Getting Healthy in 2018 with the Whole 30

As the holiday season begins and we start to look to the New Year, many of us have set some amazing goals for 2018.  In order to accomplish those goals, you need to make sure that your body is healthy and functioning at its best!  For New Year’s resolutions, people often turn to lofty diet fads that end within a week of when it started.  At LifeLong Health Chiropractic, we are focusing on a long term health plan in order to change your health for the better in 2018!  As always, our primary focus in our office is to make sure your nervous system is functioning at its best by making adjustments to the spine.  In addition, for the month of January, we are also going to be doing a Whole30 eating program open to all practice members and the public (invite your friends!).

The Whole30 program is a 30 day program designed to help clean up your diet and jump start you into cleaner, healthier eating.  The program is unlike other diets that result in eating limited portions and being hungry all the time.  Instead, the Whole30 focuses on making realistic changes that your body can handle for 30 days and even longer if you desire.  This is accomplished by eliminating certain foods and ingredients that will spike your blood sugar, disturb our digestion, and contain artificial ingredients.  Listed below are the official rules from the Whole30 website:

Do Eat:

Eat moderate portions of meat, seafood, and eggs; lots of vegetables; some fruit; plenty of natural fats; and herbs, spices, and seasonings. Eat foods with very few ingredients, all pronounceable ingredients, or better yet, no ingredients listed at all because they’re whole and unprocessed.

Do Not eat:

• Do not consume added sugar, real or artificial. No maple syrup, honey, agave nectar, coconut sugar, date syrup, stevia, Splenda, Equal, Nutrasweet, xylitol, etc. Read your labels, because companies sneak sugar into products in ways you might not recognize.
• Do not consume alcohol, in any form, not even for cooking.(And ideally, no tobacco products of any sort, either.)
• Do not eat grains. This includes (but is not limited to) wheat, rye, barley, oats, corn, rice, millet, bulgur, sorghum, sprouted grains, and all gluten-free pseudo-cereals like quinoa, amaranth, and buckwheat. This also includes all the ways we add wheat, corn, and rice into our foods in the form of bran, germ, starch, and so on. Again, read your labels.
• Do not eat legumes. This includes beans of all kinds (black, red, pinto, navy, white, kidney, lima, fava, etc.), peas, chickpeas, lentils, and peanuts. No peanut butter, either. This also includes all forms of soy – soy sauce, miso, tofu, tempeh, edamame, and all the ways we sneak soy into foods (like lecithin).
• Do not eat dairy. This includes cow, goat, or sheep’s milk products like milk, cream, cheese, kefir, yogurt, sour cream, ice cream, or frozen yogurt.
• Do not consume carrageenan, MSG, or sulfites. If these ingredients appear in any form on the label of your processed food or beverage, it’s out for the Whole30.
• Do not consume baked goods, junk foods, or treats with “approved” ingredients. Recreating or buying sweets, treats, and foods-with-no-brakes (even if the ingredients are technically compliant) is totally missing the point of the Whole30, and will compromise your life-changing results. These are the same foods that got you into health-trouble in the first place—and a pancake is still a pancake, even if it’s made with coconut flour.

The diet program may seem like a lot, but you will find that as you do it, the health benefits will far outweigh the sacrifice of giving up certain foods.  Listed below are just few of the amazing benefits of the Whole30:

• More energy throughout the day due to a stable blood sugar
• Less bloating and better digestion
• Better sleep
• Weight loss
• A sharper, clearer mind
• Better mood
• Decreased joint pain and stiffness

Those are just a few of the many benefits of the following through with the Whole30.  

We will have an official event in our office to kick off the Whole30 on January 9th at 6:30pm at LifeLong Health Chiropractic .  We will be going over the rules, share recipe ideas, and eat dishes that are Whole30 approved.  In addition we will have a Facebook page for everyone who is doing the Whole30 in order to encourage each other throughout the month and also to share recipes and ideas.  RSVP to the event here:  https://business.facebook.com/events/144028783035187/