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2 weeks post whole30, wish I hadn't done it


DoctorMom

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So I'm posting to provide a balanced view for people who are considering doing this nutrition plan.  It just doesn't work for everyone, unfortunately, and I'm one of those people.

 

During my Whole30 my weight went from a very nice 128.2 to 128.4.  I spent hours and hours cooking and depriving myself of food I really enjoy.  My milk production went down (a lot at first, and then recovered some, not fully, by the end) despite not losing any weight.

 

Now I'm two weeks out after my whole 30 and basically back to eating how I did before, when I was at that very nice weight of 128.2.  My milk production is back like gang-busters, which is great.  And I've gained 7 lbs!  That's right.  7 lbs in 2 weeks.  

 

Before the diet I was at a weight I was quite happy with, eating my normal, balanced diet with some fun items in moderations (sweets).  I deprived myself for 30 days, spent lots of money and energy doing this.  Lost nothing.  And now, I've gained 7 lbs.  

 

So I would call this a back-fired diet.  Really wishing I hadn't done it in the first place.  Back to counting calories and doing things in moderation.  As far as "all the other benefits" can't say I've really noticed any big differences since adding back in dairy, gluten, etc.  Never had the tiger blood.  An interesting experiment but an utter failure.

 

I'm glad the Whole30 works for some people, but it certainly didn't work for me.

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Before the diet I was at a weight I was quite happy with, eating my normal, balanced diet with some fun items in moderations (sweets).  I deprived myself for 30 days, spent lots of money and energy doing this.  Lost nothing.  And now, I've gained 7 lbs.  

 

 

You said you were at a happy weight, but that you "lost nothing," as if it were a negative. What are you referring to? Do you have specific issues you were hoping the W30 would help with? What were the goals you did not reach?

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I think you misunderstood me, JJB.  The negative isn't that I lost nothing.  The negative is that I gained 7 lbs in 2 weeks after stopping.

 

128 - happy weight

125 - happier weight

135 - not-so-thrilled weight

 

Here were my goals from my initial posts:

"I'm doing the Whole 30 in an effort to clean up my family's diet (replacing our unhealthy carbs with healthy plant-based carbs) and to gain control of the sugar cravings.  Love love love all baked sweet things.  Some afternoons at work I get headaches, and I've wondered if they are because of sugar binges in the afternoons, like eating a ton of gummy bears.  I'd like to see an end to those headaches.  Also, I could use an energy boost.  I'm currently breastfeeding my 6 month-old twins. "

 

"I'm doing the Whole 30 in an effort to clean up my family's diet (replacing our unhealthy carbs with healthy plant-based carbs) and to gain control of the sugar cravings.  I wouldn't hate it if I lost 5-10 lbs, too!  "

 

Still love and crave sugar and baked goods.  Headaches got better during whole 30, but haven't really had any since stopping, either.  And I did meet my goal of cleaning up my husband's diet but my toddler never got on board and demanded "toast!" constantly.  Husband is thrilled we are back to having all the good things in our lives.  Main take away is how to incorporate more vegetables.

 

So while weight loss wasn't a HUGE goal for me during my whole 30, I had hope to at least lose 3 lbs considering the tremendous effort and deprivation.  And gaining 7 lbs in the immediate post-whole 30 time period certainly wasn't something I wanted, although I had not outlined it expressly in my upfront goals!

 

The criticism of the classic "diet" is that, sure, you lose while on it but then gain it all back as soon as you stop.  I had hoped Whole30 would be more a lifestyle change than a "diet", but instead it seems the worst of both worlds.  Not only did I not lose anything, I gained more after relaxing the very restrictive rules that just aren't feasible or desirable in my everyday-forever life. 

 

I'm sure someone will tell me I just didn't do it right.  Or "well you should do the Whole 90 or the Whole 180! and then you wouldn't have gained those 7 lbs" which, of course, is true.  But my conclusion is that this just didn't work for me.  In fact, it backfired.  I'm glad it works for many, but to provide some balance to the discussion, I'm providing an alternate viewpoint.    

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It was not my intent to criticize, and I'm certainly not going to tell you that you did something wrong. Just trying to understand your situation. I don't think anyone will ever convince me that eating whole, unprocessed foods is just "not right" for everyone. But I can certainly wrap my head around the restrictions or the cost being too much, or it being too difficult with picky children (or husbands!). And also if you can eat off-plan foods and not have any obvious issues, then I can understand that it's not easy to find the motivation to stick with a program like this (I'm sure I would have been tempted to go back to my old diet if that had happened to me).

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You call the Whole30 restrictive, but my experience was that the Whole30 opened me up to eating tons of things I had never tried before. My approach as I began was that I should try every vegetable in the produce department of the grocery store. I had experience with maybe 30 percent of the veggies in Whole Foods before I started and now I have cooked and eaten about 90 percent of what is on offer. To say it another way, I more than doubled the variety of vegetables that I ate. I tried every variety of prepared sauerkraut and kimichi that I could find and tried making my own (not very successfully).I did the same thing with meat and fish. I added bison, lamb, rabbit, and a variety of organ meats to my menu, along with varieties of fish I had never heard of before. I still have not prepared octopus, but I did well cooking squid. And the best thing for me about the Whole30 was never needing to feel hungry to lose weight when I started the process needing to lose 30 pounds. 

 

I have been eating Whole30-style 4 years now. Maybe that is why I am not very sympathetic when you call the approach restrictive and complain that it was so hard and you had to give up so much to follow the program. It is different from eating the way most Americans eat and requires planning and cooking, but I think it is a small price to pay for the benefits. 

