It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways (26 page)

Once you’ve been making good food choices for a while, you’ll
finally
be able to trust what your body is saying. And no snazzy mathematic calculations based on your height, weight, body fat, and activity levels could possibly compete with the awesomeness of the human body.

In addition, you won’t be weighing, measuring, or tracking your calories at all. We think those are all unnatural, unsustainable, psychologically unhealthy processes that take the joy out of food and eating. Eating is an organic, natural, intrinsic behavior that we were all blessed with at birth. Digital scales, spreadsheets, and calorie monitors have no place in our new, healthy relationship with food.

Having said that, we’re not going to let you fly blind.

We’ll give you some general estimates as to how much, and how often, you should be eating. But let the record reflect that our “how much” and “how often” recommendations are just a
starting point
. It’s up to you to pay attention to the cues your body is giving you—hunger, energy, sleep quality, mental acuity, performance in the gym or in your sport—to tweak our plan until it’s just right for you.

We can’t do that for you.

Tough-love point #1:

You have to make sure you’re eating enough, that your nutrients are plentiful, and that you’re getting enough protein, fat, and carbohydrates. You’ll have to figure out what to eat for lunch, how to order at a restaurant, and how often you’ll need to go grocery shopping. You must teach yourself how to read labels, stay on course when you’re on the road, and cope when you run into old cravings and compulsions.

We’ll give you all the tools, guidelines, and resources you’ll need, but the rest is up to
you
. Because getting healthy doesn’t happen just because you’re taking a pass on bread.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s start with what your typical day should look like.

• Eat meals at the table, in a relaxed fashion.
  
• Do not allow distractions like TV, phone, or email during mealtime.
  
• Chew slowly and thoroughly; don’t gulp.
  

The first thing we want to talk about isn’t how much, how often, or how many. It’s just
how
. Health initiatives work only when people successfully and sustainably change their habits. And a major focus of our healthy-eating program is changing your deeply personal relationship with food—breaking old habits and patterns and creating new associations with food and eating.

Changing those habits starts at mealtime.

Start thinking of eating as a
nourishing
experience
. Don’t fall victim to reductionism—our meals are not just fuel, calories, or nutrients. Our meals are so much more than just the sum of their ingredients! Our meals are our culture—the things our parents taught us and their parents taught them. They are memories and emotions, reminding us of other meals and other experiences we have shared with those we love. Mealtime is about building new traditions within our own kitchens, with our own families—and setting a good example for future generations.

But when you eat meals in your car, inhale lunch at your desk, or mindlessly shovel in dinner while watching TV, well, you’re not really fostering a relationship with your food at all. There is no cultural significance, you recall no fond memories, and you create no traditions—unless you count passing your negotiating-rush-hour-traffic-while-eating-a-Big-Mac skill down to your kids a tradition.

And the manner in which we eat our food—hurriedly, automatically, without presence of mind or consideration—plays a large role in creating our psychological and hormonal issues with food.

That starts with creating new mealtime habits.

First, eat as many meals as possible at the table, in as relaxed a fashion as time and company will allow. Establish a healthy-eating routine that allows you to appreciate your Good Food, savoring the experience. Be present, if only for a few minutes. We know most folks usually can’t spend an hour at every meal, but just because your schedule is tight doesn’t mean you can’t relax for fifteen minutes and devote your time, energy, and senses to your food. (And for the record, your office desk is
not
a table. Take a break from the stress of work and enjoy your meal elsewhere.)

Eating slowly and in a relaxed fashion not only assists with digestion but also helps us take a much-needed break from the stressful pace of our normal lives. Tough-love point #2:

We know you
think
you are so busy that you can’t spare fifteen minutes to sit down at the table and eat, but that is not true. You just choose to spend your time elsewhere. There is a difference.

When you do sit down to eat, do so without electronic distractions. Don’t sell your experience short by eating while watching TV, sending email, or managing your calendar. If you took the time to prepare a healthy meal for yourself (and, perhaps, your family), give it the respect it deserves when it comes time to eat it. Appreciate your hard work and the final product.

If possible, share your meal with others. Conversation around a meal does not serve to distract, but rather enhances your experience. Remember, reward, memory, and emotion pathways in the brain are all interconnected. The same series of biochemical events that connected you to that downtown-bakery cookie could be used to reinforce your love and appreciation of healthy, home-cooked meals shared with the ones you love.

