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Melissa Urban is back on the podcast to talk about the new Plant-Based Whole30 program. Most of you know the Whole30 as a real-food 30-day challenge that helps you discover the foods that work best for your body.
In our previous episode together, Melissa talked about her book Food Freedom Forever, a guide for letting go of bad habits, guilt, and anxiety around food. There isn’t one definition of food freedom that fits everyone and as an extension of this idea, Melissa explored options for plant-forward eaters which became the framework for the new Whole 30 program.
Melissa and her team have thoughtfully created the Plant-Based Whole30 to help people healthfully self-experiment with this way of eating – which I fully support. I know there are many reasons why people choose not to include meat in their diet but unfortunately, I often see people struggle with aspects of vegan and vegetarian diets, like getting enough protein and certain micronutrients. The Plant-Based Whole30 provides tons of helpful tips, tricks, and resources to aid someone successfully navigate a plant-based way of eating and discover if this is the right path for them.
Listen in as Melissa and I chat about:
- The Whole30 origin story
- The shift you make when starting a new way of eating
- The importance of self-experimentation
- The Plant-Based Whole30 framework
- Who the program is for
Resources:
Robb Wolf and The Paleo Solution
Gretchen Rubin’s Four Tendencies
Stephanie Greunke, RD – Whole30’s in-house dietitian
Connect with Melissa:
Website: Whole30 | Melissa Urban
Instagram: @whole30 | @pbwhole30 | @melissau
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connelly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Patreon supporters, and listeners.
Quotes:
“That word ‘vegan’ can just come with a connotation. It can either scare people off, or people can become so tightly identified with it and so we didn’t want to bring that into the conversation.” – Melissa Urban
“There’s a lot of misinformation out there about meat that really pulls at emotional heartstrings and can really be highly influential, especially at those years when you’re trying to deal with a changing body and a lot of social pressures” – Diana Rodgers, RD
“The important thing that I like to stress with the Whole30 is that it’s a self-experiment. It’s not a prescriptive way of eating. We’re not saying these are the rules that you need to eat by forever to be healthy. That’s ridiculous.” – Melissa Urban
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:01
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connelly who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now onto our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:39
Welcome back to the podcast everyone. Today I have with me, Melissa Urban. Welcome, Melissa.
Melissa Urban 0:44
Hi, Diana. Thanks for having me. It’s so good to talk to you again.
Diana Rodgers, RD 0:47
Yeah, so I wanted to have you on because I’ve been getting a lot of questions about why Whole30 decided to have a vegan version of the Whole30. And a lot of people were really surprised to hear that I was in full support of it. And so as a Whole30 coach, and somebody who’s known you for a long time and has endorsed all the work you’ve done I wanted to have you on. And just, first of all, let people know a little bit about your background, how you started Whole30. But also, let’s talk about why Whole30 Vegan exists, how it can be a really useful tool for people who just really don’t want to include meat right now, and actually see it as an awesome potential bridge for people to maybe just learn a little bit more about how their bodies react to food, and maybe even getting them more in tune with the fact that they might need meat down the road if that’s something that they’re open to. So…
Melissa Urban 1:39
Yeah, I wasn’t surprised at all when you were like, ‘Yeah, I get it. I know exactly why you’re doing it. I’m in support.’ Like I knew that you would understand. But it’s great that people are asking, and I love the opportunity to share a bit more of the background. So thanks for having me on.
Diana Rodgers, RD 1:52
Yeah, so let’s back up a little bit. I’m here outside of Boston, Massachusetts. And I know these are your old stomping grounds. Why don’t you just you know, for my followers that don’t know much about your background, talk a little bit about how you got started in all this.
