The first time I came across The Whole30 was listening to the Happier Podcast by Gretchen Rubin and Elizabeth Craft, two sisters who talk about happiness and habits. If you haven’t come across the podcast before I highly recommend it. In episode 52 the sisters interview Melissa Hartwig, one of the co-creators of The Whole30, and I thought, “this lady is one type A bag of nuts.” No sugar? No dairy? No legumes? WTF do people eat? Meat and vegetables for every meal sounded like my idea of hell. And eggs for breakfast. Every day. Urrgghhhhhh. I cannot accurately convey my horror.

And that was that.

Then in December 2016 I was feeling bloated, sluggish and grotty. I suffered (and therefore so did everyone else in the house), from terrible PMS that made me a ragey, grumpy pain in the arse who snapped at everyone every 3 weeks. No one was happy. I wasn’t being the parent I wanted to be. My skin was spotty and hormonal too with cysts that appeared one month and took 3 months to fade. So, grumpy, spotty, angry and bloated. My food habits were pretty terrible too. Not ice cream for breakfast terrible but sneaking junk food so I didn’t have to share it or confront the fact that I was eating junk or sugary snacks so often. Plus it was the Christmas period and alcohol featured in more evenings than I was happy with. Something had to change.

I had re listened to the Happier Podcast episode and suddenly it was like a lightening bolt… the Whole30. This was what I needed to do. A full reset on food and alcohol so that I can figure out what exactly was causing the fatigue, bloating, break outs, anger and mood swings. I mean obviously it was secret 3pm Anzac biscuits and a childhood dairy intolerance that I wanted to believe had disappeared when I fell pregnant at 24 with my eldest. But somehow I never managed to turn “I should stop eating a family pack of TimTams” into not actually eating the family pack of TimTams.

But Whole30 had structure. Whole30 had rules. Whole30 had bags of support online. I could do it. I knew I could. So I did. And you can too.