Screw the Whole 30 Diet
From hero to zero in 36 hours.
On January 2, I started my second annual “Whole 30.” In case you haven’t heard, this 30-day program asks you to take all the foods you might normally find tasty and throw them in the trash. These include anything sweet besides fruit, grain, dairy, soy, seed oils, factory-farmed meats, fake anything and processed anything. If a trace of any of these passes your lips, you’re either done or Day 1. A book, a website, an email series, countless blogs, success stories, and forums are available to support the trip from pudge to purity.
This program is a beautiful experience for many people. Most of them lose weight. Many of them heal their bodies from terrible allergic reactions to things like dairy and gluten. They sleep better. Their libidos increase. They achieve a dietary nirvana.
And then there’s me.
My results were even worse than when I tried (and ultimately rejected) this plan two years ago. Two years ago I made it for two weeks. I remember wandering around the Flatiron in NYC at lunchtime despairing over the lack of unprocessed food options, eating tablespoons of almond butter at night to fill the void.
My then-boyfriend had it much worse. He’s a TV production manager who travels, and I’d get desperate calls from tiny backwater locations. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than a 250-pound muscle-packed dude practically crying from hunger after eating nothing but salad in one diner after another.
“Is it Whole 30 if I peel the onion rings?” he might ask me hopefully, our relationship then too new to do the sane thing and throw in the towel.
This year? This year I did a Whole 3. Yep, it took me about 36 hours to stray from the path. My toothsome treat—I mean, cheat—was cream in my morning coffee. (The boyfriend? Now he’s the husband, and he laughed in my face and refused the diet entirely, highlighting the difference between dating and marriage.)
Those first two mornings of my 2014 Whole 30, I got up, and somewhere between bedroom and kitchen felt my world collapse as I remembered the sad, dairy-free liquid waiting for me once the water boiled. And so I decided that I’d take my coffee with cream on morning three. This was no impulse but a considered thought process that added up to one conclusion: To hell with it.
And I wasn’t disappointed. I can drink my coffee black. I can tolerate it, just barely, with coconut milk. But I can only truly enjoy it with cream. That exact perfect creamy, opaque caramel color. That luscious mouthfeel. That rich flavor. I’ve tried everything else and nothing can replicate it.
It turns out that the way I want to start every day is with a small pleasure, and for me, when it comes to coffee, milk is what it takes.
I came to realize that everything that makes me resist the Whole 30 can be found in that morning cup of coffee. It is shameful, but I am content to let my food choices be driven by base urges, pleasure and vanity chief among them. Yes, yes, I know: It IS the Whole 30 not the Whole 365. But life is short. What if I got hit by a bus on a day of almond-milk-flavored coffee? This would be tragic.
Of course, health and ethics do both inform what I eat. But aside from my obvious shortcomings as a person, I see danger in the quest for purity through food. It can verge on obsession, and there’s a big world out there, folks. Places to go, people to see, problems to confront, happenings to celebrate.
So when it comes to food, and so many other things, I’m willing to be a little bit dirty. Especially if it means I can put more energy and willpower into other pursuits. I will add that I am extremely thankful that my relatively good health allows me to be so cavalier.
And so, I’ve continued onward into sloth with something very like the Whole 30, but not the Whole 30 at all. Let’s call it the 98% 30, with the percentage declining weekly. On day 10 I hit the vino and the chocolate mousse at a nice celebratory dinner and didn’t feel even the slightest bit of guilt.
I’m a Whole 30 failure—a sinner, a deviant, a zero. Thank goodness that sustainable healthy habits are not a zero-sum game.
