A lot of people have taken on the Whole30 program, a month-long clean-eating challenge that promises a pack of health and emotional benefits.
The program, which aims to reset your metabolism and reshape your relationship with food was developed by Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, a husband-and-wife team with backgrounds in sports nutrition, anatomy, and physical therapy.
“People have concerns about their health, their mood, their energy, their body weight, their self-confidence, and so many of those things are seriously impacted by our food choices,” says Melissa.
The popular Whole30 diet looks a lot like the Paleo diet which involves consuming low carbohydrates and high protein food items. It requires you to eat 90 meals consisting only of meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, fruit and nuts and nothing else. There are no cheat days or indulging for one month.
The diet completely strips away "hormone-unbalancing, gut-disrupting, inflammatory food groups," considered to be sugar, alcohol, grains, legumes, and dairy.
For Whole30 participants, it's not about stretching the rules of the diet to their furthest limits. It's about learning to enjoy whole, clean, simple food that fuel the body.
The program promises a list of benefits, such as higher energy levels, better quality of sleep, lightened mood and lesser food cravings, especially when it comes to sugar and carbs.
Some people who took the Whole30 challenge credited the program with everything from healing diabetes to treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
The Whole30 program could be a good option for individuals looking to give themselves a healthy reset or discover what food sensitivities they might have.
Although health nutritionist Tanja Guigon-Rech of Nutrition Nation agrees with the benefits that a person can get from the program, but she does not agree with its restrictive nature. "It essentially teaches not to eat processed foods and eat more whole foods, and everyone can do that," she said.
"There is no single diet for everyone; everybody is different, has different nutritional needs and processes food differently," she added.
