If this looks enticing, you’re on the right track. Photo courtesy of Ash Boddy
I recently finished the Whole30® nutritional plan, and I want to tell you all about why I did it and why I think it’s awesome for surfers. But first, I need to reveal a little bit more about me. I have an addictive personality. I don’t mean that I’m so awesome that I myself am addictive. I mean that I get addicted to things easily. My current addiction is surfing.
I used to have far unhealthier addictions: huge smoking addiction, near alcohol addiction, but the most serious addiction of all was sugar. I have a sweet tooth and I have it BAD. This stems from a really unhealthy relationship with sugar-based foods that I remember having since I was a grommet. When I was finally let loose on the world without adult supervision, this went off the charts. Alcohol and bad food were my major food groups.
I have been known to eat a lemon meringue pie in one sitting, and that’s just the start of it. While I have an addictive personality, I’m also a control freak and I hate the control that sugar has over me.
When I got into the world of health and fitness, I saw it as my opportunity to go “all-or-nothing” healthy. At first, I came out fat, unfit, and with a bad attitude towards food. I thought that calories meant something, and that fat made you fat.
Over the years, I have experimented with different eating plans with different people and have learned a lot from the frontline. Cleaning up my diet was a process of trial and error. It wasn’t until two years ago that I came across the work of Dallas and Melissa Hartwig, and what I liked about their work was that it showed everything that I had learned from personal experimentation, backed with research, and written in a way that resonated with my beliefs on what a healthy eating plan should be.
When it comes to the war on sugar and grain addiction, the one thing I have learned is that there are no half measures that work.
What is the Whole30®?
The Whole30 is an unbelievably simple plan: eat whole foods for 30 days.
It’s pretty much the same as the Grizzly Bear plan that I introduced in 2012, except it has one crucial ingredient: a worldwide supportive community. Simply look for #whole30 on your social media channels!
The rules are simple:
1. No refined sugars or sweeteners.
2. No known irritants (no grains, dairy, gluten, soy).
3. No legumes (beans, peas, peanuts).
4. No cheating (no ‘paleo pancakes’, no gluten free brownies).
5. No weighing or measuring yourself.
For 30 days straight. No half measures, no excuses. At the end of the 30 days, you can add these ingredients back in and test your reactions. Most people choose not to reintroduce these foods, however, because they feel Whole30 works.
Here are my five reasons why I think the Whole30 is awesome for surfers, and why I’ve added it to my Complete Package:
1. No Bullshit: It’s NOT hard
One of the things I love about this plan is their caveat that it is not hard. In the military, I went for a week with no food, no sleep, and constant imposed physical and mental stress. That was hard.
To quote the Whole30®:
“It is not hard. Don’t you dare tell us this is hard. Beating cancer is hard. Birthing a baby is hard. Losing a parent is hard. Drinking your coffee black. Is. Not. Hard. You’ve done harder things than this, and you have no excuse not to complete the program as written. It’s only thirty days, and it’s for the most important health cause on earth – the only physical body you will ever have in this lifetime.”
This really hit home for me because my wife and I have had experience of these three things in only the last 12 months: my wife lost her dad last year, then suffered a bad miscarriage nine months after, and a very close friend of ours, who is in her 30s, is currently fighting breast cancer.
All of those things have been hard. So, in a weird way, going through those experiences has made 30 days without sugar not really feel like a challenge. In my five years as a personal trainer, food is the biggest obstacle I have to overcome with people. They are happy if you tell them to do 100 burpees, but draw the line at foregoing their piece of toast in the morning.
You’re a surfer: anything outside your comfort zone is hard (could be a wave two feet higher than what you are used to), so you’re used to it. When you get that little pulse of fear, you have learned to paddle into it. You already have this approach to surfing, so you are more suited to apply this approach to food.
It’s not hard. Are you ready for the challenge?
2. It targets your excess body fat
When was the last time you saw a fat surfer? There are anomalies, but not that many, right? How many fat golf professionals do you know? Physiologically, it is near impossible to surf both well and frequently with a giant gut hanging out over your boardies. Surfing is just easier when you are lighter and have greater control of your body.
By stripping away any known irritants and inflammatory substances (like sugar, grains, unsaturated fats and dairy) in the Whole30, your body starts to burn your excess fat as fuel. So not only are you preventing fat from accumulating, you’re burning off your excess reserves, and teaching your body to become fat-adapted, as opposed to looking for more sugar, so it will do so more regularly in the future.
3. It reduces inflammation (i.e. pain)
Have you ever had a shoulder ache or back ache that just won’t go away?
Or worse – have you ever suffered from a migraine? Acne or eczema?
All pains and ailments stem from inflammation. Inflammation is a healing process, but you must give your body the right environment to heal, otherwise you stay inflamed. It’s the body’s natural alarm system. Unfortunately, modern medicine forces us to get rid of the inflammation rather than trying to work out what causes it.
When we’ve worked with people who are in chronic pain, when we remove known irritants and sugars from their diet, in 9 of 10 cases, their pain reduces significantly or disappears. We’re talking about people with spinal disc injuries, chronic shoulder pain and daily diarrhea (27 years, in fact!).
You eat at least three times a day, so if you start to take out food that causes irritation and inflammation, your body will start to calm down and ease off the alarm system.
When you surf, your movements need to be as seamless and effortless as possible. With a clean diet, muscles and joints will be less inflamed allowing you to surf longer and harder. You will give your body the right amount of nutrition, which forms the building blocks for how to repair and grow your body to adapt to the demands of your surfing.
I’m so convinced that the Whole30® is the best nutritional plan for surfers that I’ve included it in my premium packages: The Complete Package (GBP59.95) and The Bespoke Package (GBP250.00).
Have you tried the Whole30? I’d love to know your thoughts if you have – simply shoot me an email at ash@weekendsurfwarrior.com
