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How did you find Whole30?


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A friend mentioned to me that she and her husband were doing a W30. She gave me a brief overview. Our girls were playing in a softball game at the time, so the discussion was short and interupted by my yelling to cheer the girls on (I'm that mom.) I put the website address into my phone with all the other sites I plan to visit 'someday'. My mom had a gluten sensitivity so we were already gluten free in our house. She was so frustrated because she was still getting sick. I looked at the site. No beans? No peanut butter? No way. Fast forward a couple of months. I bought ISWF for her to read. We took the kids on a 4000 mile road trip over 3 1/2 weeks. I did most of the driving because she was still recovering from frozen shoulder. I read it at night in various hotels across the country. It all made so much sense. We started the day the kids went back to school. (6 months after first hearing about it.) My mom lost 15 pounds, her shoulder was no longer an issue and her digestion was normal for the first time in 15 years. I did not feel I neede to lose weight, but I did. My body has found it's ideal weight. I eat an enormous amount of food. Best thing for me was the sleep. I've had trouble falling asleep for as long as I can remember. No more. I sleep like a baby. I just started my 2nd W30 (going for 100 days). I still have issues to deal with. Mostly emotional eating. I'm finding the 2nd time around to be easier.

I love these stories!

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3 months before actually triping and falling over ISWF I was playing around with my diet. I had made a vow around April of 2012 that I was somehow going to rid myself of migraines and all the other stuff that I was suffering from. First I cut out dairy - not completely but I cut back drastically. I immediately noticed a shift in my mental state and the ugly painful boils that appeared on the upper part of my thighs disappeared. I started tweaking sugar consumption - limiting myself to only honey or maple syrup. I happened upon Paleo. It sounded kind of interesting but I wasn't terribly clear what it was - other than "eating like a caveman" which like others, I didn't really identify with. I started experimenting with Paleo "treats" and trying "gluten free" or low gluten flours and pastas. I was feeling better. Then a friend of mine posted a link to a Christian Nutrionist on facebook which i promptly liked. Upon investigaing the facebook page I found the link pasted to ISWF. I fell in love with the name alone. Did some initial research and the next day I picked up the book. I didn't even finish reading the book before starting my first Whole 40 on August 21st. Everything just clicked and made so much sense.

I am doing my 3rd attempt (First was a successful whole 40 the second was a whole 27) as I still have migriane issues but they are getting better.

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I started Crossfit last year and then started to dabble in Paleo meals for dinner. In my search for recipes, I found the Nom Nom Paleo blog (http://nomnompaleo.com/) and started making her recipes. She is on her third Whole 30 and using her ideas, I went and purchased the book, read as much of this forum as I could and then prepared my fiance mentally by reading him a bunch of stuff and we got started 5 days ago :)

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A year or so ago a friend of mine read "Wheat Belly," eliminated wheat from his diet and lost substantial weight. So I read "Wheat Belly," and it made sense to me. I tried eliminating wheat, but I found all the wheat-like substitutes to be expensive, hard to find, tedious to work with and sometimes kind of gross. Also, things like "artisanal cheeses" that sounded wonderful in the book just didn't agree with me in practice.

I then read "The South Beach Diet," and it, too, made sense to me. But 10 days into the two-week induction period, I felt like something was gnawing a hole in my gut! I thought this was simply how eliminating carbs mades me feel. I now believe that was how ricotta cheese and artificial sugar desserts every night make me feel!

Finally, a very fit (Crossfit/yoga/marathon runner superstar type) friend of mine made a casual reference to eating Paleo in a facebook post. Out of curiosity, I looked up the term and found out -- Horrors! -- IT'S THE CAVEMAN DIET! I had always suspected the Caveman Diet was something a bunch of guys made up as an excuse for behaving badly: Eat meat. Build fire. Run around naked in woods.... :wacko:

But I believe in knowing what you are talking about before you start dissing something. (Crazy, huh?) So I started reading. I read Cordain. Then I read Sisson. Then I stumbled across some link to The Clothes Make the Girl, and I FELL IN LOVE with Melissa Joulwan! And from her site, I linked onto whole9life.com. (And sometime I read Robb just for the fun of it!)

Now, I admit the Whole30 program was daunting. :o:wacko: But what I liked about it was, the rules are the rules, no substitutions allowed, you are either all in or you are out. I much preferred that to fake food substitutes and cheat meals and all the other "strategies" that just teased the dragons.

As of this writing, I am completing Day 19 of my first Whole30. Ask me again in 11 days, but I think this is the answer I have been seeking for so long.

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I first came across the Whole30 on the blog of an elite runner that I like to read. She lasted about six days on it, but I was still intrigued by the concept. A few months later, I was talking about wanting to either do the W30 or Dr. Jungers Clean Diet again and she mentioned that she'd had a friend do the Whole30 (and only last about a week.) I suppose it says something about me that a challenge that the only personal connections I had were "unsuccessful" was all the more intriguing.

The hubby and I decided that we wanted to do a big "diet clean up" in January. So, I dug through the archives of that runners blog to find the link to Whole30 and bought ISWF. I'd read alot about the Paleo diet, but can't say I was convinced that it was the right diet for me. (I'm a triathlete and there's still a lot of contention over whether the paleo diet and endurance sports work together.) But I figured since I'm not really training right now, I could afford 30 days of pure experiment, so we started our W30 on Jan 1 with a large group of other folks.