Melissa Urban 2:06
Yeah, so I was based originally in New Hampshire, Southern New Hampshire. So you and I spent quite a bit of time together in the Boston area, and we used to hang out in person, but I co-founded Whole30 in 2009. It was really just a two-person self-experiment. My original co-founder and I were really into CrossFit. We had just attended a nutrition seminar that Robb Wolf had put on. So you know, he was talking about Paleo and experimentation with an anti-inflammatory diet. And it really lined up with the research that my co-founder had been doing on dietary factors in inflammation specific to rheumatoid arthritis because his sister had RA. He was really interested in some of the research that Loren Cordain was doing, particularly with legumes and inflammation, and RA. So we get back from this nutrition seminar where Robb was talking about a paleo diet. We do this really challenging Olympic lifting session at CrossFit Boston. And we’re sitting around after the session, I was eating Thin Mints right out of the sleeve because I had just exercised and I had earned them. And he was like, you know, what if we did this, like super kind of squeaky, clean 30-day based on a paleo framework experiment, we only ate those foods for 30 days, and we kind of pulled out everything else from our diet, and I’m very black or white, on or off. I’m a Gretchen Rubin Upholder and Enneagram 8. So these kinds of challenges are like fun and easy for me. So I’m eating my Thin Mints. And I’m like, Yeah, that sounds good. When I’m in when should we start? And he was like, how about we start right now. And I handed my Thin Mints off to my friend Zack. And I was like, let’s do it. It’s on. And that was really the start of the very first Whole30. We had this very rudimentary set of rules that we were only going to eat this kind of anti-inflammatory diet. I gave up the caramel iced coffees in the morning and my bagels and my low-fat cream cheese and you know, all of the kind of healthy foods that I had been eating and focused on a whole food diet. And you know, meat, seafood, and eggs, vegetables and fruit, healthy fats. And I was really hoping to see some performance improvements and recovery improvements in the gym. And I did. But I had such a powerful transformation. In those 30 days, my energy skyrocketed and remain stable. And I didn’t realize that I could have energy improvements, my sleep got so much better and so much deeper, my mood was much improved. I was able to get like out of the mirror and off the scale for the first time in my life. Just my cravings went away, I stopped really focusing on like, what my body looked like. And I was really jazzed about all of the benefits that I was feeling and it helped me identify the ways that I was using food in an unhealthy fashion to punish or reward or self soothe or show myself love. So those 30 days were so powerful that I decided to share about them on my little CrossFit training blog. And a couple 100 people were like I would want to know more about this like I would follow along. So I wrote up a very, you know brief template have what we called Change Your Life in 30 days and led people through it in July 2009. And that was really how the Whole30 was born.
Diana Rodgers, RD 5:08
Wow. And my first introduction was through reading The Paleo Solution book, which I think came out just like a year later. And the one thing that you mentioned, I mean, I felt better sleep and more energy. But it was the not constantly obsessing about food in my head – that cravings, to me, that was the most liberating because I just constantly was grazing all the time and constantly worried I’d have like, my gluten-free bars in my bag. And to not have to, number one feel satiated is a beautiful feeling. And then to just not worry if you might have lunch at noon, or one and know that it’s not going to be like red alarm bells. I mean, I was really on this blood sugar roller coaster. Whenever I do talks, I’m like Is anyone else? And everybody raises their hand, I don’t know if that’s how you felt before too.
Melissa Urban 6:05
It is. It’s so funny that you say that. Because before this experiment I used to do, I was like, I have to eat every two hours, my metabolism is high, I’m very active, I have to eat every two hours. And by the end of my Whole30, I could actually go four or five hours and I would feel hungry but I wasn’t cranky, my energy wasn’t low, I could still focus, and I’ve been able to maintain that since literally 2009 since that first experiment just through dietary changes, and it’s so profound and so powerful. And I think I forgot about that as a benefit because I kind of take it for granted now.
