Why I quit the Whole30

Before I finally gained control overmy health, I was QUICK to jump on any and every band wagon that came along if
it promised to make me weigh less or look better.

If I noticed a friend had found success losing weight with any certain plan, I
was willing to try it. Over the years I’ve tried to grapefruit diet, Low Carb, WeightWatchers,
Slim Fast, Shakeology, Excessive calorie counting and cardio, the 72 hour diet,
and several other crazy ideas.

I would take a plan that had worked for someone else and then try to manipulate
results so that I could do the same. But they all had two common denominators:
They weren’t sustainable for more than a few weeks or months at a time, and they
caused me to take my focus off of the real motivation for getting healthy and
to place it onto the scale. 

Thankfully, I’ve learned A LOT on
this journey over the past 26 months and God has been so faithful to help me
find a new path. I no longer look to a number on the scale or on my clothing to
determine my worth, and I no longer think that I have to use some strict plan
to stay healthy. I do my best to eat in a way that honors God and a way that
makes me feel healthy.

Last year, my husband approached me about trying to do a 30 day detox plan
together. It was called the Whole30 and was based on the book It Starts With
Food. The basic premise is that the foods we eat may be potentially harmful
to our bodies due to food sensitivities and that by eliminating these food
groups, your body can heal. They encourage you to throw out the scale for the
entire 30 days and to stick to the plan without compromise so that you can
truly gauge how you feel without having the offending foods in your
system. 

We decided together that the best time to attempt this lifestyle overhaul would
be on January 1st 2015 and that we would do it together. The only
problem…after all that God revealed to me at Revelation Wellness InstructorTraining retreat, I realized that I personally had issues with taking a ‘good
thing’ and letting it become my ‘god thing’. Stated differently, I tend to
allow things to take on more power than they should and they become a form of
idol in my life.

I had committed to my husband that I would do this plan with him, and to a
couple of our friends, so I didn’t feel like I could back out, so I determined
that I would do the Whole30 with him and that I would be able to make it about
Jesus. 

And friends, I tried. I did.

 I struggled through the effects of my body
detoxing from sugar, I put up with the crazy dreams, mood swings, and headaches that come when your body
begins eliminating offending foods and healing. I bought specialty ingredients,
I cooked new recipes and meal prepped my little self to death. I utilized
message boards and facebook groups of others who were completing the Whole30 at
the same time, and tried to white knuckle my way through.

But the further I got into the plan, the more I started to see that I had once
again let a plan hijack my purpose and my focus. It was behavior modification
for the wrong reasons and put me into a restrictive mindset. For me, it became
yet another time when I would base my worth off of my performance or on how I
did that day with my food choices. I constantly was thinking about food, what I
could have, what I could not have, and what it was doing to my weight. I began
focusing on what I could not eat more than on my personal walk and so I had to
set it down.

After 21 days eating no grains of
any sort, no dairy, no legumes, no soy, no sugar, no processed foods, I ended
it.

My husband continued and my friends continued, but I knew that for me, it brought
up too many of my food issues that apparently had not yet been fully resolved.

And looking back now almost one month later, I know it was the right choice. I
am still working through some of the issues it brought up, and struggling to
recalibrate my thought patterns to what I KNOW to be true in my heart.

 I learned a lot about my own personal health
during the 21 days that I did, learned some lessons about endurance and
perseverance, and also gained some insight into some work left to be done in my
heart. For me, the Whole30 wasn’t the best choice (due to my own strongholds),
but for many of you, it may be a great choice. Please do not read this and be discouraged if you are considering your own Whole30 journey- it may be the PERFECT plan for you. But I encourage each of you before you start ANY plan to search your heart. Commit it to God and see how He wants to work in your life through it. And if at any point you begin to see red flags that your “good thing” is taking you further from Him then SET IT DOWN.

It won’t matter how healthy your body may be if your heart is far from Him. No number on a scale or in a clothing size is worth it. NONE.

For those that are curious as to how the 30 days went and some recipe ideas, come
back in the next couple days for a full run-down of foods we ate as well as descriptions of
how the detox affected me each day. I would love to give you some details and some resources you can use if you decide to pursue your own Whole30.