In July of last year, my husband and I did a Whole30 together. I wanted to do one, and he told me he would do one with me as a gift. It was fun and motivating to do something for our health together, and we were forced to plan meals, so it worked out well for both of us. We did nothing else differently and both felt great, and my husband also lost weight.

I am not one who has ever done diets. I have never liked or agreed with the idea of them, but this, to me, was more like a cleanse and I thought there were great reasons for doing it. I thought abstaining from sugar and eating completely clean for a month was a great idea. I wanted to do a Whole30 because it is a nutritional reset which is designed to help you squash unhealthy cravings and identify how certain foods affect you.

Before Whole30, my husband and I didn’t eat much meat. In fact, I wasn’t sure how I felt about eating a whole lot more meat than usual, but I wanted to follow the program and give it a chance. We usually ate smaller meals/snacks more frequently throughout the day, and part of Whole30 is sticking to three full meals. The Whole30 approach took a bit of time to get used to, but it wasn’t long before we felt satisfied and sustained between meals and didn’t need to have a snack anymore. It felt really great, actually. I wasn’t getting brain fog during the work day, running low on energy, or feeling light-headed or a headache coming on if I started to get hungry. I felt more energetic and my energy was sustained throughout the day. There were no “crashes.” My husband experienced these things also, and we didn’t have the side effects we’d get from eating dairy and sugar, two things not allowed on the program.

I want to do another Whole30, and make it a Whole45 this time, because last time we didn’t do the reintroduction part afterwards as the program outlines. I honestly wasn’t aware of it at the time. The reintroduction phase is meant to help you identify how food categories not allowed on the program affect you (gluten-containing grains, non-gluten grains, dairy, and legumes). Additionally, both of us also have quite the sweet tooth, and it’d be great to get that under better control so we can still choose to enjoy it when it’s special but not go crazy.

More on this next time, and how I plan to document my Whole45 experience on the blog!