Diana Rodgers, RD 6:39
I know it was definitely the biggest thing for me. And I also remember thinking it was totally crazy. Also like, the idea of not eating grains. I started in Weston A Price. And I remember I was at a Weston A Price conference. And I was looking for the gluten-free bread because I knew about my celiac disease by that point. And I asked somebody and I said, you know, it was really hard for celiac. Actually, I didn’t I’m not seeing the labels for gluten-free bread. And she’s like, yeah, well, some of us are on the GAPS diet. And I was like, what’s that? And they said grain-free. And I was like, Oh, I know that like gluten-free is already torture. Yeah, at the time for me, like, for me, it was such a slow progression. But even doing a Whole30 paleo type thing when I did it, even though I was already gluten-free, was still a major, major shift both for my cooking style, my way of thinking about food, and also in how I felt. So I can’t even imagine someone going from like a more standard American diet to Whole30
Melissa Urban 7:45
It’s a big shock. I mean, I was already eating relatively whole foods, but I was doing the low fat, you know, dairy, the whole healthy, whole grains. I was already eating vegetables, though, I already knew how to cook. So like those were two things that were definitely working in my favor. But it was a shift I had to start grocery shopping differently because produce spoils. And I couldn’t just buy like a week’s worth of you know, food at the very beginning of the week, because like my delicate produce would be bad by the end of the week. So it definitely was a shift. But then the idea of just like no grains, just vegetables, and fruit I found really easy and really liberating like, Okay, this whole section of the grocery store, I’m just not doing for 30 days. But I can have almost anything in this entire section. So I ate more vegetables than I’d ever ate, I learned new ways to prepare them like I rediscovered a love for things like brussel sprouts and asparagus that I hadn’t really liked before because I was kind of forced to find ways to prep them that I really liked them. And so those habits have always stuck with me as well.
Diana Rodgers, RD 8:43
Yeah. Yeah, it’s amazing how once you just get used to it. It’s not a huge shift anymore, right? Like, it seems… it can seem really daunting to before you’ve tried it. But I think also people run into like, I’m one of those people’s like, oh my gosh, that seems… but then as soon as I flip into it, it’s pretty easy. Would you say most of the people that started like, is there a typical avatar of a person that does a Whole30? I mean, I know you really hit men and women and all different ages. But do they tend to be people that are already kind of doing like a low-fat healthy-ish type diet? Or, like, where are they entering Whole30 from?
Melissa Urban 9:26
It’s all over the map. So it used to be for the first couple years that it was largely because we, you know, got started in the CrossFit community and was spread kind of virally through word of mouth through the CrossFit community. It used to be younger fit people who were already interested in health. And this was just sort of a shift in the things that they were paying attention to. So they were already focused on working out and eating well, and we were asking them to kind of shift their focus, and they had tremendous success and performance improvements in the gym. Then what we noticed right around 2012 is that we’d show up to a CrossFit seminar. And there would be like 50% of the room would be people aged 40 and up. And I remember being at this CrossFit seminar in Philadelphia and walking around and being like, Hey, how did you hear about us? And the answer was, my daughter told me about it, my daughter lives in another city and said, they’re coming to Philly, you need to go, or my niece told me about it, or my hairdresser told me about it. And now what we’re starting to see in 2012, is the shift to these younger CrossFitters, who are getting awesome results and then talking to their parents and saying, hey, you know how, like, your energy has been a little low, or you’ve got those constant kind of, you know, cramps, or muscle tension or joint swelling or pain in your knee, I think this thing could help. And then they started showing up. And now our audience is so incredibly broad and so incredibly diverse. We still have people who are coming to us who, you know, are already thinking about eating healthy, we have tons of people who are coming to us from a standard American diet because they’ve heard about the benefits of the whole 30 We have a ton of doctors and registered dietitians like yourself prescribing Whole30 to their patients because they know the power of changing the food that you put on your plate. And this is a very low-touch way of identifying food sensitivities and figuring out the foods that may be contributing to your health condition. So it’s really all over the map. And we hear testimonials from parents who are doing it with their children. And we have testimonials from like 75-year-old grandmothers who can like finally take their cat for a walk in their cat stroller again. It’s really wonderful to hear everyone’s different stories and how diverse they all are.
