Staying on track with any diet takes effort.

The Whole30 seems intimidating until you finish your grocery shopping and get into the recipes, you will see that 30 days isn’t hard.

Since so many of us are trapped at home, now is a better time than usual to do it, it’s only 30 days with a couple weeks reintroducing the foods.

I had myself ready to go through the severe sugar addiction symptoms Melissa warned against, but actually didn’t deal with any bad side effects from quitting sugar.

Buy the journal, or check it out from the library, check out the Whole30 cookbooks as well as “It Starts With Food.”

Read “It Starts With Food” before you start and go to the Whole30 website- sign up for the newsletter as well as the beginner kit.

Find 1-2 weeks of recipes, mark down the ingredients and do your grocery shopping the day before you start.

Try to grocery shop 2 times, and shop for 2 weeks at a time.

Keep an eye on how long you have left, how you feel and keep a log.

If you keep a blog, keep tabs for accountability on your blog. You don’t have to do a post every day but it can help with gaining support. There are also several Whole30 groups on Facebook. Support is extremely helpful in getting through this month.

Try to avoid going out to eat, but there are options if you do- just be careful. I ate steamed kale and it ended my first attempt at 22 days- it was sauteed in butter.

Keep the end results in mind

Don’t weigh yourself, it’s tempting but it’s not a weightloss diet- it’s to try to help discover problematic foods. A lot of people do lose weight, but one of the rules is to not weigh yourself until after you’re done.

Try to not obsess over food.

Don’t snack unless you need to.

Prepare a wide variety of foods. It can get boring eating the same things over and over so make sure you get a lot of healthy fats and proteins- they fill you up longer. Use this time to try new produce and meats.

Those are the things that got me through the month. I may have failed, but it did help me see how bad dairy does effect me and I found I have some issues with sugar. By the time I was just a couple days through the diet, I could taste how much sweeter normal foods were and when I went back to a normal gluten free/low dairy diet, sweetened foods were almost overwhelming.

Have you done Whole30? Did you make it through the whole month? What tips would you give someone just starting out?