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Is a Whole14 or Whole21 Sufficient enough to start more reintroductions?


sisco022

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I'm hoping someone can help me. I thought I remember it saying somewhere in "It Starts with Food" that either a Whole14 or Whole21 was sufficient enough to start reintroductions? I can't seem to find it and I don't really want to re-read the entire book right now.

 

Let me give you some background quick about why I'm asking. I've been diagnosed with IBS for 13 years now. I only first found relief to my symptoms after doing my first Whole30 in August 2014. Since then I have completed two more Whole30's. I am currently on day 19 of my fourth one. The biggest reason I am doing so many is because each time I am only able to get in a handful of reintroductions before I end up on a trip out of town. I tend to travel about once a month or once every couple months. I've tried continuing on these trips but it is just not realistic and really rather unenjoyable. Especially on vacation I would like to eat the foods that I have learned my body can tolerate but that are not technically W30 compliant.

 

Now, once again, I've found myself in the same situation. I leave to go out of town at the end of April which means I can only get in about 5 more reintroductions. But, if what I thought I saw is correct, and you can start reintroductions at day 14 or 21, then I could get in 3 more reintroductions and that would be huge for me. Because of my IBS, my reintroductions are very specific. I only reintroduce certain foods, not just a food group. Like, instead of doing a dairy day, I will do a sour cream day. It's really important to me to know exactly what my body can tolerate. However, it is a very long process doing it this way.

 

If anyone has any insights I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

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No 14 or 21 days is really not enough to start reintroductions. A lot of people on the program don't even see their most significant changes until day 28 or 29 or 30 or 31 even. 

 

I get wanting to do these very careful introductions. Are you doing foods you have done on past Whole30's as well or just new foods? Depending on how long your trip is and how close you stay to Whole30 on your trip you could possibly get away with doing a shorter Whole30 when you get back and continue introductions when you start feeling as good as you did at the end of this one.

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I'm hoping someone can help me. I thought I remember it saying somewhere in "It Starts with Food" that either a Whole14 or Whole21 was sufficient enough to start reintroductions? I can't seem to find it and I don't really want to re-read the entire book right now.

 

Let me give you some background quick about why I'm asking. I've been diagnosed with IBS for 13 years now. I only first found relief to my symptoms after doing my first Whole30 in August 2014. Since then I have completed two more Whole30's. I am currently on day 19 of my fourth one. The biggest reason I am doing so many is because each time I am only able to get in a handful of reintroductions before I end up on a trip out of town. I tend to travel about once a month or once every couple months. I've tried continuing on these trips but it is just not realistic and really rather unenjoyable. Especially on vacation I would like to eat the foods that I have learned my body can tolerate but that are not technically W30 compliant.

 

Now, once again, I've found myself in the same situation. I leave to go out of town at the end of April which means I can only get in about 5 more reintroductions. But, if what I thought I saw is correct, and you can start reintroductions at day 14 or 21, then I could get in 3 more reintroductions and that would be huge for me. Because of my IBS, my reintroductions are very specific. I only reintroduce certain foods, not just a food group. Like, instead of doing a dairy day, I will do a sour cream day. It's really important to me to know exactly what my body can tolerate. However, it is a very long process doing it this way.

 

If anyone has any insights I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you.

I think what you're thinking of is when Melissa says that once you've done multiple Whole30s (full and to the letter), if you need a quick reset to get back on a clean eating path or you're going on holiday, you can do a shorter 'whole30' to kickstart you back onto your good habits. It's not a replacement for a full Whole30 and there aren't re-intros done in the case of a shorter Whole30.

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I would understand if this was my first time doing the whole30, but it's not. It's the fourth. So I have a very good understanding of how my body reacts to the program. I know that there are many reasons for sticking to it for 30 days, and a big one is the psychological aspect of it. But I'm not doing this a fourth time to help with cravings or a sugar dragon, or anything like that. I've done that already, on three separate occasions. I'm doing this because I want to be able to reintroduce foods that I have not been able to reintroduce yet. So If I'm feeling optimal by Day 21, then what I'm asking is; is my body at a point now where I can start reintroductions? 

 

Also, I know all about the idea of doing shorter "Whole30's" to get you out of a slump and kickstart you back into better habits. In my case I'm not trying to do that. I was eating clean, just not 100% whole30. So why can't reintroductions be done on a shorter "Whole30"? 

 

Also, thanks for responding to me initially. I appreciate it.

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So why can't reintroductions be done on a shorter "Whole30"? 