Diana Rodgers, RD 11:27
And I think there’s so many things about it that are so genius, and I think focusing on what you can eat. Yeah, number one is the biggest shift. And also, I have to mention to you when I was doing my dietetic internship, I don’t know I think I’ve already told you this, but…
Melissa Urban 11:47
Oh, I remember you talking about it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 11:49
Yeah. So my preceptor who is a dietitian, the head of dietetics at this hospital that I was working at. Lifelong Weight Watchers, overweight, and she was eating her salad with no dressing at lunch, and I’m eating these, like, you know, big hunk of protein and some veggies. And I think one of the tricks is for me was just like, I was just doing my thing, you know, eating something so different. And she’s like, How can I… you know, what are you doing over there? You know, and then, um, I have just this, you know, you could try this Whole30. She did it, she immediately saw the biggest results. And then she just kept saying, ‘No, you’re blowing my mind,’ because it’s so hard to unlearn. You know, especially for someone who learned the standard American diet in school, and we’re preaching it right. Yeah, the Whole30 completely… I mean, I still get random texts or wherever, you know, like once a year, just saying like, remember, you blew my mind.
Melissa Urban 12:43
I love hearing that. Yeah, it is, it is a big shift, for sure. And it does go against a lot of what you may have been, you know, you may have read or your doctor may be telling you or the government is telling you, you should eat in terms of like the food pyramid or whatever they’re calling it now it can run kind of counter. But you know, the important thing that I like to stress with the Whole30 is that, first of all, it’s a self-experiment. It’s not a prescriptive way of eating, we’re not saying these are the rules that you need to eat by forever to be healthy. That’s ridiculous. There is no one-size fits all, we all know this, this is a self-experiment to help you figure out what works for you. And the foods that you eliminate for 30 days in this short-term experiment, you’re not eliminating them because they’re bad. You’re eliminating them because they can be problematic to varying degrees across a broad range of people. And you want to know if they’re problematic for you. That’s it. If you get through this 30 Day experiment, and you eliminate, you know, bread, and then you reintroduce it and you feel just as good and it makes you really happy to eat it. Go ahead and keep eating it then but at least you’re making an educated informed decision now based on your own experience, rather than listening to someone else tell you what you should or shouldn’t eat, because that seems to change, you know, every time you open Time Magazine.
Diana Rodgers, RD 13:58
Exactly, exactly. And so since the original, It Starts with Food, and then the Whole30 book, how have you shifted the program, you’ve come up with more books, you’ve come out with sauces, talk about how it’s grown.
Melissa Urban 14:13
Yeah, it’s grown quite a bit. The fundamental premise of the Whole30 has remained almost exactly the same in that it’s based on an elimination diet, which has been around since the 1920s, and is still considered by many medical and health experts to be the gold standard for identifying food sensitivity. So that hasn’t changed. The science behind what we eliminate and what we include also hasn’t changed that much. And we’ve made a few tweaks here and there based on our clinical experience and new research. But for the most part, the program itself has remained the same. You will discover, of course, that as it’s grown, our resources have grown tremendously. We have more channels and support than ever. The program is free. It’s always been free and will remain free. But we have now you know, over 140 Whole30 approved partners like Applegate and Lacroix, and Waterloo and Primal Kitchen, and you’ll find three different Whole30 salad bowls at Chipotle now, which is really exciting. So we’re trying to increase access to people by providing Whole30 compatible and Whole30 approved convenience foods. We have a much bigger focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion. So our Whole30 recipes channel features, some incredible, talented creators sharing their whole 30 recipes from their culture or from their family. So again, focusing on what we can eat and what we are eating. We obviously have more than 200 Whole30 certified coaches now all across the world who are spreading the Whole30 mission in their local communities, which is wonderful. So it’s changed in a lot of ways. And it’s definitely grown and expanded. But the heart of the program has always been the community. That’s the part of the program that we still focus on the most. And we kind of base all of our growth decisions around is this in the best interest of the community.
