So you wanna do the Whole30?

DISCLAIMER: If you’ve added yourself to the list of people participating in this month’s whole30 then I’ve got a couple of thoughts for you. If you consider yourself a bit of a precious flower and are easily offended don’t read any further…

It’s called the Whole30. It’s not the Whole13 or Whole-until-I’ve-had-enough-30 or Whole-except-for-my-friend’s-birthday-30

It goes for 30 days. No more. No less. I mean sure, it’s gonna be tough if you’re still eating bread and pasta and drinking diet coke. Get pissed regularly? Could you lay off the sauce for a month? If you can’t, well there’s another big reason you might find it a battle…

If you’ve attempted this previously and didn’t complete 30 days in a row of strict paleo (w/ no grains, legumes, dairy or sugar – as outlined on the Whole9 website) then guess what? You didn’t do the Whole30.

Whole30 Goals on the whiteboard

If you’re going to put your name down for the whole30 this month then that means you’re putting your name down to commit to 30 days in a row. You can’tout a particular date in the middle of the 30 days because it doesn’t suit your schedule. There are no free passes because it’s your birthday – You signed up for 30 days in a row yeah?! – or did you sign up for that ‘other’ version where it’s 30 days minus the days that would be a bit of an inconvenience for you?!

If this is the reason you haven’t put your name down (eg. you’ve got an upcoming special event like a birthday or an anniversary, etc.) then here’s a news flash for you: There’s never going to be a really good time to do this. As a matter of fact something will always come up and give you an excuse not to do the hard stuff. That’s life in general: There’s always going to be an option to take the easy route and/or make an excuse to avoid the challenging stuff. But you don’t train at Adapt because its easy right?

The truth is that there’s no better time then right now to start the Whole30 (if you haven’t done it or aren’t already doing it) Start this very instant. Go grab yourself a large glass of water, drink it down and write down all the possible excuses that come to mind not to do it. Then take that piece of paper, tear it up and start it from your next meal. There’s so many resources out there in the form of websites and books, dead set chock full of delicious recipes, videos, useful tips and techniques that the only reason you wouldn’t have a go is because your too damn lazy.

Remember the reason you’re doing this. It because you want to have a clue how your body responds to optimum nutrition. Don’t think you’re addicted to sugar?! This gives you a chance to find out what happens when you get off the crack and/or remove inflammatory foods like grains and/or dairy. Maybe you’ll even go as far as finding out that you feel and perform even better without it?! It’s a reset for your body… Taking a day off in the middle means you’ll interupt the experiment and then you’ll never know if it actually works.

I am and always will be a believer in “don’t knock it until you try it” and as you’ve probably heard me say on more than one occasion “If you do A: Smart training with B: Smart nutrition (and yes, the Whole30’s smart nutrition) you get C: Results. If you’ve made up your mind not to do this because A: It’s going to be too hard or B: You just couldn’t be bothered then you get C: You’ll have absolutely no idea whether it works or if it doesn’t. You had a chance to change your life but you wont because your just too lazy?!

I know a gym down the road that happily sells Gatorade and Diet Coke to people like that. Clueless people that think training is reading a magazine on a recumbent cycle – just to ‘tick a box‘ every day. Years down the track they’ll wonder why they haven’t got any results. Yeah, they’ll wonder as they sip on their diet coke…

-
Ben

Training for Friday 3.8.12

A: Snatch vol – EMOTM 1 @ 80% of your 1RM

B: clean and jerk max

C: conditioning.

Post loads and training notes to comments. Why are you doing the whole30? Post that to comments too.