BIG MAD SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT - Whole30 (2.5.21)
I did Whole30 so you don't have to.
Like most people who hate themselves, every January 1st I embark on some new, ill-conceived diet or exercise regiment. The arbitrary turning of the calendar is the perfect opportunity to change your habits and by extension your life. Even though time is fake and dates are a construct, we humans love to use the new year as a natural bookend to the shitty old life we had last year and the awesome new one we will live this year.
In years past, my reform efforts have mostly been concerned with drinking and drugging. For the past 5 years or so my plan is usually to drink myself into oblivion on New Years Eve, so much so that I donāt want to touch alcohol for a whole month. And most years, itās a rounding success. I get āpiss my pantsā level drunk and the residual shame and hangover propel me through the whole month. The first week or so is usually terrible, but after that itās always smooth sailing. January is also the perfect month to experiment with sobriety because it lacks any holidays or significant alcohol-related events to tempt you, and here in the northeast itās cold and shitty outside.
The first few years I just gave up alcohol, allowing myself to still get stoned on the premise that āweed doesnāt have any caloriesā. However this resulted in me getting twice as high as I normally did, which kind of defeated the whole purpose of the exercise. So I moved to no psychoactive substances whatsoever (except coffee.) A whole month of straight-edge sobriety. Just me and my thoughts. It made for some extremely boring Friday nights, but it was nice to at least temporarily lift the marijuana-induced mental fog stoners know all too well.
This year I decided that since 2020 was such an nightmare, I would start 2021 with 30 days of absolute torture to help make the other 335 days of the year at the very least seem better by comparison. January would be my proverbial shot of Jameson while the remaining months would be the briny pickle juice chaser to make the rest go down smooth. I decided to combine 30 days of stone-cold sobriety with perhaps one of the most sadistic diets ever conceived: Whole30.
What is Whole30?
Whole30 is a āfood experimentā started by some food blogger named Melissa in 2009. Melissa is the woman in the picture above, and she is basically the Paul Newman of Whole30. I did not bother to read any of her fifty blog posts discussing her āWhole30 journeyā but her face is literally everywhere. The premise of the diet is pretty simple. You cut out grains, sugar, alcohol, dairy, gluten, and processed foods from your diet for a whole month to completely ween yourself off, thus āresettingā your bodyās reaction to those foods. Then you slowly introduce those foods back one by one, in order to better understand how they are affecting your body and your wellbeing.
It seemed pretty simple to me. And I was intrigued at the idea that I could conveniently blame my health woes on eating too much sugar or carbs. But once you look at all the literature and read all the blogs, you start to realize that basically every good food on planet earth has one of these things in it. The Whole30 website provides a handy shopping cheat-sheet of allowable foods, and the list is comically small.
Nevertheless, because I am a sadist, I boldly embarked upon my experiment of deprivation. On New Years Eve I drank my apartment dry, ingested all the weed gummies I had stashed away, and threw out every remotely delicious food item I could find. SO IT HAD BEGUN!
Day 1 to Day 10: Withdrawal
The first ten days were by far the hardest. Not necessarily because I was craving those foods I couldnāt have. At that point I was still all gung ho about the whole thing, so any feelings of hunger or any cravings I was having would be trumped by the sheer force of will.
And the meals that I was eating werenāt really that different. I was still cooking and eating much of the same meals I had enjoyed before, except with slight tweaks. We had taco salads instead of regular tacos on Taco Tuesday. I had to replace the splash of almond milk I put in my morning coffee with a chalky, unsweetened version. Iām not six years old so I had no problem replacing sides of pasta or rice with another vegetable.
The hard part was that I was experiencing physical symptoms of withdrawal. I had a constant low grade headache that no amount of water or Advil could curb. I couldnāt sleep. I didnāt take a solid shit for like the first two weeks. The Whole30 website said that this was normal, and that the symptoms would subside. Eventually they did, but those first ten days felt like I was coming down with coronavirus.
(Not to mention the whole failed coup thing that happened a mere six days in that had me seriously considering pouring myself a glass of scotch or downing a handful of weed gummies to calm the nerves.)
Day 11 to Day 20: Resignation
During this middle part, things werenāt so bad. The physical symptoms of withdrawal had subsided, and I had become more or less resigned to my situation. I had come to terms with what I could and couldnāt eat. Also, I started to actually āfeelā better. I noticed increased energy levels and I was waking up less groggy.
However what was strange was that started to obsess over all of my meals. I would basically spend the entire day planning elaborate dinners which I would cook that evening. Iād scour the internet for Whole30-friendly recipes. Iād trudge through the cold to the Star Market around the corner to get some key ingredient I failed to put on my meticulously planned grocery lists. Iād spend hours prepping ingredients and standing vigil over my crockpot to make sure my chili was seasoned right or my pork shoulder was cooking evenly.
I do genuinely love to cook, but during this part of the Whole30 challenge I must admit that I really went overboard with it. Most nights my partner and I just pow-wow at 3:30pm to look over our fridge and throw something together on the fly. But for this stretch I spent basically 90% of my waking hours thinking about dinner. I binged every single season of Iron Chef America hoping I could pick up on some fancy technique or inspiration.
