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Reintroduction Idea


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I've started Day 1 of The Whole30, but I'm already thinking about how I'm going to handle eating afterward, and I had an idea: to finish my first Whole30, allow a 48-hour crap-apalooza (if I can get through it), and then go on to a second Whole30, allow another 48-hour feast afterward, do a third Whole30, etc., in a continuous cycle. The reasoning behind this is to allow a calorie-spike to restimulate the metabolism and keep the fires burning. There's a similar logic to the weekly cheat day in Tim Ferriss's Slow-Carb Diet: "It is important to spike caloric intake once per week. This causes a host of hormonal changes that improve fat-loss, from increasing cAMP and GMP to improving conversion of the T4 thyroid hormone to the more active T3" (The Four-Hour Body, p. 88). This is also the logic of "Holiday Hedonism" to create an anabolic burst in Marty Gallagher's Purposeful Primitive program: "Here is how we rationalize sanctioned gluttony. Train intensely and eat in restrictive fashion leading up to the holiday/vacation. After a period of prolonged deprivation, a short, sudden, massive reintroduction of calories, calories of an indiscriminate nature, will trigger the mythical 'Anabolic Burst.' This results in a significant increase in lean muscle mass, literally overnight. A successfully executed Anabolic Burst requires a protracted period of highly restrictive eating followed by an all out, no regret, unapologetic food binge" (The Purposeful Primitive: From Fat and Flaccid to Lean and Powerful, p. 422).

Any thoughts? Has any seasoned Whole30'er done something similar?

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Eating crap makes you less healthy regardless of the sequence or timing of eating the crap. Read It Starts With Food.

O.K., thanks for the input -- I'll get the book from Amazon and compare what it has to say about life after W30 and/or caloric "spiking" with these other sources.

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Eating crap makes you less healthy regardless of the sequence or timing of eating the crap. Read It Starts With Food.

I've just read "The Whole9 Guide to Eating Dirty," parts I and II, and they were very helpful. I think I'll do the gradual reintroduction program outlined in IASWF after the first W30.

Thanks again for the input!

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The Whole30 is about discovering the benefits of feeding your body real, whole, healthy foods. Relax and discover. You might find that after you get used to eating healthy, you lose interest in eating dirty.

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Couldn't you do a "massive reintroduction of calories" without being dirty? Also, I am not counting calories on the Whole30, so I don't know this for sure, but I would guess that my calorie intake hasn't gone down. Just the quality of my calories has gone up.

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The Whole30 is not a calorie-restriction program. You are supposed to eat as much food as you need to assuage hunger and to maintain your activity levels. Programs that call for restrictions sometimes include periods of binging to balance things out. The Whole30 starts from a place of balance. There are all kinds of eating programs out there and many of them lead to disordered eating habits. The Whole30 is an approach that is designed to support both physical and psychological health.

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from someone who has completed multiple whole30s and attempted to reward myself afterwards, take it from me and don't do it. One of the interesting things that happened on the whole30 is I became much more sensitive to foods I had removed. A pizza party and a few beers not only leaves me home on the couch all day the next day, running back and forth to the bathroom, but depressed and anxious in ways I've never experienced. It takes me about 3-4 days to recover from a binge and feel normal again. Post whole30, feel free to test old foods again or reward yourself once or twice, but I guarantee you will not feel good after a 48 hour binge.

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My experience has been similar to Johnny's. First, the foods I used to crave just aren't appealing anymore. Then if I do indulge, I feel like complete crap and it's SO not worth it!! Now my "dirty" foods are paleo treats that non Paleo's wouldn't even consider to BE a treat!! You should give yourself time to clean up your taste buds, appreciate the benefits of the new way of eating and don't expect that you're going to need to cheat.

I craved bacon all during my 30, couldn't wait to have it(I didn't buy any approved bacon so I didn't eat any on the plan). The first morning I had some after my W30, it tasted too salty and unimpressive.

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Thanks, everyone, for all the input! I read the posts about eating dirty by Melissa and Dallas. and they make perfect sense to me. Of course binging on crap is unhealthy: unhealthy food is unhealthy food, period. So, who knows -- maybe I'll never look at another Reese's Peanut Butter cup with yearning and longing again. Anyway, after The W30 I'm only going to reintroduce small amounts of forbidden foods back into my diet and see how I feel.

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I think the memory of a Reese's is better than the actual thing.

I had ice cream after my Whole30... and I honestly think I'd have been happier with agave sweetened cashew ice cream than I was with the "real" thing. After the first few bites, it was actually kinda gross. And I definitely didn't feel well later.

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Agave nectar/syrup is not a healthy food. It's highly refined, and very high in fructose. It's actually higher in fructose than HFCS. Fructose is horrible for the liver in that kind of concentration. Not that I'd recommend it, but you'd probably be better off with table sugar. ewwww

Not all things that sound or are billed as natural and healthy are. Health food stores and WF can be just as full of garbage foods as the regular grocery.

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The whole point of reintroduction is to learn how these "less healthy" foods are affecting you, in the scientifically controlled environment of the Whole30. Binging on a bunch of stuff (grains, dairy, peanut butter, sugar, alcohol) all at once means you'll learn nothing from your Whole30 experience - because after that binge, when you feel like crap, you'll not know which foods to blame for which effects.

Our reintroduction period is very specific, and designed to provide the most learning and awareness for your experience. I'd highly recommend just sticking to the schedule, for fear that the last 30 days will have been wasted otherwise.

Good luck to you!

Best,

Melissa

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The whole point of reintroduction is to learn how these "less healthy" foods are affecting you, in the scientifically controlled environment of the Whole30. Binging on a bunch of stuff (grains, dairy, peanut butter, sugar, alcohol) all at once means you'll learn nothing from your Whole30 experience - because after that binge, when you feel like crap, you'll not know which foods to blame for which effects.

Our reintroduction period is very specific, and designed to provide the most learning and awareness for your experience. I'd highly recommend just sticking to the schedule, for fear that the last 30 days will have been wasted otherwise.

Good luck to you!

Best,

Melissa

Yep, that's what I've decided to do -- the 10-day reintroduction program, which another member has kindly put up elsewhere on the forum. Thanks for the advice! Things are going great so far! :)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well, now that I'm on Day 31 and still eating compliantly, I know I am definitely not going to drop a bomb of crap food on myself. There's no problem with eating this way, especially now that I know my problem areas -- fruit and caffeine --, which I'm really going to try to limit during Round 2.

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