The Primal Parent

The Whole 9′s It Starts With Food – Book Review

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This summer has brought us babies, yay, and books. But since I was 1. busy writing my own book (Primal Moms Look Good Naked, to be released in February) and 2. having a baby (Maya Sofia) I wasn’t really keeping up on what was hitting the shelves. So now that I have a little more time (really just a little) I can sit back with a cup of tea and read (with Maya glued to my chest of course).

The first in what is going to be a series of fall book reviews is It Starts With Food.

First of all, let me tell you how much I love that title. All of us who have watched the Primal diet transform our lives are always blabbing about food this, diet that. And really, that is the most important change we can make towards improving our health.

But food isn’t the only cog in the well-being machine. As the title clearly states, health starts with food.

Melissa and Dallas Hartwig, the authors, are a beautiful pair. They are both healthy, fit, hot, smart, and hardcore. And they devised the most successful Paleo weight loss plan in existence. Who better to help you transform your health, right?

These amazing coaches also have a resourceful website, Whole9life and offer seminars all over the country.

The Book

It Starts With Food is a much needed addition to the Paleo/Primal book lineup. It is practical and written in a way that anyone can understand, employing fun and effective analogies at every turn.

The book is a lot more than just an outline of their strategy, however. They don’t just give you a safe foods list and send you on your way. They actually address what goes wrong inside our bodies when we start to make bad food choices – that is, when we start succumbing to cravings. Then they show us how to resolve them.

In case you’re wondering, dieting isn’t the answer. We have to remove the Franken-food as they call it, the laboratory created foods, and replace them with real foods. We have to rewire our brains to make them work in the way they’re supposed to so that we can stop being controlled by food.

Making good food choices, that is, eating meat, good fats, vegetables, and fruits will change our bodies in 3 ways. It will balance our hormones, repair our guts, and reduce inflammation. All of these things together will help us to both lose weight and reverse many modern ailments such as skin problems, psychological issues, asthma, arthritis, etc.

Hormones

Bad food choices impacts our hormones in a slew of negative ways. Melissa and Dallas focus on just four: insulin, leptin, glucagon, and cortisol. These are the hormones in charge of guiding our cravings. When these get out of balance, we begin to gain weight and feel bad. Thankfully, changing our diets can change our hormone balance and restore overall health.

Gut Health

Gut health is notoriously difficult to achieve for many of us. We come from a background of antibiotics and prescription drugs, industrialized dead foods, poor gene expression, and the list of digestive system assaults goes on. It’s almost like we go to extremes to damage our guts.

But a damaged gut causes a lot of problems.

Our guts are what extract the nutrients from our food and what gives us strong immune systems. If we impair that extraction process or reduce the strength of our immune systems we simply cannot be healthy.

Eliminating the most common offenders will improve our gut health and, hence, overall health.

Inflammation

Systemic, chronic inflammation (not to be confused with the acute inflammation which occurs when we cut or bump ourselves) is at the root of many, if not all, modern diseases and nearly everyone these days has it.

Inflammation is an immune response to help heal our bodies when they’re hurt. But when this immune response goes on constantly and systemically it can leave you sick and vulnerable.

So, who’s immune systems are bogged down by inflammation, preventing them from losing weight and feeling great? Nearly everyone’s these days. If you’re overweight, you have systemic inflammation. If you regularly eat industrialized vegetable oils, you have it. If you eat a lot of sugar you have it.

Less Healthy and More Healthy Foods

The next two sections of the book go into great detail about which foods we should eat and which we should avoid. They advise that we eliminate sugar, alcohol, PUFAs, grains, legumes, and dairy. They are strict about the things they eliminate because they are aiming for superior health.

The inclusion of things like alcohol and dairy are often debated in the Paleo community. I myself indulge in both from time to time, usually not, but I recognize that optimal health – i.e. feeling amazing, not something most people today really know anything about – you’re going to have to leave them out.

The Whole 30 Program

The climax of the book is, of course, their famous program.

No cheats, no slips, no excuses

Like I said, they’re hard core. And that is why their program has been so successful. It takes elimination of all possible food offenders to be sure which foods are problematic. It takes a diet of perfectly clean foods to completely clean out and heal the body.

Now, of course, 30 days is not going to offer complete and total relief of all your ills forever. You can’t just do the 30 day challenge and then go back to your old ways and expect to be all better.

One disservice our medical system has done to us is to lead us to believe that a session, a program, or a pill is enough to repair us – that we don’t have do anything ourselves or make any long term changes for wellness.

But in reality, good health is a commitment to change. Their 30 day challenge is just the beginning. That’s what the next section is all about – a strategy for reintroduction.

I’m glad they didn’t leave this out. Reintroducing specific foods is what helps us to really get to know our own bodies and what helps us to make informed decisions when we cheat. There are some cheats that I simply will not, under any circumstances, succumb to because I have experimented and know what makes me feel really bad. This knowledge is what can make or break long term success.

Have you read it? What did you think?

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22 Comments

  1. i’ve been happily not eating dairy for a year now.. feeling great and everything! But floating around my paleo community is lots of talk about ghee and butter.. and these are hardcore paleo-ers VERY into their health. So I’m confused. Any thoughts? I discovered your site on facebook a few days ago and think its great..i love all your self experimentation, its so informative. keep up the great posts!