I am slowly starting to see the magic. I've learned a lot about our eating patterns and I really like the not being hungry every two hours that I used to feel. I've also seen a significant decrease in the stiffness I've had in my achilles/ankle for the past year. I'm not sure exactly what my post-W30 diet is going to look like yet, but I'm currently re-reading "The Paleo Diet For Athletes" to get some ideas of how I can incorporate this way of eating into my training when it picks up again.

This forum is such a great resource, I'm so grateful to all of you for sharing your stories.

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For a long time I'd been unhappy and frustrated with my weight and the way I felt in general, and knew that I needed to change the way I eat and my relationship with food. I've never been interested in "diets" at all, and was trying to eat in moderation -- except there was no moderation, it was always "yes, eat it!". I went on amazon looking for a book that might help me change... and there was ISWF. I bought it, read it, and completely recognized myself in the pages, particularly the part about "but I eat so healthy!" or whatever it was. What it was, was a wake up call!

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Interesting!!!

June 2012- My soon to be brother in law was hit by a vehicle while riding his bicycle. The driver left the scene, and left him for dead. He ended up having the bottom part of his left leg amputated. As a family we were crushed. He was THE MOST athletic person in either of our families, and was slated to be the best man in our wedding in October 2012. We spent a lot of time at the hospital, and talking about staying active and healthy. His wife kept on telling us to try this diet she was doing, meanwhile I kept bringing cupcakes. (BIL is a sweets freak). He ended up working his ass off in PT, and made it his goal to walk down the isle at our wedding, and he did! Cried my eyes out!! After getting back from our honeymoon, we decided to try said diet- Paleo. After hours on the internet and lots of failed Paleo attempts at dessert I came across Mark Daily Apple; where I eventually came across whole30. So here I am. BIL has just been fitted for a special prosthetic for cycling, and this dude can seriously kick my ass in just about any physical capacity. I think about him often during this whole30, and gave him permission to b*tch slap me with his prosthetic leg when I whine about cheese, or my stye, or some other non important piece of blabla. He's gnarly, and I'm just trying to keep up :)

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I found the Whole 30 on Facebook from an old high school acquaintance that I'm only in touch with because of facebook. She had posted about doing her first cook-up from Well Fed and I asked about it and that got the ball rolling. It took a few months for us to finally start on Jan. 1.

Sharon - we're geeks and gamers right along with you. My husband and I actually met in the MMORPG Age of Conan. We're mostly playing Guild Wars 2 and a few other games these days. What do you play? We both love to play... just gotta fit in more bike riding. :)

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I'd bought a big ebook bundle that included Well Fed months ago, but didn't really make any of it. I figured it probably wasn't something hubby would like, needed special tools, etc., oh well - I got like 20 other books in the bundle or something ridiculous.

Then...I went on a really grain-heavy stint for a while, kept getting sick, decided that I should find some sort of grain-free breakfast option to replace breakfast burritos or English muffin breakfast pizzas. I also wanted something for lunches as I was fresh out of ideas. Enter NomNomPaleo. Bless her heart, I didn't even think my version of the prosciutto egg muffin thingies was that great, but her foods looked SO AMAZING. I was bored and went through her linked pages - FAQ, what's paleo, etc., and it led me to Whole9. I spent about a day thinking about it and finally told hubby (instead of saying "I maybe want to go grain free for a while" like I usually did) I'm not eating grains. I'm going 30 days without grains and without sugar. I am. That's what I'm doing. Whether you understand or not, I'm doing it. I think this might have been helped by the fact that he's doing a marathon and I don't really understand it. So we're each doing something for ourselves that we feel we need to do. He's not quite behind it yet, but I don't care. He can have whatever he wants, but I will not be eating it while I'm Whole30ing, and definitely not if it's something I later decide isn't worth eating (based on my reactions to it).

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I found it because one of my friends posted it to make fun of -- she was like, "Ugh, I could never do this." My husband and I had an incredibly stressful year, and we'd both been trying to adjust our diet for the better. I was mostly vegetarian, so we'd been doing a vegetarian low-carb thing that was only kind of working. I read Whole30, and the focus on nutritious foods made sense to me, so we went for it. I started eating poultry again (in addition to seafood, which I never stopped eating) first Whole30, and now I'm back up to just about everything. Definitely feeling much better over all.

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FaceBook stalking. Kinda, Sorta.

Some time late last year I over heard a co-worker talking about her "weird" sister and her family that ate a strict Paleo diet. Another co-worker chimed in with a tale of his girlfriend doing Paleo for a few weeks at time but never making it a month. He was actually referring to Whole30 but he didn't call it that. They both attempted a rundown of what Paleo is. But given their attitudes about it you can imagine how accurate it was. They just made it sound hokey and dumb. All I walked away with from that conversation was that you can't eat corn. Uh- thanks?!?!

Then in late December the above mentioned girlfriend "liked" Whole9/Whole30 on Facebook. I was like what's that? So clicked and read the “about†-um wow! This could be amazing! I then spent a few days digging all through the Whole9 site, bought the book and set a date to begin my first Whole30. I am now on day 15, so glad I followed her to my new life! :D

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