Dear Steph: My thoughts on Whole30
Pros, cons, and considerations
This Substack is intended to provide nuance to the confusing, conflicting nutrition information that permeates social media and casual conversations.
It’s also a place where I can chat with you, like a friend and someone who deeply cares about your physical and mental well-being. It’s a place where I can hold space for those with goals that go against what society says is okay to want (i.e., weight loss or fitness/aesthetic goals).
With that, I commonly receive questions like this,
“What do you think about ____ diet?”
On the surface, it seems like a simple question with a simple, short answer. In reality, I typically have about 30 follow-up questions to guide you appropriately.
The annoying, unsexy answer, “It depends…”.
RED FLAG: Any credible practitioner with years of experience working with individuals will tell you they’re often humbled by science and people’s lived experiences. Sometimes, your intuition or evidence-based research doesn’t line up with the person in front of you. Nutrition is an art and a science.
My honest thoughts on Whole30
So, with all of this in mind, let’s break down how I typically respond to the question, “What do you think about Whole30?”
First, let’s highlight a few pros, cons, and considerations. If you aren’t familiar with the program, you can learn more here.
PROS:
The program is based on the gold-standard framework of an elimination diet, which helps individuals identify food intolerances/sensitivities.
If you think you have symptoms associated with eating dairy, gluten, or soy, the full program (elimination + reintroduction) can help you identify if a specific food or food group is the culprit. I often recommend this over a blood test. Food intolerance testing is riddled with false positives and often leads to individuals removing more from their diet than what’s truly necessary.
Symptoms of a food intolerance include skin irritations, stomach pain, diarrhea or nausea, gas and bloating, headaches or migraines, heartburn, and others.
The program prioritizes whole, minimally processed foods.
Nobody can argue with this point. It’s an incredibly nutrient-dense template.
It requires you to become more aware of what you’re eating.
It requires proactive planning and attention to packaged foods' ingredients.
It offers flexibility - you choose which foods align with your values, budget, and preferences.
Hate fish? Don’t eat pork? Can’t stand Brussels sprouts? Can’t afford organic? You still have plenty of options. There are endless combinations of protein, veggies, fruit, and fat that you can enjoy.
It encourages you to rethink your habits and subconscious behaviors.
This includes your alcohol consumption, your coping strategies, and emotional eating.
It encourages you to get in the kitchen.
While this may feel like a con because of the additional time, energy, and dishes, we can all benefit from learning how to cook and refining our skills. It also saves money in the long run.
It focuses on Non-Scale Victories.
Instead of using the scale to interpret how well you’re doing, you look at how healthy food impacts your skin, digestion, energy, mood, and other health symptoms. Paying attention to how food impacts nearly every aspect of your well-being can be life-changing.
You have access to free resources.
The Whole30 team generously offers free handouts, recipes, and a supportive community to help you through an elimination diet. This is often missing in other programs.
CONS:
People often skip the reintroduction.
The Whole30 isn’t just a 30-day program. It’s 30 days of eliminating specific foods, then reintroducing them systematically, one by one, to determine whether or not they work for you. From there, YOU get to decide which foods you want to prioritize, limit, or avoid indefinitely.
While this isn’t a fault of the program, some individuals either intentionally skip the reintroduction and eat “all the things” immediately after the 30 days, or they aren’t aware of the importance. In order to determine how foods are impacting you and move on to the next step (food freedom), you need to do a proper reintroduction.
Doing it for the wrong reasons.
If your only goal is losing weight or wanting a quick reset, please consider a different approach. While the Whole30 can be helpful for weight loss, that’s not what it’s designed for.
The program's dietary restrictions are designed to help you identify an eating pattern that supports your health, habits, and relationship with food. However, they can be overly restrictive for longer-term weight loss goals, and there are other, more sustainable ways to approach weight loss.
Doing it because of peer pressure vs personal conviction.
The Whole30 isn’t easy, so make sure you go into it with the understanding that it will require planning, attention to detail, and a bit of willpower. Just because all of your friends are doing it doesn’t mean it’s the right time or option for you.
It eliminates legumes and whole grains, which may not be necessary.
Some people experience gas, bloating, or other issues with legumes, which is one of the reasons they are off the table during the Whole30. Additionally, some individuals do not tolerate soy. Legumes have many health-promoting qualities, so this restriction may not be necessary for everyone.
It is nearly impossible to create a program that is easy to understand and applicable to everyone. If you thrive on legumes or specific whole grains and want to include them, you can still do an elimination diet similar to the Whole30; it just technically wouldn’t be the same program.
It can be challenging for highly active individuals to eat enough carbs.
Dense carb sources on the Whole30 include potatoes and other root vegetables, winter squash, and fruit. These foods also contain fiber and can be more satiating than other more processed carbohydrate sources like rice or bread. Highly active individuals often need to eat a decent portion of these carb sources at most meals to fuel their training.
Still on the fence? Here are some considerations:
CONSIDERATIONS:
Remove any personal judgments you may have that certain foods are “Good” or “Bad” based on the program’s “Eat” and “Do not eat” lists.
