My Whole30 Story

To be honest, I have always been on the thinner side. As a teenager, I was so used to being thin that as soon as my clothes got tighter or someone mentioned that I was “filling out” (a well-meant but not well-received comment), I restricted my food until I started blacking out at school, and even then it was a hard habit to kick.

Fast forward to college: I began working out consistently and my relationship with my weight improved. I didn’t worry too much about what I was eating and lived on a standard college diet of (daily) pizza, donuts, and some salad. My digestion was HORRIBLE but I didn’t make the connection between my digestion and my diet. I thought I must have some sort of disease, but the ultrasound detected nothing. 

Toward the end of my senior year, I entered a particularly destructive relationship, during which I tried to perfect myself by restricting food in the hopes of meeting his impossibly high standards. After the breakup, I started running obsessively and my weight dropped even more. I felt like a shell. 

Six months later, I moved to New York to pursue my doctoral degree. I was sticking to a vegetarian diet and still had a lot of digestive issues, so I went to see a naturopath who suggested avoiding gluten and dairy and reintroducing high quality meats. I went gluten and dairy free but still avoided meat and saw some immediate improvement. Still, my digestion wasn’t great. 

I became obsessed with healthy foods, but my motives were less than pure. Have you ever heard of orthorexia? It’s an obsession with eating “clean” foods and controlling every morsel that enters your body, and it’s increasingly being recognized as a form of disordered eating. That’s how I would identify this time of my life. It was easy to mask my disordered eating by telling others that I was just trying to be healthy, but I knew the truth: I was trying to be thin. 

In 2015, I completed my first Whole30. Loving a challenge, I dove in head first. I did it because I hoped it would help me lose weight and it would give me an excuse to avoid certain foods, but I told myself and others that it was all in the name of health. 

About six months later, I joined a boxing gym, and this was a pivotal moment in my life. Boxing completely changed the way I viewed my body. I learned to appreciate my body for all it could do and started to see food as fuel to help my body strengthen and perform in the gym. I also found that vegetarianism could not support this level of activity; I added high quality meat back into my diet and my strength and energy skyrocketed. 

I don’t remember exactly when I completed my second round of the Whole30, but I do remember having a different mindset. I wanted to figure out which foods did not agree with me so I could finally feel well. I did not expect that my relationship with food would change, as I had accepted that I would always struggle with it to some extent. I underestimated the program. 

Whole30 transformed my relationship with food. Not only did it help me identify which foods were causing my symptoms, it helped me feel in control of my diet in the healthiest way. I could now decide when I wanted to indulge in something that I felt was worth it—without feeling guilty. I started to focus on how foods could actually contribute to my health. I stopped weighing myself. I focused on nutrient intake rather than calories or macros. I completed two more Whole30s (and counting) after that, and my relationship with food—though still imperfect—has improved each time. 

I’ll be honest: I still think about food a lot of the time. But there is a key difference in my mindset now: whereas I used to obsess over avoiding foods that could make me gain weight, I now think about all of the amazing recipes I want to make. I think about food as nourishment, rather than as something to be feared. I think about ways to share what I’ve learned with others and help them transform their own relationships with food.

This is why I became a Whole30 Certified Coach: because when you find something that impacts your life in such a profound and positive way, you want to share it.