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So... is anyone else dealing with brain fog? I seriously feel like I am losing my mind. It makes everything so much harder! I don't know if it is from my drastic change in food, the fact that I have an 11-month-old that doesn't sleep through the night, or a combo of both... and am still just so tired.

Hi! I was eating what I considered a fairly healthy diet before whole 30. Bread + Pasta were defineitly my weakness though and a bit of a sweet tooth. I am 27y / 103lb / active (workout atleast 2x a week) and walk about 15k steps per day. On the whole 30 program i find my self feeling extremely fatigued (though I feel I’m eating more than before) with muscle pain and a total lack of interest in working out, i just want to go home and lay down after work. A typical food day: breakfast: 1/2 sweet potato, two eggs cooked in coconut oil or ghee, spinach sautéed, 1 avocado. Black coffee (my breakfasts all contain a mix of these ingredients served different ways) with the occasional addition of a banana who almond butter or cooked apples) Lunch: soup (2cups) containing (carrot, sweet potato, russet potato, celery, sausage, collard greens + spinach) plus one piece of fruit (peach, banana, cherries with almond butter) seltzer / regular water dinner: collard wraps (2) with spicy ground turkey, peppers, carrots, cucumber, purple+green cabbage. Seltzer / regular water Or zoodles with ground turkey + compliant marinara and a vegetable (cauliflower) But generally some form of veggie+ meat mix. Im just unsure why I’m feeling so sluggish and unmotivated! uploaded a bunch of my meals for size reference

Hi all! Today is the last day of my reintroduction period and I dived in with gluten. I don't have celiac and I didn't notice issues with gluten during my last Whole 30. However, today I had some whole wheat toast with breakfast and not even an hoir later...BAM! BRAIN FOG has settled in. Is this a common reaction I can contribute to gluten sensitivity?

Hi, i am currently on day 13. Around day 5 I started feeling badly, especially after excercising. I added more carbs, protein and fat (frankly over-eating) to try to feel better but it didn't help. By day 8 I was just laying in bed all day and exhausted with muscle fatigue from walking a 1/4 mile (I typically RUN 10 miles a week); I was feeing out of body and dizzy; and my brain was quite foggy--driving felt dangerous and I felt as if I might "forget" to get out of my car. I went to the doctor and my BP was down 30 points from my normal (was 100/70 and is usually 130/70). My blood work all came back fine. They advised me to add more salt and to stop exercising. I regained energy for a few days but now I am starting to feel the same. I am a 41 year-old female, 5' 8" and 150 pounds. My typical breakfast is 2 eggs, 1/2 a large potato mixed with onions and 10 kalamata olives and cooked in ghee and topped with more ghee, 1/2 grapefruit, and a banana. A typical lunch is 2 cups of amount of Cuban Piccadillo (ground beef, green olives, peppers, raisins and capers) over half a large pan-fried yam. I have a larabar bar or nuts and a piece of fruit as a late afternoon snack (I am very active). A typical dinner would be 1/3 pound pan-fried chicken with copius amounts of broccoli drizzled in olive oil. Since my doctor visit I have been heavily salting everything and even eating several dill pickles a day. I am having trouble hanging on and functioning. What can I change to feel better? Thank you for reading my long post! -Aimée

Hey everyone, I attempted to start a Whole30 last Monday and failed on Thursday evening when I resorted to drinking a glass of milk to get SOMETHING into my system. Basically, I was having extreme difficulty maintaining an adequate calorie intake. To exacerbate matters, I take stimulant medication for ADHD, which suppresses/dulls appetite for me. By Thursday, I felt lethargic, was experiencing brain fog like nothing before (blanked on basic vocab during a video conference at work and was otherwise extremely unproductive), feeling very faint, and to top that off, the very thought of putting food in my mouth made me feel incredibly nauseous, and I wasn't feeling hunger strongly enough to bother overcoming it, not even when I had easy-access compliant options waiting for me in the fridge and ingredients (and skills) to cook lots of compliant things. Here's my food log from that week as I remember it (the calorie deficit is obvious): Day 1 (felt okay) breakfast - 1 banana lunch - 1 banana dinner - shepherd's pie (Whole30 book recipe) Day 2 (felt tired and kinda crappy) breakfast - 1 banana lunch - leftover shepherd's pie (fairly small portion) dinner - meat sauce with sauteed sweet potato noodles Day 3 (felt lethargic and like my head was full of lead) breakfast - 1 or 2 hard-boiled eggs (can't remember) lunch - 1 hard-boiled egg and mug of homemade duck stock dinner - butternut squash soup Day 4 (felt horrible, could barely think straight) breakfast - 1.5 hard-boiled eggs (couldn't finish the second one) lunch - mug of homemade duck stock (was supposed to eat leftover butternut squash soup, thought of it made me nauseous) **DAIRY INTERVENTION** - approx. 12 oz of delicious whole milk dinner - potato and onion latkes (with dollop of sour cream) and side of meat sauce Yeah... not enough calories. I knew all along that I just needed to EAT MORE, but lack of calories in the first place made it harder and harder to do anything about it. Vicious cycle and all. Still, I'm not sure where the nausea and food aversion came from, though, and am wondering if anyone else has experienced that, because that's the part that had me worried enough to pull out. Furthermore, I noticed that I quickly developed some concerning mental blocks and such, like getting it in my head that I couldn't make a dish because I didn't have a complaint version of its accompanying dipping sauce, or the coconut milk made it smell weird/not right (given my history with scent-triggered migraines, I can get weird about this). Then I got weirdly hard-headed about keeping compliant even if it meant I ate nothing (because eating nothing was less effort once I was in that nasty funk). Didn't like that at all. Aftermath: So after the dairy intervention, I wasn't about to blow off the entire thing just because I had some milk. For the record, I have zero issues with dairy (no skin troubles, no GI troubles, nada) and have a long history of drinking craptons of milk. I decided to remain Whole30 complaint, with the exception of dairy (avoiding cheese, though). Suddenly, with dairy added back in, following all the other rules is WAY easier, I stopped having all those stupid hangups, and I feel fantastic already. For now, I'm in Whole30 + dairy mode and am working on shifting cooking habits away from non-compliant things (risotto, black beans, etc) and getting used to Whole30 cooking (just sometimes with dairy). If I continue to feel good, I might just continue Whole30 + dairy (and hope it doesn't make me too much of a blaspheming heretic). Or try going whole hog sometime in the future.

