The Whole 30 with Peter

Some of you might be familiar with something called cellulite. I happen to have acquired some over the past several years and recently realized that I’ve become a ‘fat dad’. Symptoms include love handles, fat neck, a slight jiggling when walking, and ill fitting clothes. And some children.

I don’t mind being a fat dad, but I’m aware that it’s not a good trend to set so early on in life. Being a fat dad in your 30’s means you are going to have some trouble later on with all sorts of nasty things like high blood pressure, heart disease, gout, strokes, apnea, etc, etc, etc.

So, it was a good thing that my wife suggested we try out the Whole 30 diet. You can google it, but basically it is no grains (i.e. bread), no sugar, no legumes, no dairy, and no alcohol for 30 days. The idea is for your body to reset over the 30 days. The magicians in charge of this diet say it will change your life.

So, we did it. (Mostly). At day 28 I had enough of this fanaticism and I ate several pure white dinner rolls from Walmart and loved every second of it. But, in the meantime, I can’t say that it was altogether torturous.

The first week was the hardest, I kept having visions of custard-stuffed-french-toast with icing sugar, strawberries, and whipping cream. But after the first week it wasn’t too bad, it was just hard being hungry all the time, but you get used to it.

It was easier for me than for my wife Debby, because she was the one doing all the planning, shopping and cooking under the restrictions. This involved a lot of coconut oil and a lot of meat.

By the end I had lost 17 pounds. I think cutting out sugar and grains was the main contributor to that weight loss. All the other stuff they mentioned about the diet changing your life was not the case. I think if you already have a fairly balanced diet (which means NOT drinking 2 liters of Coke a day) you won’t feel a lot of change besides weight loss.

Would I recommend trying it? Yes. It was a good experience, but I would say you will probably fail if you are doing it by yourself, especially if you are doing your own shopping and meal preparation. And yes, if you don’t mind robbing joy from your life for 30 days.

The end!

Peter