Dries fruits

[Jlweezie724]

If I dry my own fruit without adding sugar can I have an unlimited amount? The shopping list says to limit dried fruits.

[ShannonM816]

You should still limit dried fruits.

If you look at the meal template, you'll notice that it mentions occasionally adding fruit, and that a serving size is a handful of fresh fruit. When you dry fruit, you shrink it down and concentrate the same amount of natural sugars into a smaller size, so if one apricot is about a serving of fruit, one dried apricot would also be a serving of fruit, but it's easy since the dried one is a smaller size, to eat more than that. Usually we tell people to try to limit fruit to not more than two servings a day.

The other issue with dried fruit is that because it is more concentrated, it often tastes sweeter than the same fruit would have tasted fresh, which means it's more likely to leave you craving more sweets. If you continue to eat a lot of sweet foods, you'll find that at the end of your Whole30, you're still having cravings for sweet foods, and it'll be that much easier to slip back into choosing unhealthy sweet options like cookies or candy. If you limit the sweet tasting foods you eat during your Whole30, your cravings for sweets should decrease and that will make it easier when you no longer have the rules of Whole30 for you to be able to resist sweets.

[Jlweezie724]

Thank you so much. The dried fruit and nut mix is the best on-the-go snack. I guess I'll rethink that.

[SugarcubeOD]

3 hours ago, Jlweezie724 said:

Thank you so much. The dried fruit and nut mix is the best on-the-go snack. I guess I'll rethink that.

As far as 'snacks' go, dried fruit and nuts are not great.  We encourage you to make your meals large enough and mirrored to the template in order to get 4-5 hours between meals.  Should you need to eat between meals when you're figuring out your meal size, or if you have to go longer than 5 hours, we recommend a mini meal which would be protein and fat and ideally veggies - basically a template meal but in a smaller portion.