Reintroduction Help!

[elenamaria1028]

Today is Day 31 for me, and being as Type A as I am, I am looking to jump in and complete the reintroduction phase as described, however, I have already run into an obstacle with my first meal. On legume reintroduction day, I found that I cannot even stomach eating the peanut butter I bought to eat with my apple. I am worried that this will be the case for many of the foods I will attempt to reintroduce over the next 10 or so days. Does anyone have any insight into how to tackle this? I feel so wonderful after completing the last 30 days that I don't want to force myself to choke down things for the sake of the reintroduction process.

[ShannonM816]

First, you can do the reintroductions in any order you want, so if there are things that you're really looking forward to and want to eat, do those reintroductions first. Then, if you want to take longer to do them all, that's okay -- take more than two days between each reintro, and when peanut butter sounds good, have it then.  This would be more like slow roll reintroductions -- you still want to only have one non-Whole30 food at a time, but you do it when you feel like it, not on a pre-set schedule. 

Alternately, you could just think of this as a science experiment and see if you can separate yourself from whatever nervousness about the foods you have and look at is more dispassionately -- think something like, I've done Whole30, and now it's time to find out more about how these items I've left out affect me, so regardless of whether I'm wanting these foods or not, I'm going to have them, and pay attention to how I feel, and then in the future, I know how they'll affect me. 

Even if you plan to eat Whole30 most of the time for the rest of your life, the reality is that there will be times when you are out in public with not as much control over what you're able to eat, and doing reintroductions now means you'll know if there are things you really, really must avoid, versus things that you prefer to avoid but that don't affect you too seriously if you have them occasionally. You need this information to help you learn to ride your own bike, or when using the off-roading chart to determine if a food is worth it.  

[Mj Slazak Courchesne]

You also don't have to reintroduce everything, so if there's something you don't miss (or that you know bothers you), then skip it! http://whole30.com/step-two-finished/

[mburns224]

Hi everyone, 

Along the same lines of reintroducing when you feel like it......if you're planning to continue eating whole30-ish, with foods that have more than one non-compliant ingredient (baked goods, for example), is it okay to just eat those things when they come up, see how you feel, and then decide if more experimentation is needed? For example, if just go along after day 30 not deliberately making too many changes, and then one day it is dount Sunday at Church, or a girlfriend offers me cookies when I'm having tea at her house - is it okay to just go for it? Then if I feel fine, I know that baked goods are fine for me, and if I don't I can go back and do some more testing to find out what the culprit is (was it the sugar? the gluten? the dairy in the frosting?). 

Or does doing a slow roll introduction mean that you reintroduce non-compliant foods when you feel like it, but only if they are one-ingredient foods? 

Thank you!

[ShannonM816]

@mburns224 ideally, you still just do things with one ingredient. However, anything you do after whole30 is up to you, so if you decide to have a cookie or cupcake that has multiple non-w30 ingredients, that's up to you. With sugary stuff, pay attention not just to how you feel physically, but also if it causes cravings, anxiety, or other emotional reactions. 

Here's the slow roll reintroduction instructions if you want to review it:  http://whole30.com/2014/09/dear-melissa-slow-reintroduction-roll/