Clean Eating with Dirty Whole 30

Why is it dirty?  Because if it’s dirty I’m more interested.  Like my music: if I clutch my pearls and gasp with shock, I loooove it!  Calling it the Dirty Whole 30 makes it sound mysterious and luridly licentious even though it is none of those things.  It’s just really clean eating.  Ha!


But I digress.  I’ve been struggling, yo.  For real!  I lost that fiver in January, earned an injury and dialed my focus back so far from Diet and exercise that I actually bounced up to 242 before I settled back down to 234.  I always wonder how much I’d weigh if I managed to avoid all that bouncing up and down the scale… back when I was at my healthiest I ate a lot of raw food.  My plate was filled with fruits and veggies, rarely did I rely on carbs.  I felt good when I ate that way.  I performed well and I’m really having a hard time getting back to that low carb/clean eating way of life.  The Whole 30 seemed to be a really good way of getting back to basics.

In a nutshell, the Whole 30 is a 30 day, fairly restrictive eating plan that is designed to rethink and redesign your relationship to food and your eating habits.  Sugar is the one I’m most concerned about.  I’m certain that I have a keen sugar addiction right now.  I won’t be eating any refined carbs, no sugar, no dairy or animal fats.  The program relies heavily on meal planning and preparation so that when you are confronted with a weak moment, you have something to eat.

I will be allowing a couple of alternates that will hopefully not impact the results.  I’m going to allow eating in between meals.  The plan’s ideal is to rely on three meals with minimal snacking.  Vegetarian food is processed through the body more quickly than a meat eater’s diet.  That means I will get hungry faster and if I want to be successful, I am going to have to plan for that by having some bananas and apples ready.  Another thing I’m going to allow is when my parents come over in a week.  I promised to make posole and I’m just going to enjoy the evening rather than worry about being on a diet and not eating this meal I’ve been planning to make for my dad for a month now!  Additionally, there are some allowances made for vegans and vegetarians by the program author so it is possible to do whole 30 without the animal flesh focus, I’ll just be inclusive of more tofu and eggs.  I think I’ll hate eggs by the end of this.  LOL

Things I am Planning on being Challenged by:

  • Morning coffee- this will be an adjustment.  I can have coconut cream but no sugar.  I will definitely need to experiment with my caffeine in the morning!
  • Night snacking is going to be tricky.  I have a big nighttime habit that is doing me no favors presently.
  • Cutting soda pop- I will still have seltzer water but diet root beer is one of my primary crutches.  Losing that will be difficult.  Not impossible, but it’s going to challenge me.
  • I’m slightly worried that I won’t want to exercise because of the nutrition shift (low energy?).

Things I’m planning on looking forward to:

  • Most people lose between 10-30 pounds.  I will appreciate that.
  • Beat my sugar addiction!
  • Realizing the power of me- I know I can do this!
  • Opening up my palate to more flavors again.
  • Getting healthy!!
  • I’m honestly more excited than worried and that is a very good thing.

One of my favorite things so far is definitely making my whole 30 bullet journal.  Making the pages is helping me to clearly understand what I will be doing for the next 30 days!  My whole 30 will take place between February 18th and March 19th.  Prepare to read a lot about it here!  Ha!


I’ve got this.