Diana Rodgers, RD 15:52
Right. And so this brings me to people who, for whatever reason, are not comfortable eating meat. So whether it’s they don’t like the texture… there are, and I have a lot of empathy for these folks, there are certain meats that I don’t think I could eat. So I get it, I get that the texture can be you know… I have a lot of vegan and vegetarian friends and I’ve struggled to find a diet program that I thought was a good way of doing it. So actually, I was so thrilled when I saw that you guys came up with a matrix for how to put together a healthy plant-based diet. So we talk about like, what led you into coming up with it? How you did the research? I know I’m good friends with Steph, your dietitian, who I know put a lot of thought into it. So how did it come about?
Melissa Urban 16:50
So the original Whole30 does include animal protein. That’s where you get your protein needs from and without… because of the foods that we eliminate on the original Whole30, it has been impossible to do the program without any animal products. And accessibility has always been at the forefront of my mind and my mission. I want the Whole30 to be available to anyone in the world who wants to do it. And up until 2016, if you came to me and said ‘Could I do the whole 30 as a vegan or primarily plant-based?’ I would have to say no, you can’t. Because you can’t do the 30-day elimination in a healthy way without eating any animal protein and excluding all of the plant-based protein sources that we eliminate. In 2016, we always had chapters in every single one of my books, though, for how to modify the Whole30 to do it healthfully as a 100% plant-based person. In 2016, I outlined a vegan reset in my book Food Freedom Forever. So it’s based on the Whole30 framework but it was 100% plant-based. And it eliminated the most commonly problematic sources of plant-based protein while remaining a health-promoting program. So that was kind of our first foray. But we really wanted to do more, we wanted people to have access to the same life-changing benefits that the Whole30 can provide the same supportive community and that feeling of inclusion, we wanted you to have access to that, while still honoring your own dietary preference. And there are a lot of reasons that people don’t want to eat meat. I was vegetarian for many years in college, because I still struggle with the texture of certain cuts of meat, anything on the bone, anything really fatty. I can do ground meat, I can do fish, but like you put a big old ribeye in front of me and I’m going to struggle to get that down. So, you know, for that reason, for religious reasons or ethical reasons, for health reasons. for cultural reasons, for financial reasons. There are a lot of reasons that people choose a primarily plant-based diet and we wanted them to still have the same access to the Whole30. So we started researching, we did some surveys within the community, Steph Greunke reached out to this huge team of medical doctors and RDs and naturopaths, and other health care providers. And we created the plant-based Whole30 The first kind of iteration of the Whole30 ever that is 100% plant-based but focused primarily on identifying food sensitivities, still regulating blood sugar while providing enough protein and a different array of micronutrients to be helpful during those 30 days. It was a really long process of going back and forth deciding what foods we’d include in which we would eliminate we had to think about our meal template to make sure that folks ate adequate dietary protein based on our recommendations with every single meal. We thought about how to make it digestively friendly understanding that some of the components that they would be eating particularly legumes, beans, and lentils can be digestively challenging, so we had to think about ways to help mitigate some of the digestive challenges that people may face. And when all was said and done, we announced the plant-based Whole30 on February 2, and then people are right now in March in the middle of the first-ever group, plant-based Whole30.
Diana Rodgers, RD 20:07
That’s really great. And again, I really appreciate you doing it. There are definitely protein challenges with trying to get your protein from plant-based sources. So you include tofu, legumes, and then certain types of meat substitutes like Chipotle has these vegan…
Melissa Urban 20:27
Chorizo. So it’s whole food forms of soy. So it’s tofu, it’s tempeh, it’s edamame. So not we’re not doing highly processed forms of soy like your texturized vegetable protein, we’re doing more whole form and if you can do it fermented and if you can do it organic, fantastic. All forms of legumes including beans, peas, lentils, even peanuts, our protein sources on the program, minimally processed meat alternatives, most of them are pea protein-based, but you’ll see the plant-based chorizo from Chipotle or Abbott’s butcher. We have a few different brands that are compatible with the program. But it does rule out your like Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger because they contain ingredients that we find are just too highly processed to be helpful. And then we supplement with plant-based protein sources, so pea protein, or hemp, or any of the watermelon seed that can provide additional sources of protein in a digestively friendly way for people who find that they can’t base their primary protein source for three meals a day on legumes until maybe their body adjusts to it. Or if you know, they just don’t tolerate it. Well, we also don’t include any grains on the program. And that was in an effort to be blood sugar-regulating because one of the pitfalls of a traditional plant-based diet is a very often combination of rice and beans, for example, or, you know, beans and other forms of grains. And because those are primarily carbohydrate sources, and not as dense sources of protein, when you combine those two, you can end up with blood sugar dysregulation. So by leaving grains out and using vegetables, and fruit, and additional protein, and complimentary protein from nuts and seeds, we’re better able to balance blood sugar on the program. So those were a few of the thoughtful details that we put to ensure that the 30-day elimination is as helpful as possible on the program.