It's almost one year since I did my first Whole 30, which I started in mid-January 2012. This post discusses the evolution of my health since taking the Whole 30 plunge and recognizing how dramatically food impacts my wellbeing. Before starting the Whole 30, I had lots of symptoms and medical diagnoses: hypothyroid, generalized body aches and pains, fatigue throughout the day, unreplenishing sleep, insomnia, depression, anxiety, GERD (heartburn), eczema, chronic itchy sore throat and ears, inflammation. I basically just never felt "good, " and was pretty much always lethargic and moody. I took medication for my hypothyroid, depression and insomnia. My early reactions to the Whole 30 were wacky: I was super energized by the lack of carbs-- so much so that I felt like I was "rushing" all the time-- almost "high" or manic-- but could barely focus enough to write an email, and could not fall asleep without a sleeping pill of some kind. This was kind of cool, but it was also draining, because I felt more "wired" than energetic. After awhile, my energy leveled out, and I was more consistently awake during the day, and able to fall asleep without medication at night. Other weird side-effects of the early days were body temperature changes-- I would get really flushed sometimes after eating, and at night I would get the cold sweats. Also, before falling asleep at night I would sometimes have a racing, pounding heart. I have learned that these were typical reactions to my hormones regulating due to the dietary changes, and these symptoms were gone after about two weeks. By the middle of the Whole 30, I was able to fall asleep well, and wake up feeling well-rested after a normal 8 hours of sleep. My daily fatigue and body aches were gone for the most part. Because my energy improved, I was able to quit my caffeine habit, and also stopped craving cigarettes. Also, because I started feeling better in general, I was able to notice when several Whole 30-approved foods made me feel bad- nightshade veggies, cooked egg whites, dutch process cocoa and red wine (ok, not approved, but I had a few glasses for a friend's b-day mid-Whole 30) were among the culprits. By the end of the month, my body aches, insomnia, GERD, fatigue and inflammation were generally gone. My mood had improved overall, but I still had ups and downs. My chronic sore throat was gone, but the itchy ears still flared up on occasion, and though the eczema was not gone, it was reduced. I attempted a premature withdrawal from my antidepressants after the Whole 30, and learned the hard way that long-term health problems are not fixed in a month. After struggling to stay antidepressant-free for a few months, I went back on the meds in May and have decided not to push any "cure" before it's ready to happen. What I noticed when I went off the meds was that my carb cravings went through the roof, and if I made any poor dietary choice, I would be paying the price for days afterward-- one cup of coffee or some soy sauce meant that I would slip into a cloud of depression, fatigue and brain fog for days, during which my body would be screaming for chocolate and muffins and lattes. It was brutal, and too difficult to handle while holding down a job. By going back on the meds, I have been able to consistently make better dietary choices, and thus heal my body better. If it's in the cards for me to go med-free again, I'll take that step when the time comes. Now, 11 months after my initial foray into paleo life, I am still surprised by how my body is healing itself. Some of my food intolerances have gone away, due (I assume) to the healing of my gut, and I can now eat nightshades, dark chocolate and coffee without incident. I almost never get body aches and pains, and my heartburn is simply nonexistant. I also rarely get a severe reaction to a food (even the apple pie I ate at Thanksgiving) so it seems that my body has increased its resilience. And though there are mild signs that I have made a poor food choice, I'm not laid up for days. Unexpected results have been increased regularity of my menstrual cycle, improved skin appearance and texture (I barely even need to use body lotion anymore! My skin is so hydrated and firm, it's amazing), and improved muscle tone without a change in exercise. I lost about 10 lbs on the Whole 30, but gained back 5lbs in lean muscle, and now have a more toned, muscular appearance, and am the happiest I've been with my physical appearance potentially ever. Overall, the Whole 30 has given me an appreciation for the body's ability to heal itself, and a respect for the individuality of our nutritional needs. I now approach health from a "my body knows best" perspective, and realize that wellness is a lifelong process, not a quick fix. Thanks for reading my update, and best wishes to everyone on their personal journeys!