A take on the Whole 30

I love parts of the Whole 30 diet.  

Eating foods with very few ingredients ✓
Consuming ingredients that you can pronounce ✓
Healthy gut ✓
 
Given these great parts, I (and many other RDs I know) still rarely recommend the Whole 30 diet to clients. It’s simply too unrealistic for most people. For example, there’s oftentimes a conversation like the one below.

Following this type of conversation, are a few days of diet misery and then some rationale to quit.
 
Bottom line, diet choices affect many things. Some of the majors factors include:

1. Prep Skill and Time: Whole 30 requires a ton of preparation, which is a skill in itself. Most people (even experts) still struggle with weekly meal prep. In addition, most people need to research and become knowledgeable enough to prep the right way!
2. Knowledge: Part of the Whole 30 preparation requires massive amounts of time reading, reading, and reading nutrition labels. This includes reading the labels of products that appear healthy, but actually are not.
3. Lifetime habits: Whole 30 It isn’t a true representation of how most individuals will eat over the course of their lifetime. For instance, I love legumes…I think they are a nutritious source of protein for almost everyone and should be included in many people’s diets.
4. Taste: It will take time to learn how to make food delicious and with enough variety that it will provide lasting enjoyment.

 
Instead of suddenly diving into a popular trend diet, work with a dietitian on a plan that is tailored to you. This will ensure that it’s realistic. In addition, it adds a level of accountability because you helped create the plan. There is also ample research that shows how elimination diets (no dairy, no wheat, etc.) can actually have detrimental effects for people who don’t really have food allergies or intolerances. All in all, take the positives from this diet trend (e.g., think about how you can add more vegetables) and add it to your own tailored program. ​