I recently completed a 32 day no processed foods challenge and boy oh boy…I learned A LOT, so we’re going to run through the struggles, the wins, the losses, what happened when I indulged for the first time after the 32 days, all of it…so let’s dig in!
Why did I do this?
I can hear folks saying, ‘Marcus you already eat healthy enough, you don’t need to lose any more weight, relax man, eat a friggin’ donut…’
As you know I love a good challenge because it’s such an amazing way to level up, learn more about myself and grow and I’d never done this 30 day challenge before, so I thought hey, why not…let’s have fun with this and see what I can learn, that’s why!
It’s fairly effortless for me at this point to stay on track nutrition wise throughout the week, it’s habitual, however my pattern had been to have 1 bigger treat meal, cheat meal or indulgence, or whatever you want to call it, on a Saturday or a Sunday typically.
But, what I started to notice was that my weekly indulgence began to have a bit more power or pull over me than I wanted it to…I was essentially looking forward to it a little bit too much for my liking and so I wanted to see what it would be like to skip it. Also I just wanted to see how my body and even more importantly, how my brain responded, so here’s how…
Day 1 – 6 was breezy, which totally makes sense because it was business as usual to stay on point during the week and not indulge. I’m an abstainer, so I do far better with larger but less frequent indulgences, moderation does not work for me and there is a high likelihood that it doesn’t work for you either.
Having a single square of chocolate does absolutely nothing for me, I want the whole bar or I don’t want any at all and choosing not to have any at all actually provides me with so much freedom because I don’t have to play that back and forth game of, ‘do I have one square’ and then one square always turns into 3, which turns into 6 and the whole bar is gone…
Just eat everything in moderation is amazing advice for the minority of folks and terrible advice for most people, meaning moderation is not ‘right!’ We tend to put it up on a pedestal, but it actually goes perfectly contrary to our evolutionary biology as humans and so the fact that it does work for some individuals is a miracle!
Fat Loss Tip: I’d recommend figuring out the best approach for you and most importantly be honest with yourself, just because you wish that you were a moderator doesn’t make it so. I wish I was 6’4, I’m 5’10.
Also, if moderation worked for you as a fat loss and weight maintenance strategy, believe me, you’d know it by now!
Onto day 7…oh man day 7…
I wasn’t hungry, but man was I ever emotional, I had major cravings, I just simply wanted to distract myself with food because I was so uncomfortable with how I was feeling. Angst, sadness, restlessness…it wasn’t fun, it was basically like withdrawal symptoms from a drug and food is a drug without a doubt, but that’s an article topic for another day.
On day 7 I ate quite a bit more fruit than I typically do just because to be honest, I was eating it to fill a void and/or distract myself from the uncomfortable emotions that were coming up…straight up coping mechanism, there’s no two ways about it…I was not physically hungry.
I got through day 7 successfully by just feeling what I felt, it was not fun, but it was necessary and fortunately day 8 was back to breezy again which was nice! Then on day 9 I noticed that my knees felt noticeably better…as you know I have 2 autoimmune conditions and the arthritis in my knees has been a lot more ‘stubborn’ than my Eczema, the Eczema I’ve had complete control over for years now, but the arthritis has required more diet tweaking and experimentation.
Day 9 was super cool because I went for a 17 minute pain-free run which was huge for me, I wasn’t moving very fast, but simply being pain-free was a massive win! Now, I’ll mention that at this point I was following a very specific elimination diet because I was so determined to figure my arthritis out, so it wasn’t only the no processed foods dealio in the mix, but also the elimination diet working it’s magic in regards to my arthritis.
Side note, if you are experiencing any autoimmune-like symptoms and you want them to go away, my top 3 tips are nutrition, nutrition and nutrition, that is the tool for the job!
Day 11 I did have slight knee discomfort and I think it was from a touch of dairy that I had the day prior, but more on that in a minute…
By day 12 I noticed some legit body composition improvements, which totally makes sense because I was taking in fewer calories via skipping that weekly indulgence meal from the previous weekend and then something very interesting happened on day 13…I had zero cravings, like no desire for treats even walking through the bakery section at the grocery and then on day 14…
Where I potentially may have typically indulged in something per my previous pattern, I said to myself, ‘I could have a treat, but I’m sort of indifferent’…I thought, it’s simply not worth the way that it’s going to have me feel afterwards, so it was an easy skip…huge improvement from the weekend prior and that really tough day 7.
Day 15-21 I didn’t have any thoughts of indulging and I was just feeling so damn good that only healthful single ingredient whole food was appealing to me.
