The book - it starts with food

[mandimarie]

I'm planning on starting tomorrow - I'm just wondering if I need to buy and read the book before I start?  Can it be found at a book store or simply bought online only?

[ShannonM816]

You can get all the information you need to do a Whole30 here on the website (go to whole30.com and click I'm New to the Whole30 and it will give you links to all the program rules), but the book will give you a lot of answers about the why behind it all. I found it very readable and helpful, but if you don't want to buy it, you can be successful without it.

 

You can buy the book online, but you should be able to find it in stores as well. Right now, they've just announced a new version coming out July 29, so you might talk to your local bookstore about when they'll be getting the new edition in, if you want to have the most up to date version -- although there are not really that many changes from the old one, so if you find the older version and want to get it, it would still work. You can read about the differences in the old and new version here.

[mandimarie]

Thanks Shannon!  Best of luck to you....how has it been working for you?  I'm afraid for the first two weeks - I have done the complete cut of carbs and the first five days were the worst.  I swap a lot of "food" with quest bars and advocare proudcts - I'm in love with their spark drink in the morning and b4 my workout.  Looking forward to getting everything I need to feel great from food and strictly food

[ShannonM816]

I've done two Whole30s, the first one last September, the second in January. I feel great when I eat this way, but I'll be honest, sometimes it's hard to stick to it. I get tired of cooking and especially tired of doing dishes. I wasn't used to cooking so much before. You definitely have to plan ahead and make sure there's food ready to go in the fridge to be successful. I try to cook a lot of food on weekends so that I have plenty of stuff I can take for lunch at work and so that there's stuff that just needs to be reheated if I'm running late in the morning, or had a really long day at work and don't want to cook a full meal. 

 

If you haven't found it already, I recommend checking out theclothesmakethegirl.com  -- specifically, this article that talks about how much food it takes to eat this way, and this one that talks about how to do a weekly cookup. She also has a ton of recipes, both on her blog and in her two cookbooks, Well Fed and Well Fed 2, and almost all of them are Whole30 compliant.