I suppose that this sort of fixation kind of makes sense given the circumstances. There were so many rules and regulations surrounding what I could and couldnāt consume that I felt like I had to be thorough in my preparation so as not to accidentally fuck up. I also feel like I didnāt want to deprive myself of good tasting food. I didnāt want to feel like I was punishing myself. So to compensate for the lack of flexibility in ingredients I tried to make up for it in elaborate preparation.
Day 21 to Day 30: Obsession
At this point in the experiment, I pretty much settled into a consistent routine as far as meal preparation went. I had found a few quick and relatively easy recipes that I could throw together on the fly for the nights I didnāt feel like standing over the stove for 2 hours. I also discovered Beef and Country Vegetable Chunky Soup, which is pretty much the only Whole30-approved canned soup product that doesnāt taste like watered down dogshit.
The hard part about this section was that I could see the light at the end of the tunnel. I was on the proverbial 5 yard line, and it became increasingly difficult not to just spike it at the 1 like DeSean Jackson did that one time. One night my partner decided to have rice to accompany some curry I made, and I remember having to muster all my inner strength not to just eat a handful straight out of the rice cooker like an animal. Also shoutout to her for essentially doing Whole30-lite as result of sharing a kitchen and grocery list with me.
During this time, I really started to crave some of the foods I was depriving myself of. Since I am not a millionaire I have a Hulu subscription with ads, and I had to stop watching Hulu altogether because I kept seeing the same Pizza Hut commercial and I couldnāt bear watching that stuffed crust cheese pizza over and over again. One of my good friends is also doing Whole30, and at the beginning it was a wonderful boost to have someone to commiserate with and share hacks with. However by the end of the month, we were basically just sending each other pictures of cheeseburgers and discussing how many puppies we would kick to have an Italian sub again.
To help quell those cravings, I tried to incorporate some Whole30 replacements. I love honey mustard on salads, so I purchased a Whole30-friendly honey mustard dressing that basically tasted like watered down Frenchās mustard. I was so bad that it might have ruined honey mustard forever. I was really craving pasta one night so I made a red lentil-based pasta that tasted like a rubbery pasta toy that a kid might play with. I realized that trying to have these bullshit replacements would only make those cravings worse, so I had to find another way to deal.
So I told myself that as a reward for completing the whole 30 days, I would allow myself to participate in a āmukbangā on January 31st. A mukbang is a form of niche internet pornography, popular in South Korea, where petite women consume disgusting amounts of food live on camera, presumably for the pleasure of perverted businessmen. During that final 10 day stretch I would literally fantasize about what I was going to order for my mukbang. Like a kid awaiting Christmas, I couldnāt sleep for like the three days leading up to the mukbang becuase I was so excited. For fucks sake I made a Christmas list but for food. This is directly from my Notes app:
Day 31: Mukbang
The day was finally here. I woke up early, skipped breakfast (of course), and went on a long run to help stimulate my appetite. At about 1:30pm, my $86 Uber Eats order was dropped off. My order included an entire pizza, two cheeseburgers, an order of loaded waffle fries, a bag of Oreos, and several different types of booze. Here it was in all itās glory:
To the average person, this doesnāt look particularly appetizing. And the truth was is wasnāt that good. But to someone who hasnāt ingested a carb or dairy product for 30 days, I was like a pig in shit. By 1:45pm, I couldnāt bring myself to take another bite. I managed to eat one slice of pizza, half a burger, a handful of fries, and about 6 Oreos. Couldnāt even bring myself to take a sip of alcohol. An absolutely weak showing for someone who used to be able to eat 4 pieces of pizza and guzzle a pitcher of beer like it was nothing.
By 2:00pm, I was prone in bed, unable to move. I felt an acute stomach ache and nausea coming on. My head hurt. My body was sore like I had went 10 rounds with Mike Tyson. My heart rate soared. I spent the next two hours feeling too sick to take a nap and too tired to summon the energy to sit upright. Those that know me know my secret super power is a stomach of steel, and here I was knocked on my ass by some pizza and half a burger.
The mukbang was definitely a mistake. I probably should have followed the directions laid out by the Whole30 people and introduced all this food gradually and carefully. But if 24 hours of digestive hell was what it took for me to get through the 30 days, I would consider it worth it.
The Verdict
Was Whole30 worth it? In my professional opinion, it definitely was. I canāt quite put a finger on why, but I definitely felt better during that whole month. I felt like I had more energy, and I never got out of bed feeling groggy or sick. Iām sure a certain amount of that was the placebo effect borne out of the knowledge that I was at least trying to be healthy. But it was effective nonetheless.
My relationship to food and ingredients have definitely changed for the better as well. I think that this whole experiment has caused me to be much more deliberate about what Iām consuming and more aware about itās affect on my body. Although it feels pretty obvious to point out that when you put unhealthy crap into your body you ultimately feel like crap, I now have a better understanding of how it makes me feel like crap. And I think this was pretty much the whole point of the exercise in the first place, so I suppose mission accomplished.
That all being said, it was a lot of work. It took a lot of mental bandwidth to be so deliberate about planning meals and diligently checking ingredients labels. It was honestly a pain in the ass. But I think that in the end the juice was worth the squeeze.
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unreal