On day 22 everything sort of ‘clicked,’ my joints felt the best that they had, my mood was super stable, it was legitimately the most calm, cool and collected I’ve ever felt in my life and I don’t say that lightly, for example…I noticed more emotional stability when I stopped drinking alcohol 8 months ago and without processed foods as well, it took things to a whole nother level.
There’s just no doubt that what you eat plays a MASSIVE role in feelings of angst and depression, I’ve experienced it myself and I’ve seen it over and over in my clients…it’s just non-debatable at this point…if you experience feelings of angst and/or depression and your diet isn’t dialed in, you’re leaving a TON of mood and emotional stability on the table.
My digestion was also the best it’s ever been in my life and if you haven’t already, I’d recommend reading the Leaky Gut Explained article and everything will make sense in regards to the connection between digestion, autoimmunity, mental health and inflammation.
By day 26 I noticed that if there was any inkling of being quote unquote ‘addicted’ to certain foods, it’s gone and I wasn’t even counting down the days for the challenge to end or anything like that…so much so that I lost track of where I was at and when I ended up recounting, I was actually on day 32 before I had realized it!
Then things got even more interesting because I thought, okay…I’m going to have a few treats and see how I feel, so I had some magnum ice cream bars (the praline one is so legit by the way) and I also had some rice krispie squares. I had a quite a few treats and instantly I noticed that I felt bloated, digestion went off, I felt discomfort in regards to my joints via more stiffness and rigidity, a lower sense of well-being and one of the biggest things was actually my eyes…they felt like they were on fire…they actually physically hurt!
And this got me thinking because I have an astigmatism in both of my eyes and since then I’ve discovered that eating too much dairy really messes with my vision, which makes total sense because I drank milk and crushed yogurt and ice cream when I was younger like it was going out of style. I think that all of that dairy actually started to deteriorate my vision, which adds up from a leaky gut and autoimmune standpoint…again, read the Leaky Gut Explained article if you haven’t already.
Post indulgence, it took me about 3-4 days of perfect eating to get back to where I was feeling my best during the challenge, so there was definitely some residual effects going on for 3-4 days afterwards.
I have indulged once more since and it was pretty wild because the day after the second indulgence, I got a super painful sty in my eye, which again solidifies the dairy and eye degeneration connection…
My digestion went off of course, joints were impacted, mood and emotional stability went down the drain…I felt very anxious, depression-like feelings notched up and it just wasn’t enjoyable.
Now all this information does not mean that I’m never going to indulge again…the whole point of this challenge was to experiment and to get really clear on the trade-offs that I’m truly making when I eat foods that I’m simply not evolutionarily designed to eat. It’s like, what happens when you put diesel fuel in a gas car? It just does not perform as well and it adds to the wear and tear of the vehicle.
The thing is, it’s really helpful to quote unquote ‘clean your slate’ in order to get a much more accurate picture of how the foods that you’re eating are actually impacting you, for example…
If you’re eating hyper-palatable treats on a regular basis, you just don’t know what sort of impact that they’re truly having on you because you’re a fish in water…but by doing a challenge like this, you wipe the slate clean and then when you reintroduce the funky stuff, it shows you exactly what sort of impact they’re having on your body and your brain.
It’s sort of like moving to a different area of the city and there are all sorts of new noises or potentially a lack of noise and at first you really notice it right!? But then after a while, that new becomes the new normal…and you’ve likely heard me talk about this before…
Ya don’t know whatcha don’t know and so experimenting with things like this make it so ya know and if you do choose to take something like this on…at first you are going to feel amazing in some ways and potentially like sh*t in other ways because all of the uncomfortable emotions that come up are standing between you and the body that you want or essentially the life that you want…hence what I felt on Day 7, but fortunately it’s only temporary…’this too shall pass.’
It’s really not hard from a physical standpoint to cook and eat healthfully, the difficult part is feeling all of the ‘stuff’ mentally and emotionally that’s required in order to reap the rewards on the other end, but…
It’s so cool because the ball is in your court, you can choose to feel better via simply eating better!
You can lose that excess fat that you’re carrying around, you can have great digestion, you can heal up your joints and your skin and you can get rid of your headaches and migraines and autoimmune conditions and acne and psoriasis, rosacea, ibs, crohns…you get the idea.
Let food be thy medicine.
As far as moving forward goes, when I do choose to indulge, I’m going to be more mindful of my dairy consumption, specifically by favouring dairy-free options so for example, instead of a dairy-based ice cream, I’d go for a coconut-based one because I tolerate coconut a lot better than traditional dairy.
Overall I’m so happy that I did this and I’d highly recommend it for you if you’re looking to level up, to grow, to improve and to get more out of your life!
If you don’t want to do this specific challenge, you can always just improve your eating habits generally and you’re going to look, feel and perform better, no doubt about it!