Taking time with your meal also means chewing your food carefully. Wolfing down food not only harms digestion because it arrives in your stomach without being properly broken down, but it doesn’t give your satiety hormones a chance to send their signals, either. As you eat,
receptors in the stomach
are activated as it fills with food or liquid. These receptors communicate your level of fullness to the brain through various hormones (including leptin). But these signals take time to start to register in the brain—at least ten minutes. By eating too quickly, you’re not giving your hormones enough time to do their job—so you eat more than you should because your brain doesn’t yet know you should stop.

Now, if you’re reading all this while shaking your head and saying, “In your dreams, Hartwigs,” we get it. Lest you think we’re envisioning some fairy tale where we all have hours upon hours every day to eat, drink, and be merry with our friends and loved ones, rest assured, we are firmly in the grip of reality. We’re just asking you to make some effort here, keeping in mind our ultimate end goal: helping you change your dietary habits, and permanently instilling a new, healthy, lifelong relationship with food and eating. Your behaviors around mealtime will play a part in that change. So, please, try to meet us halfway.

And if you still feel as if this is all hippie-foodie-kumbaya mumbo jumbo, don’t worry—we suppose you can still eat Good Food while driving and listening to your voicemail.

But you really should chew.

Now, on to the specifics.

• Eat three meals a day.
  
• Start with breakfast.
  
• Don’t snack, if you can help it.
  
• Stop eating a few hours before bedtime.
  

First, there’s nothing magical about three meals, but the concept generally works quite well from a hormonal and social perpsective. First, having a four- to five-hour break between meals gives glucagon time to do its job and mobilize some energy and keeps leptin levels normalized. In addition, most people tend to organize their work and social lives around three meals a day. Of course, if you work exceptionally long days, or have an especially active metabolism, you may end up needing four meals a day. That’s OK—just make sure you allow a good chunk of time between meals to encourage the optimal hormonal response.

As for Meal 1, don’t put it off for too long, even if you’re not hungry. If you’re not hungry first thing in the morning, that tells us that your hormones are off. And one of the best ways to get those hormones back in line is to eat something in the morning, when it’s biologically appropriate.

Ideally, eat Meal 1 within an hour of waking. It doesn’t matter whether you wake at 6 a.m. for your day job or 3 p.m. for shift work—wake, then eat.
^*
This is important.

Remember, leptin has a daily rhythm tied to your eating schedule. Which means that if you start eating too late in the day, your entire leptin pattern can be thrown off. Which means that at night, when leptin should be high, it won’t be. And cortisol, correlated with leptin dysfunction, will tend to make you crave more food. Usually not the good kind, either. Which means that you’ll be prowling through your pantry or freezer after dinner looking for a snack. Which leads to more hormonal disruption.

So, wake up and eat Meal 1 pretty soon afterward.

In our experience, a good Meal 1 focused on satisfying protein and fat and nutrient-dense veggies (and
not
overloaded with fruit) sets you up for less hunger, more consistent energy levels, and fewer sugar cravings, which makes it easier to make good food choices throughout your day. We’re not saying you can’t include
some
fruit with your first meal, but just don’t make it the star of the show.

Now, each meal should be designed to hold you over until the next, eliminating your desire or need to snack. And as you become fat-adapted (a process that starts in just a few days, but can take weeks to really kick in to the point that you notice the effects), your body will begin to utilize fat as fuel more readily, helping you avoid between-meal cravings, energy slumps, and brain fog.

Finally, make your last meal the end of your daily eating cycle. If you’ve been doing everything right, satiety hormones
should
be at their peak in the evening, which means dinner should leave you feeling satisfied right up until bedtime. But if you’re still in that transition period, or your dessert habits are firmly imprinted in your reward, pleasure, and emotion pathways, avoid the cravings as if your health depends on it.

Because it kind of does.

Eating before bed not only messes with leptin levels, but it can impede growth hormone release, which is critical for tissue regeneration and growth and repair of many cells in the body. And if that snack is sugary or rich in refined carbs, it also pushes insulin levels up, which may lead to a blood sugar crash in the middle of the night. This affects melatonin secretion, which governs our sleep patterns, and means you could wake up hungry at 2 a.m., unable to get back to sleep.

Your mom was right. Don’t eat before bed.