The Whole30's Food Freedom Forever: Letting Go of Bad Habits, Guilt, and Anxiety Around Food

This book happened to come out just as I was finishing a round of the Whole30. I ordered it to help me with life after I had reintroduced the off-plan foods and bottom line: I am glad that I did. However, don't be dissuaded if you have not completed the Whole30. This is a great book to read in preparation for a Whole30 or another type of dietary reset. The Author, Ms. Hartwig, does encourage you to try the Whole30 in this book but also gives several other options if the Whole30 doesn't seem right for you. What I like most about this book is her approach to the "psychology of food". What I mean by that is in our society we tend to shame junk food or "bad eating", yet we also tend to eat for psychological comfort (guilty!) which leads to a pattern of self-deprecation when you eat a "bad food" and shame yourself for it. Ms. Hartwig's goal is to help you find a way of thinking about food in a more cyclical manner instead of a black and white manner. This book teaches you that you will overeat, make poor choices, and essentially slip into more bad than good eating habits....and this is OKAY. It is part of the process. Learning what works for you is cyclical. You'll go through times where you eat really well consistently and other times where you don't and it's all part of the process. The goal is to let go of the guilt, forgive yourself, and periodically reset your diet. It's a very healthy approach, in my opinion. It's a fresh way of looking at your diet that I haven't come across before.

Love this book, have gifted several to friends. It is simply written in layman's terms, easy to grasp the concepts. It provides a vehicle to help your body reset from all the abuse we have done to it, knowingly and unknowingly.. I have learned to read labels, once you know what sorts of things to look for its extremely easy. I actually finished 30 days without added sugar of any kind, dairy and gluten. I feel a new freedom and now I have the tools to fight weight gain and bloat. I enjoyed the cooking and extra prep, made time for it because I knew there was a purpose to it. It opened up a whole new world of deliciousness. On the days that I was weak I would have a little extra dried fruit or banana and that helped me not to give up. I think it is a lot easier to follow than Paleo and once you are done with 30 days you can introduce some fancier paleo recipes as you have the time and inclination. I will use this information and recipes for the rest of my life. I just feel more emotionally and physically stable all around.

I started with It Starts With Food years ago- followed it up with the Whole30 and Whole30 cookbook- but this book was BY FAR my favorite. I follow Melissa on social media, and find her incredibly funny- and reading this book was a true extension of her- so many phrases, I could hear her saying them and it made me smile (and physically laugh out loud, making my husband question if I had lost my mind!) Humor aside- this book really spoke to me, in a way the others hadn't. I so resemble so many of the thoughts/ situations in this book, and the way that Melissa broke them down- I just loved it. Love this book, have already flipped back to the beginning and will be restarting immediately. Thank you, Melissa, for taking the time to write this book- and for always being so real and relatable. I am confident that I, too, am on my way to food freedom, forever, and couldn't have done it without the Whole30!

This really is a great book to either start a truly healthy lifestyle or to refine a program that you may have already been pursuing for decades. While many of us don't agree with some of the advice, like adding back in all milk products, and definitely not grains/lectins (check out Dr. Gundry's book The Plant paradox, and dig into the scientific studies on my lectins are long-term toxic), the book itself has a great program that many people should be confortable following as a lifestyle.I'd also found Dave Asprey's "Head Strong" and Darin Olien's "Superlife" to fill in some gaps in Whole30, adding some useful improvements. Pretty much all modern research recognizes that spiritual, mental, emotional, social, and physical health all need to be strong.Some additional critical points for me have been:1. SLEEP: I was diet and exercise controlled on Type 1.5 diabetes (yes, Insulin-dependent due to lowered pancreatic output can be managed!) with chronic kidney disease and Hasimoto's Thyroiditis ... but then I went through a year-plus period of very little sleep due to travel schedules and new train routes past the house that woke me up all night long. Diabetes sky-rocketed, and I learned that sleep is JUST as critical as diet, exercise and general stress management.2. Type of exercise: "aerobics" actually hurts your body when overdone; emphasizing weight training and augmenting with movement/flexibility lends to better health-span. Tim Ferris' books "4 Hour Body" and "4 Hour Chef" can give some insights, but as a 50+er I have struggled to find a really great program for my health and goals. Almost everything is outdated or aimed to the 20-30 crowd (and often contain advice that will have long-term negative impacts.) I've use Ben Pakulski's weight and diet programs for years, but always need to modify it for my dominant type-II muscle fibers and diabetic/thyroid/kidney management. For flexibility, Dr. Stuart McGill's "Beck Mechanic" and work by a student of his, Eric Wong, on flexibility and functional movement, have been life-changing for me. All of these people have multiple YouTube videos for learning more.3. Home-grown foods: farmers' markets and locally sources healthy stores help, but there's nothing like picking your own food as it's ripe, year round, as the main part of diet. Canning that harvest-ripe food takes time, but what is your health and life worth?4. Finally, and again, these are my personal experiences, comes bio-hacking. Dave Asprey and Time Ferris are several of my go-to bloggers, but there are dozens of informal and scientific publications are very important. What we know changes as research discovers new things about the genome, epigenetics, gut health / holobiome, exercise and more. Some big items that have made improvements for me personally include reducing or filtering blue light in the evenings, advanced energy/brain supplements, sauna sweating, sleeping using sound (the Pzizz app, for example) and "hobby time" to relax.A final comment to several other reviews: yes, having the original book(s) helps, but almost all the really import information is free on blog posts. Deep reading is a good thing!Wishing you the best of health and life!