    • Thanks! That’s good to hear. Butter and especially ghee don’t contain any protein or lactose – two of the components of dairy which can be problematic. I still wonder, though, about eating the fat since hormones are fat soluble. I’ve never heard anyone address this before, it’s just my own curiosity. I sometimes include butter for health and taste reasons but I must say that even butter seems to bring me down a level, though not to the degree of cheese and milk.

      If you worry about butter, you can easily do without it. Coconut oil is a wonderful oil as are the fats naturally present in grassfed organic meats. For vitamins A and k liver does the job.

      • I’ve recently started to include butter for health reasons and I’m not sure if it agrees with me or if its psychological! I’m going to make some ghee and see how that works. thanks!

      • I had also wondered that about the fat soluble hormones even in ghee! I had never seen anyone else talk about it though. I currently am experimenting with different types of dairy and it’s impact on acne for me. I took all except ghee out and my skin cleared up completely (but I also moved to a much nicer cleaner seaside city at the same time so that’s a major confounder) and I recently introduced some butter for a few weeks and I’m breaking out again so I’m dropping butter (just having ghee) for a while to see if my skin clears up again. If it doesn’t then I might try dropping ghee too. I’ll miss ghee in my mashed cauliflower though :(

        • Just an update to my above comment that switching from butter to only ghee has seen my skin clear up a lot. Not completely so far because I am still healing the acne that came up when I was eating butter. A patch of rough dry skin also went away and the ketosis pilaris that reappeared on my legs during the butter phase is also fading.

          Sometimes I wonder whether this is all in my head and then I think, well even if it is the placebo effect, that’s still worth something right? Does anyone else ever feel like this about improvements made with diet?

        • I just read this regarding hormones in dairy fat as a comment by Paul Jaminet on his perfect health diet website. Thought I’d share it under my old comment:
          “Steroid hormones are fat soluble but most others are water soluble. So fatty dairy has fewer hormones than whole milk.

  2. I agree that It Starts With Food is an excellent addition to the paleo books out there, and I think it can be enormously useful to the vast majority of people who implement the program. I’ve bought three copies to share with family and friends.

    But the template it lays out does not (and cannot) apply to everyone. I’d followed a mostly carnivorous paleo diet for a year and had never in my life had such high energy levels. During my first Whole30 I followed the template that the Hartwigs lay out on their website and in the book, which meant reducing protein intake and increasing vegetable, fruit, and starch intake. A week in, I was zapped of energy, had mood swings, was bloated, and gained weight. I never felt sated after a meal.

    I’ve since figured out that this was because I was eating too many vegetables and starchy foods, and not enough protein (I have more muscle mass than most people and have similar problems with vegetables as Peggy had before her pregnancy). In the book, the Hartwigs do mention that some people may need more protein than others, but the push for high amounts of vegetables — and addition of fruits and starches — didn’t work for me.

    On the other hand, I’m glad to have experienced a span of time completely without sugar and seed oils, and in future Whole30′s I’ll simply alter my personal template accordingly, focusing more on elimination of potentially disruptive foods.

    The explanations and approaches the Hartwigs take in their book can be enormously useful, particularly for someone just discovering a paleo lifestyle, and they themselves are an enviable example of what that lifestyle can lead to.

    • Tons of vegetables has never been my thing either, although fresh vegetable juices are ok.

      If you got really bloated from eating that way, perhaps you are sensitive to fructose and fructans? That was the main culprit in my own food issues over the years and since eliminating those my diet has really opened up. Now I am able to eat many vegetables and starches. Just a thought. :)

      • I did wonder whether FODMAPS were the issue, and know I react to many fruits like apples, but not to berries, which I believe are lower in fructose. Sadly, I believe that avocados are also somewhat high in fructose, and they have been a staple in my diet for a while.

        I’ll certainly look into this more, thanks for the suggestion! Are you aware of a reliable list of low-FODMAPS foods? I did some searching on it this summer, but several lists seemed to contradict each other.

  3. I really loved the book and recently completed the whole 30.I loved what it did for me. I was always a fan of whole fat dairy, especially probiotic yoghurt, but found that when I reintroduced it I felt sick. So doing the whole thirty has taught me a thing or two.I didn’t reintroduce anything else because I knew gluten made me really sick and I don’t want to experience the digestive upset that beans will give me.

    I had been primal (I included dairy) for about a year and initially lost about 8 pounds, then the weight loss stalled and I felt I still had more to lose. The whole thirty made a big difference in that regard. I didn’t do it to lose wieght(I’m concerned about inflammation), but it feels like a bonus to have shifted a bit of weight (about 8 pounds in the thirty days).

    I feel healthier,and though I’m not cured of a few issues (carpel tunnel syndrome, some digestive upset related to hormones in my cycle,and hoping for better fertility), I think the program (if you can call it that) is great.And the online community is extremely supportive and helpful.

    I really liked the simple explanations in the book,and I’ve read a tonne of paleo/primal books. I liked all of them, but this one somehow really got through to me and made a lot of sense.