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Tom, I feel like I'm following you around the boards, picking fights.  I promise I'm not.   :)

 

I think it's inaccurate to say that the Whole30 isn't restrictive.  It certainly encourages you to generate new choices for yourself, but disallowing dairy, grains, soy, sugar, potatoes, legumes (legumes, for crying out loud!), and so on... is restrictive.

 

Edited to add: I had a really good experience with the Whole30 and would recommend it to anyone.  But I think we need to be realistic about it: the vast majority of people are going to find it restrictive and difficult, especially at first.  Whole foods is a great eating approach, but the Whole30 is a lot stricter than having the flexibility of eating "Whole-30 style."  I can see how it would feel punishing to someone who didn't have a good result.

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Hi there. First, I'm sorry you feel so unhappy with your results, especially now after seeing your first happy post-whole30 post a few weeks ago. I haven't seen you talk much about the reintroduction process, but I'm wondering if that may be an area to explore. If you've added back a food to which you have sensitivity, your body might react by suddenly gaining some weight--this is water/inflammation, not fat, but clearly not ideal. Going back to the whole30 for a few weeks, then slowly adding things one at a time would help to identify if a particular food is responsible for the added scale weight.

 

The other thing you mention in your post is a history of calorie counting. Sometimes we see people come to the forums having chronically under-fed themselves over many years, and sometimes we see them needlessly restrict eating during the whole30 as well. If either of those are true for you, it would not be unexpected to see some weight gain happen when restriction stops. That doesn't mean you should go back to restricting, just that it sometimes takes a longer sustained period of feeding your body abundant nutrition before hormones and metabolism settle down and weight stabilizes.

 

Finally there is the possibility that 128 is not the most healthy weight for you, and that you might be healthier, at this moment in time weighing just a bit more. That can be a hard one to contemplate, but it isn't unusual at all for people to have a goal weight or desired weight which is actually lower than optimally healthy for their body.

 

Of course, all three of these are just guesses based on experiences that other people have had, and we can't know your exact context, but I do hope something here might shed some light or offer some insight as you decide how to move forward.

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It might also have to do with the fact that you are nursing 6 month old twins as well. I found the 6 month mark to be the most taxing physically because babies are eating a LOT at that point as they are large by then but eating very few if any solids and if you're nursing TWO of them I can't imagine the kind of strain on your body to begin with let alone drastically changing your diet. I'm only nursing one baby and she's much older and eating plenty of actual food and I still found it challenging in the beginning. Also I think some people don't understand the time involved with nursing babies and when you combine that with all the work that goes into food prep it can be very hard. 

 

The whole 30 is working great for me at this point in time, but when my babies were that young I was lucky if I could eat more than fruit and pizza pockets let alone follow something as time consuming as a whole 30 because I spent all my time sitting in a chair being a constant source of food to someone else. Having your supply drop on the plan would only increase the amount of time you needed to sit there. I don't know if anyone who hasn't been there can compare their whole 30 experience without knowing what it's like. But I wouldn't totally rule it out forever though, it IS worth it when you're at the right point to be able to balance it.

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Tom, I feel like I'm following you around the boards, picking fights.  I promise I'm not.   :)

 

I think it's inaccurate to say that the Whole30 isn't restrictive.  It certainly encourages you to generate new choices for yourself, but disallowing dairy, grains, soy, sugar, potatoes, legumes (legumes, for crying out loud!), and so on... is restrictive.

 

Edited to add: I had a really good experience with the Whole30 and would recommend it to anyone.  But I think we need to be realistic about it: the vast majority of people are going to find it restrictive and difficult, especially at first.  Whole foods is a great eating approach, but the Whole30 is a lot stricter than having the flexibility of eating "Whole-30 style."  I can see how it would feel punishing to someone who didn't have a good result.

 

I need an editor. My company used to keep me supplied with two to keep me "well-spoken." Stay on me! :)

 

Yeah, you have a point that the Whole30 can feel restrictive to someone who lives on the off-plan foods and doesn't really want to let go of them. I didn't care what I ate when I came to the Whole30, I just wanted to lose the fat I was carrying without feeling hangry. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I wanted to say thank you for this post. I initially read it when I was mid-whole30, so came looking for it today. I just finished a whole47 and am having the same feelings of "it didn't work for me". I lost a couple pounds in the first 30 days but started to gain it back by the end (was the exact same weight at day 30 and day 47, had been lower prior to that). Now that I've been off plan for 2 days I'm realizing how unhealthy this was for me psychologically. I have a history of disordered eating and the complete obsession with food for the past month and a half definitely set me back in my healing. I also didn't see the benefits (energy was lower, workouts were harder, skin was the same or worse, digestion was the same or worse). I made myself feel bad every day that I was somehow doing it wrong, and the negative effect of that guilt is going to take awhile to undo.

So anyway, thank you. I know the mods disagreed with you, but I know how you feel.

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Haren.13 - appreciate your comment!  I like to add some balance to the discussion.  Nay-saying is strongly discouraged around here, as I'm sure you've noticed.  

 

I'm a month plus out.  Enjoying homemade full fat Greek yogurt a lot.  Veggie/protein powder and berry + kefir smoothies for breakfast about half the time.  Otherwise staying pretty whole30ish M-F, then on the weekends we cut loose and enjoy some sweets.  I made homemade cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting this morning and they were ah-mazing.  

 

Still doing a lot of salads, canned fish, and sautéing up and roasting lots of veggies on the weekend to make it easier to base meals around them during the work week.  

 

Sitting right around 131 without trying too hard.  If I count calories I'll drop to 128 in the course of about 3-4 days.  Not stressing too much about it either way.  :)

 

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