 

From a best practices and rules perspective, you will likely get more conclusive results on reintroductions if you eat Whole30, as written, for 30 consecutive days, especially when it's been a while since you've done a full-fledged Whole30.  While you may be feeling optimal on day 21, there still might be things going on within your body that have not completely sorted themselves out yet. 

 

At the end of the day, you're an adult - you can do whatever you want. When you request advice on the forum, you'll get responses (especially from the moderators) along the lines of what we feel is in your best interest. 

You say it's "important to you to know exactly what your body can tolerate." Again, the highest integrity way to know is to do the 30 days then reintro. 

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Thanks for the response. I completely understand, and understood before posting on the forum, that doing the entire 30 days is the best practice way to go. It's just that at the rate I'm going it will be another 2-3 years before I can get all the reintroductions in that I would like. So I just wanted to see what people thought about doing reintros after a shorter period and if it would work at all. I think I just need to do what I think will be best for me. Once again, thanks for taking the time to respond.

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If I understand you, you are doing a full whole30 before trying any reintroductions?

If yes, I would say that if you have no symptoms you could move into the next food. A full 30 days is the ideal but it sounds to me like you already know how normal for you feels?

Fellow ibs person,

Lucie

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This post is not really a suggestion, more a breakdown of the parameters you're using in your approach to your reintros, and how these alter your options and outcomes.

 

Speed

If you're wanting to speed up the process but still continue with individual reintroductions, you could review whether you can't reintro while travelling. As travelling is a regular occurrence and it's breaking your baseline, this is consistently extending the length of time it's taking you to perform reintroductions, as on your return from travel, you need to reestablish your baseline and then do your reintro. It's a race against time before getting back on the travel wagon which again disrupts your testing baseline, so you will always be taking a bunch of steps forward, but then a whole bunch backwards (which may feel very frustrating as well as taking up a lot of time). While you can try and shorten your re-establish phase, if this is artificially shortened, the results of your reintros will be more questionable and could result in a lot of incorrect results, which will impact the Endgame.

 

Comfort While Travelling

There's nothing wrong with wanting to be comfortable while travelling (or avoiding getting sick!) and it can be hard to be compliant when travelling and even harder to be doing specific introductions too, so this is not about any sort of judgement, just how this aspect alters other parameters. If you think this might become a lower priority than Speed, you might want to think about what the issues are for you specifically, when you travel and whether there might be other ways that would make things easier, other than just not being W30 compliant. Everyone has different travel issues, different locations, different prep time, different food availability, different social and work scenarios. This parameter impacts both your Speed and your Endgame.

 

Individual Reintros

While this might seem like the Endgame, this is actually a "how to" parameter, to help you identify your Endgame results.

If using this particular approach impacts both your Speed and your Comfort While Travelling, taking more time to achieve your Endgame, it may be worth reviewing whether this parameter is really going to give you the Endgame you're looking for, in a timeframe that's an acceptable Speed. Just to look at the flipside of non-individual reintros for comparison, if you added say 10 individual items in a single reintro day, but they're part of the same "family" and you have no symptoms at all, that's a radically different Speed. If you had a reaction, you'd then need to break it down and identify the culprit (so it's not a guarantee of being faster but it still could be). If you've got some existing knowledge of known reactions, this could potentially be used to better plan other reintroductions in groups.

 

The Endgame

This is your true purpose, the desired outcome, regardless of the steps or time to get here.

The endgame is identifying what foods you can tolerate for you and for your IBS (which has been in your life for at least 13 years), so you can feel healthy :) who doesn't want that? :D

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praxisproject, thank you so much for your considerate response. I really appreciate you taking the time to write. Your response was very helpful and much more of what I was looking for. I'm sorry I didn't respond back sooner. I've been out with a stomach bug for a few days, which has been interesting since it's my first time being sick on the whole30. Anyways, I really like what you said about about maybe introducing items that are in the same family. I have thought about doing it that way, but because I was so particular I didn't want it to backfire on me. But if I tried it and it didn't, that would save a considerable amount of time and get me through. It just might be worth it. I plan on re-reading your post because you make a lot of good points and I think it can me. Once again, thank you.

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It's okay to try things a few different ways and see what works :)

 

Things like sulfites tend to be a pretty groupy group.

Dairy and grains are two groups that you might get some variables within, but even then, there's groups inside those groups which might save you some time.

 

No need to rush making a new plan, take some time and have a think about it.

Stuff you already know you have a reaction to may help you identify different groups to try.

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