    I think anyone interested in going Paleo/Primal should read it.

  4. I understand that dairies can be very bad for many (if not most?) people, but for me yoghourts are staples. Yet, I feel great, and I’m just wondering whether this could be explained by epigenetic changes (since I’ve always eaten tons of yoghourts)?

    • I’m curious about this too. I had never been able to nail my diet to the degree that I have since I was finally able to source raw milk 5 months ago. I consume 5+ L a week and have not felt this good in many many years.

      Milk gets a bad rap but how many people in the paleo community have actually tried raw dairy? I know some people are fully intolerant to even raw milk, but are they actually the rule or the exception?

      • Alexandra, I think a lot of people have tried it actually. For whatever reason dairy just doesn’t work for some of us. Raw dairy was OK for me but I didn’t feel great with it. And it is so addictive, it’s weird. I would defend dairy tooth and nail – to myself of course, nobody else was asking. And when I finally gave it up I felt so much better. I still have little affairs with dairy because it’s so good and not nearly as terrible for me as other foods but I always have to quit it.

        • What sort of symptoms do you get from it? Or just a general state of feeling not quite as good?

          Dairy definitely is addictive. It’s literally the only (real) food where it’s like I don’t have a satiety meter. I can just keep eating and eating. Other foods, no matter how much I love their flavour, my body stops me after a pretty small portion. Actually, I sometimes use this to get my calories up because I have a tendency to undereat.

          Oh, maybe you might have a clue to a puzzle of mine: I have no reactions to any dairy product EXCEPT CHEESE! I mean, I can drink a litre of milk in one sitting and feel great, but one bite of cheese will make me nauseous. All cheeses do this, raw milk or not, no matter the age, type, country of origin, etc. People seem to usually report the opposite i.e./ cheese ok, but milk/yogurt not. I just can’t figure out what it could be, except maybe rennet but that seems a bit out there considering it’s used in minute amounts.

          • Alexandra, dairy makes me sleep a bit more, a little more tired, a little less motivated in general. It is inflammatory for me. My hands swell when I eat dairy, my joints can ache. My skin dries out.

            Cheese for me is the worst too. I do much better with a glass of milk than with cheese. If I eat enough cheese it can put me to sleep almost instantly, which is unusual since I am very energetic and not a big sleeper in general.

            I don’t know what it is about cheese either. I have experimented with this phenomenon as well. I’ve tried every type of cheese, aged, fresh, raw, not raw, full fat, low fat searching for a difference. There isn’t one. It’s always struck me as odd too.

            • Hm, well, I still suffer from fatigue issues (used to be much worse), so maybe at some point I’ll have to try ditching the dairy and see what happens.

              Right now it’s a good way for me to get my calories up and successfully avoid foods I definitely react badly to – vegetables, fruit, excessive grains. Somehow it seems to stop cravings for me. Like, I just don’t care whether I eat certain foods or not, even ones I love the flavour of and had always previously found irresistible.

              But once I ingrain the habit of eating perfectly otherwise I think I’ll try going dairyless and see how I feel.

              Very funny about the cheese. If you ever come across a clue I’d love to hear it!

  5. @ Alexandra and Lumurette,
    I think dairy is highly an individual thing, i.e., n=1. Probably more so than other foods.
    Personally, like Lemurette, I do VERY well on full fat yogurt (I strain grass fed full fat yogurt to turn it into “greek style” yogurt and that is what I eat when I mean “yogurt”). Yet, no other dairy really works well, including grass fed butter or cream: can eat it but just don’t feel 100% if I do.
    I am o.k. with a bit of raw goat milk but do not tolerate raw cow milk well, in spite of having access to great local raw grass fed source it (sad really, had to drop out of a great raw milk co-op/ community after trying stubbornly to drink it for over two years). So, I am thinking fermentation makes a big difference in my case. I also am o.k. with hard/ ages Italian cheeses here and there which, again, I think is due to the aging/ fermentation process. And I am of Northern European origin, i.e., in theory, “should” be able to tolerate dairy better than others.

  6. I just finished reading this book last night, actually, and agree with your assessment of it. What I appreciated about it was that it includes customizations for individual needs; those with autoimmune disease (which I have) should omit eggs and nightshades, for example, as these tend to be inflammatory.

    I have been thinking a lot between this program and GAPS, for example. According to the GAPS logic, even if you know that you react to specific foods, if they are “GAPS-legal,” then you should still consume them. (For instance, eggs are introduced into Intro GAPS Stage 2. As Cheeseslave just wrote on her blog, even if one cannot tolerate eggs, then they need to “power through” the symptoms all the way through Intro, then Full GAPS.) This doesn’t make any sense to me; why would someone purposely eat foods that they know cause a reaction?

    On the other hand, the Whole30 program as an elimination diet (and as a kind of reset button) makes complete sense to me. Once, through this program, someone is able to identity all their intolerances, then avoiding those foods for a set period of time — a year? two years? — while working on healing the gut will perhaps reverse these intolerances.

  7. I am very much enjoying reading it starts with food now. It does a better job of explaining all of the technical information than the Paleo solution the first Paleo book that I read

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