect no movement in my weight or waistline.

To be fair, my usual diet is healthy, scientifically designed, and individually tailored to my needs, so Whole30 had a much higher bar to clear.

To recap, the Whole30 diet removes all grains, legumes, dairy, alcohol and refined ,foods to an extreme extent. I shunned even sugar-containing spices and condiments. The basis for all good expected to come of this diet seems to be the removal of antigens that were not present in the presumed diet of primitive homo sapiens. It gains a little traction from the current suspicion of gluten as the hidden culprit in a host of chronic maladies along with the dairy-originating lactose and casein. Neither grains nor beans nor dairy were believed to support early tribes, though archeology doesn’t unambiguously support that. (How would they know to domesticate wheat and beans if they weren’t already eating them? And a hungry mammal getting the idea of stealing a calf’s milk doesn’t take much imagination.)

A small portion of the population is indeed sensitive to wheat and other common denizens of our modern diet like peanuts, eggs, and shellfish. They would presumably benefit greatly from Whole30. But the rest of us wouldn’t.

Whole30 seems to be a step up in glucose control from the modern sugar-loaded, refined diet. But it allows unlimited sweet fruit, even tropical, dried, and juiced fruit. Remove the fruit load and restore those grains, legumes and processed dairy products that do not raise blood sugar like cheese and yogurt, and you have the diet I’m used to.

So I’m not surprised by the mediocre performance of Whole30 and will look forward to resuming the few dietary vices I cling to like a glass of red wine and square of dark chocolate before bed. Bye-bye to Whole30 for me. I wish you well and success with others. It was a successful experiment and I’m glad I did it. One less stone left unturned in my quest for optimal health.