The Personal Transformation of Committing to a Strange Diet

First published on September 16, 2021

When I agreed with my wife, in 2016 and somewhat out of character, to take part in the Whole 30, a diet regime designed to help you understand if you are unaware of intolerances you may have to certain parts of your diet, I thought I was going to learn about my diet. And I did. But what I didn't expect was that far more important than that would be the ways I would grow as a person.

By the end of it, though, I knew.

'For many people,' I observed to Emma, 'the most important thing about this diet is the discipline to stick to something. To set out on something and do what they said.'

In many ways, of course, that is the true test of any dieting regime: will people stick to it? It's the same with any habit, really. All of us have the knowledge of what we should eat, how we should exercise, what new habits would help us. It's the sticking to it that matters.

The Whole30 was pretty simple on the surface: there are some things (sugar, alcohol, pulses, grains, dairy) that you can't have. And everything else (potatoes, meat, fish, fruit, vegetables) is fair game. For many people, as I observed, the hard part is sticking to that. Is not slipping.

And that was hard. Particularly when I went into sugar withdrawal and realised I was failing to get enough calories - I was hungry all the time. Truly amazing is the community surrounding diets like this (and the Slow Carb Diet, which I'll get to). They are helpful, supportive, and full of people who have already asked the questions you want to know the answer to.

New habits had to be formed, and that's never easy: making food, understanding what is in different food (which sandwiches in Pret can I eat? What's on the pub menu that is acceptable on Whole30), cooking from scratch more.

Among all of that, though, the hardest for me was causing a fuss. It turned out that deeply ingrained in me was both the desire not to cause a fuss and, more than that, priding myself on being someone who doesn't. With food, this shows up as: I'll eat anything, and isn't it a bit annoying when people's dietary choices make things difficult for everyone? Any dietary requirements, Robbie? 'No', said with pride.

It's hard to remember now, but if I put myself back in 2016 I can start to feel the feeling of how hard it was during that 30 day period (that's how long Whole30 lasts) to go to pubs or restaurants to eat out. It required me to develop a whole new tolerance, even to say 'Can I have this salad but without the cheese?'

And so whilst the diet was valuable (I lost weight, learned that I do have a slight intolerance to dairy, felt the difference after eating sugar and much more), the growing of that mild disagreeableness was the biggest result. I was a different person by the end of it. And it was a gateway to other dietary things that I'm not sure I could have done before Whole30 (much as I would have pretended to myself that I could).

More recently, I did 18 months of Tim Ferriss' Slow Carb Diet. Again, the dietary results were great. But more important was: can I stick to this? Not just for 30 days, but for a year? And, can I cause a fuss? Can I make it so other people have to buy in food for me? Can I be the awkward person? If I was a different person by the end of Whole30, 18 months of Slow Carb changed me tenfold.

Terry Crews described his intermittent fasting in a conversation with Tim Ferriss as a spiritual practice. Yes, it's good for health, but more, it's sacrificing the now for the future. It's promising yourself something and then seeing it through. It's growing in the ways you have to in order to interact with others whilst no longer doing what you have always told to do: eat up, sit down, don't cause a fuss.

There are so many reasons that a dietary challenge can be a personal growth exercise. It may be that, like me, it is in developing the muscle to take a stand, publicly for what I want (and I should add that no one said that I had to eat the cheese). It may be that it is simply proving to yourself that you can do it, that you can set out on something that will be hard for you and complete it.

It might even be that you look or feel different, or lose weight. But even if that does happen, I would bet that won't be the only part of the transformation that is created for you by changing your eating patterns.