While on the surface, it may look like these labels are aligned, they are far from it. The “do not eat” list may not apply to everyone long-term and does not represent foods that are “bad”; they are just unknown. This experiment will help you determine how well these foods work for you.
Align the program with your budget and capacity:
Match the quality of food with your budget - you don’t need to choose organic, grass-fed, and wild-caught options if that’s not available to you.
Match your capacity with convenience—if you have more resources than time, you can purchase pre-made Whole30-approved products like sauces, dips, and meal delivery services.
Those on GLP-1:
A whole-food diet is more satiating than the standard American diet. Combine the satiating principles of water-dense, fiber- and protein-rich foods with the satiating effects of GLP-1, and you may find yourself going too low in calories. These individuals will need to monitor their overall dietary intake more carefully and prioritize protein.
They’ll likely benefit from digestive enzymes, bitters, collagen peptides and Whole30 compatible protein powders to make the experience more comfortable and not risk muscle loss.
Kids:
It depends! At the end of the day, it always comes back to your context, your reason for doing it, and your capacity. It feels like a natural fit for some families, and for others, the stress or logistics don’t align.
Check out this nuanced discussion.
Pregnancy/nursing:
Those with disordered eating or eating disorders:
I highly recommend those with disorder eating or eating disorders reconsider doing a Whole30, or any program with rigid rules. Always talk to your therapist or healthcare professional to make sure it makes sense for your context.
Vegans or strict vegetarians:
Use the Plant-Based Whole30 program (which I helped create!) if you eat less than two animal sources or want to do a whole-foods based, vegan elimination diet.
Supplementation:
Even with a whole-food diet, I recommend supplementing with a multivitamin, fish oil, magnesium, and vitamin D. Unfortunately, many brands contain fillers or other incompatible excipients.
Here are Whole30 compatible options.
NEW CHANGES:
The New Whole30 book was just released, and with the announcement came questions about new updates and rule changes, most notably about the decision to allow any cooking oils, regardless of the source. According to Whole30, this means “you are now free to cook with a variety of oils, like extra-virgin olive oil, coconut oil, cultured oil, canola oil, or sunflower oil.”
Because I used to work for the company and because vegetable oils have somehow created an uproar in wellness circles, many have asked if I’m on board with this or my thoughts. I could probably write an entire substack about this topic, but I won’t.
What I will say is this presents a good opportunity for many of us to pause. It requires us to take responsibility for our instinctual response to pick a side or immediately dismiss something that challenges belief systems.
So here’s my attempt to be concise, and provide an answer.
TL:DR - I think people are making it a bigger deal than it is.
Have you ever consumed a meal at a restaurant? Have you ever had a potato chip? You’ve consumed vegetable oil. It’s okay.
If you are in the “vegetable oils are the worst thing ever” camp, take a deep breath. Nothing about this new rule change demands that you or anyone else consume them. They are not being highlighted as a superfood that should be prioritized in our diet. And there aren’t any valid or reasonable conspiracies about why they are now included.
Over the years, I’ve witnessed the necessary and thoughtful revisions the Whole30 team has made to their program for accessibility, removing barriers for individuals who want to do the program. When you’re doing the Whole30, you’re eating a mostly whole foods diet and eliminating ultra-processed foods that contain vegetable oil. You’re also not consuming highly processed foods deep-fried in vegetable oil. You’re putting your body in a state of lowered inflammation. You’re choosing foods that are free of trans fats (the form I’m most concerned about) and rich in mono, poly, and saturated fat in the context of a low-sugar/low-glycemic diet. This is good!
Would I still recommend choosing oils like avocado, ghee, and extra virgin olive oil whenever you can? Yes. Do I think we should dismiss the integrity of the program or make a big deal out of the inclusion? Absolutely not.
The lesson? When you’re triggered, take a deeper look at why it’s bothering you and if you’re potentially projecting a story that isn’t true.
So what now?
Nearly everyone can benefit from an elimination diet at some point in their life to better understand how foods impact their health. You get to choose when or IF you do one, and if the Whole30 or a different template works best for you.
If you go into the Whole30 with the right intentions—to learn about how certain foods impact your overall health and vitality—and you do a full reintroduction and food freedom, the experience can be life-changing. And I don’t take that phrase lightly; I’ve heard it from countless people over the years.
So, who should decide if the program makes sense for you? Only you can decide. I hope these pros/cons/considerations help!
Disclosure: I worked for the Whole30 for many years and have first-hand experience working with the team on their approach to the program, revisions, and the intention behind every decision. I admire their dedication to reviewing and revising the program in the spirit of inclusivity, new evidence, and nuance. I stand behind the fact that the program is extremely helpful when the considerations above are kept in mind.
I really love reading this and the gentle reminder that it's an opportunity to be curious and intuitive, rather than rigid.
This is so good Steph! I love your all-around approach to determining whether a Whole30 is right for every individual, not just a black and white “this is a good/bad program.” We all live in the gray area and having views from both sides is so helpful. Thank you!