Reintroduction after whole30?
May 23, 2017 6:47 AM   Subscribe

I'm currently on Day 29 of whole30. According to the rules of the program, I should spend the next ten days reintroducing foods to see if I have a reaction. The problem is, I don't feel much different (other than a little bit of weight loss)... so should I even bother?

I would love to get some advice from folks who have done this with good or bad results. I am not on a tear to suddenly eat everything I couldn't eat for the last four weeks, but I am frustrated that a program called "whole30" is actually "whole40" where I have to spend 10 more days obsessing about certain ingredients. This is compounded by my fear that I will spend 10 days trying this and that and see no results.

I feel like I did learn a lot about myself, and one of those lessons is that I don't really miss sugar. What I also learned is that obsessing over ingredients is very time consuming and cuts down on how social I can be since nearly every restaurant lacks compliant options.
posted by obtuser to Food & Drink (3 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
When I did whole30, a whole set of gastrointestinal problems I had went away, along with a lot of weight and clearer skin. It was really instructive to identify which foods to avoid. If you haven't had that experience, then what whole30 proved to you is that your regular diet generally agrees with you. I wouldn't feel guilty about skipping the reintroductory stage in your case.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 7:17 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


Best answer: You know that analogy about the frog in a pot of boiling water? Changes happen gradually, which is why the program is 30 days long and not one week. The idea of the reintro is to reintroduce those things SLOWLY, in the event that, say, after 30 days without cheese, it turns out cheese really does upset your stomach. You won't know until you try to eat the eliminated foods, but if you eat them all in one go and get sick you also won't know what caused it.

I mean, no one is forcing you to do the reintro, just like no one forced you to do Whole30, but IMO you won't be getting the full benefits of the program if you skip the last part.

(Three-time Whole30-er here. I skipped the reintro on my first one.)
posted by Brittanie at 7:28 AM on May 23, 2017 [3 favorites]


Yeah, in my experience with it, coming from a lightly low-carb lifestyle to start with and so not having what felt like dramatic changes during the program, it was in the reintroduction phase that some stuff became more obviously clear to me: dairy definitely has some digestive consequences, and gluten certainly left me puffy-faced the next day, and things are digestively a little better for me with moderate legumes.

That's how an elimination diet works, it's often not really about the going-off except to let your body forget about them a little so you can see what happens with the going-on. It's an allergy test, basically. That's why you only try one thing at a time.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:04 AM on May 23, 2017 [5 favorites]


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