Diana Rodgers, RD 22:15
And I’m curious, do you know anything about the people that are entering this? Are these people that are already on a plant-based diet?
Melissa Urban 22:22
Yeah, it’s interesting. When we were thinking about it, we were like, Okay, who is this for, and we are finding that all three of the categories that we thought it would be for are now in the plant-based Whole30. So for one, it’s people who are already plant-based. They’ve been eating a 100% plant-based diet, they have no interest in reintroducing animal protein, but they want to find out which aspects of their plant-based diet work best for them and their unique context. And our program gives them a very structured and healthy approach by which to do that. So they’ll eliminate foods in their plant-based diet, reintroduce those plant-based foods, compare their experience, and have this new information. It’s also folks who have done the original Whole30. But I get asked all the time would vegan approach be better for me. And I’m like, I don’t know. And neither will you until you try it. So if you’ve done the Whole30, and you want to take more of a plant-forward approach, maybe you don’t want to give up all animal protein. But you know, you want to do meatless Mondays and you or you want to eat less animal protein and include more plant-based sources. This is an excellent way for you to identify the plant-based protein sources and plant-based side dishes that work best for you. And we have two reintroduction protocols with the plant-based Whole30 one that does not include any animal products and one that does. So if you go 100% plant-based on our program for 30 days, and then want to reintroduce eggs, and then fish, and then red meat and see how your body responds to each of those what a wonderful learning opportunity that is. And then finally, we have folks that are omnivores that are just curious about a plant-based diet and what that might look like for them. They may have never done a Whole30 before, but are entering the community through our plant-based program and may or may not choose to reintroduce animal products. But this is a great way for them to test out a plant-based diet in a very structured and health-promoting way. And we’re seeing all of those in our plant-based beta groups that happened in January and now in the March program.
Diana Rodgers, RD 24:16
Yeah, that’s awesome. And are you finding anything out about age or any sort of demographic type information about the types of people that are entering this one?
Melissa Urban 24:29
We will. Our beta group was only about 40 people so not really enough to provide some clinical experience although it is really interesting that feedback and testimonials were very consistent. So people reported things like energy and sleep and mood and digestion improving. So for the folks that a plant-based diet works well for we were getting some really positive feedback and very consistent feedback. Interestingly though, you know, I want people to understand that you may do a plant-based Whole30 and it might not work well for you, you might get two or three weeks into it, and your energy is flagging and your digestion is not getting better. And you may notice that this approach just doesn’t feel as good as your old dietary approach, which may have included animal protein. And to that, I would say the program worked exactly as it was designed. It’s not that it didn’t work for you, it’s that it worked to identify that a 100% plant-based diet may not be the right diet for you. And if you’re still committed to eating 100%, plant-based then awesome. I want you to go work with a health care practitioner or a registered dietitian, or a functional medicine doctor to help you make sure there isn’t something happening under the hood that you don’t have some kind of underlying gut condition that’s maybe perhaps impacting your results, or work with an RD to help you figure out a specific dietary plant-based plan, that can be the most health-promoting for you. But if you’re not married to 100%, plant-based on you try this experiment, as some of our coaches did. And discovered, it doesn’t work as well. Cool. Now, you know that including some animal protein is the healthiest for you. And you’ve probably figured out that there are some plant-based sources that work better for you than others. I know you can include those. So I think, you know, thinking about it as a self-experiment here is really important. And no matter what the outcome, you’re going to learn a lot about what works best for you.
