Tailoring a Nutrition Challenge

Many of my favorite paleo and primal bloggers have taken on nutrition challenges in the new year, hoping to reset their eating habits after some holiday indulgences. The Whole 30 and 21-Day Sugar Detox seem to be the most popular regimens. E and I discussed it, but ultimately decided not to launch one of these challenges January 1st, for a few reasons.

First of all, the timing wouldn't have been great. We celebrated Christmas with my family the first weekend of January, and we are going on a long weekend getaway to celebrate E's birthday this coming weekend. While part of the purpose of a nutrition challenge can be to learn that skipping dessert on a special occasion won't kill you, we felt there there was really no need to set ourselves up for an extra hardship by undertaking a challenge that would fall over those two weekends.

Another issue is that neither of us is really interested in doing another Whole 30. We completed one this past fall, and I will admit it was a valuable learning experience. By not drinking alcohol for a month, I discovered how awesome my sleep patterns were without it. I also connected the dots between sugar and dairy consumption and my skin health. Still, though, I thought some aspects of the program were unnecessarily restrictive. I'll never forget the day we spent 20 minutes in the meat department at the co-op, reading the ingredients on every package of bacon hoping to find one without any sugar in it. While I did complete the challenge successfully, I still don't buy the idea that the miniscule amount of sugar used to cure bacon is going to set off sugar cravings.

I was interested to learn from this podcast that the 21-Day Sugar Detox is a little more pragmatic in its approach. Foods containing small amounts of sugar, like bacon, are not necessarily considered off-limits, and a limited amount of kombucha tea is permitted for its health benefits. For these reasons, I considered trying this challenge as an alternative to the Whole 30.

In the end, though, E and I decided not to go that route, either. After a year of mostly paleo eating, we really don't need the food lists and helpful tips. We came to the conclusion that we both know what we need to do to dial in our eating habits. For me, that means taking a break from the less healthy parts of my day-to-day consumption-- my weekend wine and few ounces of dark chocolate per week will be off-limits for this exercise-- plus, of course, skipping my rare dalliances with dairy, corn, rice, and sugar.

To address the issue with timing, we're going to start next Tuesday, after we return from our long weekend. We'll get three full weeks of clean eating under our belts, then wrap it up before Valentine's Day.