Whole30 - Are You Brave Enough to See if You're Wrong?

Maybe I hang with the wrong crowd, but lately I've heard a lot of ridicule aimed at people who are jumping on the "gluten sensitivity" train.  Here's the deal: Gluten sensitivity is a real thing.  Just like dairy sensitivity is a real thing - at its worst it's called lactose intolerance.  Just like diabetes is a real thing.  And Crohn's disease is a real thing.  If you aren't sensitive to any foods, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but taking the gluten out of my diet is one of the best things (of all time) I could do for my body.  And yes, I just paraphrased Kanye but only to make you realize that cutting down people who are trying to improve themselves is the equivalent of pulling a Kanye.

Let me ask you a question.  Are you 100% sure that you don't have any food issues?  Because I thought I was one of the lucky ones with no food issues, too.  

Spoiler alert: I'm not one of the lucky ones.  

Aside from an addiction to sugar, I also discovered that gluten or wheat or something in bread-type foods makes me an angry, hateful person with clouded thoughts and a quick temper.  How did I discover that?  By cutting those foods out of my diet for a full 30 days.  

I'm talking about the Whole30.

Photo by whole30.com

What is the Whole30?  In my opinion, it's the best thing you can do for yourself.  Objectively, it is a program of eating (it's "not a diet," but I'm going to call it a diet) that eliminates common problem foods for 30 DAYS and then gradually reintroduces those foods one by one for you to find out exactly which foods cause issues with you.  It's a diet that's not about the scale - though you will lose weight.  It's about your mental health, your emotional health, your physical health, and the control you should have over all aspects of your well-being.

Here are the things you eliminate: 

-Sugar

-Alcohol

-Grains

-Legumes

-Dairy

-Carrageenan, MSG, and Sulfites

-Foods typically made with the eliminated items but substituted with good foods (Don't try to make cookies out of apple sauce, pizza out of cauliflower, etc.)

-Stepping on a scale.  Yep, I'm saying you can't weigh yourself for 30 days.

It sounds terrible.  It is.  But it's also AWESOME.  If this sugar addict (and pizza addict and beer lover) can do it, so can you.  Trust me.

I completed my first and only (so far) Whole30 earlier this year.  After about a week, I felt mentally and physically better than I have in my entire life.  That quick temper that I've always been known for?  It disappeared.  The generalized feelings of melancholy that I've lived with my whole life?  They evaporated.  When something upset me during those 30 days, I quickly recognized what was triggering those negative feelings and responded logically, you know, like they tell you to do in self-help books and magazine articles.  Who was this normal person????  It was me.  The real me.  The me beneath the gluten gloom.

I'm ready to be that person again, but that means I'll have to kick bread-type foods out of my life permanently.  Am I sensitive to gluten?  I don't know.  I'm not currently able to claim more than a mere correlation between glutenous foods and general grumpiness, but that's enough for me to want to drop those foods from my diet.  Will I be able to live a pizza-less life?  I guess we'll find out... after the holidays.  ;-)

Do you want to find out if you could possibly eliminate the parts of your personality that make you cringe?  Try eliminating a few foods from your diet, and see if that helps.

For a TON of free resources and more information on how the Whole30 has literally HEALED people, visit Whole30.com.