Diana Rodgers, RD 26:19
I think that that’s so great. Because what I hear from a lot of people that try a plant-based diet is that when it started failing for them, they were just told to plant-base harder.
Melissa Urban 26:32
Mm-hmm. Right.
Diana Rodgers, RD 26:34
Maybe you need to go raw, or maybe you need to go fruitarian. Or maybe you just weren’t good enough at doing it, you need to just do it more, eat more vegetables. And for a lot of people, as you know, and I listened to your call because I was just so curious about kind of the troubleshooting aspects. And Steph did such a great job at explaining like, Okay, here’s the potential problems, you know, like maybe too much raw or too much beans. Here’s all the reasons why it might not work out great, and why maybe pulling in some animal source proteins is going to serve them better. And so that’s so different from all of the other plant-based diet solutions out there.
Melissa Urban 27:20
Yeah. Yeah, you know, I want to emphasize that I and Whole30 are completely agnostic as to what your food freedom looks like. And if you read the stuff I wrote in 2011, and 2012, I was not so agnostic, I was pretty clear that I thought that eating animal protein was necessary for optimal health. It was for me, I had a comparative experience where I didn’t eat as much for a long time. And then I started eating more again, and I felt and performed so much better. And back then it was hard for me to look outside of my own experience and recognize that people have different lived experiences. Now we are completely agnostic. Whatever your food freedom looks like, I want you to use either one or both of our programs to identify what works best for you. If it’s not working for you, though, the answer isn’t necessarily just to do more of that same thing that isn’t working. And we offer tons of tips and tricks to help with digestive issues and troubleshooting digestion, you know, you’re going to have to work a bit harder to make sure you’re getting specific micronutrition on a plant-based diet. So if that’s your long term approach we talked about, you know how you can use lab work to determine if you need heme iron, or how to supplement with things like Vitamin B12, and some of these other really important vitamins that you may that are not as bioavailable or easily available on a plant-based diet. So I want to work with you to help you figure out how to make whatever diet you feel is best for you the most effective for you. And if I can’t help you, I’m going to refer you out to someone an expert who can. But yeah, I think this idea of like just do more of it or just work harder without, without offering other solutions or other options is a little limited, I find.
Diana Rodgers, RD 29:00
Yeah. And I think a lot of people also assume that I’m anti-vegan, and that’s not really the case. I wouldn’t say that I’m agnostic. Personally, as a scientist and nutritionist, I firmly believe that eating animal-source protein is optimal for humans. However, I think people should absolutely have the flexibility and freedom to choose the diet that resonates the best with them. And if they want to not eat meat, that’s totally fine. And I think the best way to not eat meat is to do a plant-based Whole30. So and I will just refer them to you know, somebody who is a… you have specific coaches that are a little more trained in the plant-based version?
Melissa Urban 29:46
Yes, yes, they are certified.
Diana Rodgers, RD 29:48
Yeah so as a practitioner, I don’t feel that I’m the best match for somebody who totally doesn’t want to eat animal source foods, but that doesn’t mean that I am looking down at them. I just totally… I get it that some people, yeah, don’t want to eat meat, meat freaks them out for whatever reason. They should still eat whole foods. You know, there, I see so many people doing it wrong, basically, especially young people who are really swayed. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about meat that really pulls at emotional heartstrings and can really be highly influential, especially, you know, at those years when you’re trying to deal with a changing body and a lot of social pressures, you know. And so I think that a tool like this is just super, super valuable, and amazing.
Melissa Urban 30:39
I really appreciate that. First of all, that means a lot. There’s a reason that we don’t use the word vegan in our approach. We thought long and hard about what to call it. And that word vegan can just come with a connotation, it can either scare people off, or people can become so tightly identified with it. And so we didn’t want to bring that into the conversation. We are plant-based. But if you look at the plant-based Whole30 and the original Whole30, there’s also a ton of overlap. It’s real nutrient-dense food, we’re filling our plate with vegetables and fruit, we’re eating natural, whole healthy fats, we’re eating to satiety, we’re not restricting calories, we’re not counting calories, or macros. We’re not stepping on the scale, we’re not talking about weight loss. Like there’s so much overlap between the two communities in between the two things that we have in common, and we like to focus on the commonalities as opposed to the differences. I think that’s a nice collaborative way to make everyone feel like they are a part of the same community, no matter which protocol they’re doing.
Diana Rodgers, RD 31:36
You know, is there anything else you wanted to kind of add in? I mean, I definitely just wanted folks to kind of listen to your reasoning for it, listen to how I felt about it. Hear the collective endorsement of this program for folks that may need, again, for whatever reason, don’t want to eat meat, but maybe could be doing a plant-based diet in a more healthful way. You know, what else?
Melissa Urban 32:01
I so appreciate the opportunity. And it’s been really great, obviously, to be able to come and kind of explain a bit more of the backstory and obviously hear your perspective. I guess the last thing I’ll just say is that I am a huge believer in self-experimentation. If you follow me at all, you know, I do tons of different self-experiments, whether it’s not drinking right now, or cold showers or rucking or hot food, or talking to strangers. And you know, a plant-based approach could just be another one of your self-experiments. We’ve designed it by registered dietitians in a very health-promoting way. And I think it’s a really great opportunity, whether you are plant-based but interested in what your diet might be like if you included some animal protein or vice versa. Either one of our programs gives you an awesome opportunity to learn more about yourself. And like nobody has ever said no, thank you, I don’t want to know any more about like me and how I operate and run. So I really encourage people to come in through whichever door you like and welcome and experience the welcoming nature, the inclusive nature, the supportive nature of the Whole30 community, if you’re gonna try it, I think our house is the place to come to do it.
Diana Rodgers, RD 33:07
So there’s information about your program, I’m assuming at whole30.com. They can find a coach that if they want to work with one who’s certified in the plant-based Whole30 yet on your website,
Melissa Urban 33:20
There’s a Whole… you go to Whole30.com. And then there’s like a big plant-based kind of green button. It’s got its own kind of website hub, and all the pages are green that tells you you’re on the plant-based site. There’s tons of downloadable free resources, the rules, a shopping list, a protein guide, a troubleshooting guide supplements articles, we have plant-based, whole 30 certified coaches, we have a 14 product bundle with Daily Harvest. The Whole30 plant-based edit with Daily Harvest that can help make meal prep a little bit easier and give you a good foundation for things like legumes and veggies and introduce you to some new kind of produce that you might not find at your local grocery store in a convenient way. So we have tons of resources and options. We had the opportunity to create these before we launched the program, which means you’re coming into it again in the program is free, but you’re coming into it from a very supportive place.
Diana Rodgers, RD 34:07
Awesome. Well, I know that you’re working on some other fun things. I can’t wait to help promote them in the future when we can talk about them more publicly. Always a pleasure to chat with you. Thank you so much. Yeah, and then folks can find not only they’re on Instagram, your Whole30 recipes, which I’ve taken over way back. It’s such a huge resource and then there’s the official Whole30 Instagram feed.
Melissa Urban 34:33
We have PB Whole30 now, so a@PBWhole30 And that’s an entire channel devoted just to the plant-based. And you can find me @MelissaU that’s where I talk about things that are definitely well beyond the scope of Whole30 but still tangential, I think.
Diana Rodgers, RD 34:46
Definitely Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time, and have a great afternoon.
Melissa Urban 34:52
Thanks, Diana.
Diana Rodgers, RD 34:54
Thanks so much for joining us on the Sustainable Dish Podcast. If you like the show, please leave us a review on iTunes. And don’t forget to sign up for our newsletter at Sacred Cow.info see you next time thanks for listening
