… and after time to reflect, what do I think about what I heard and experienced?

I think Melissa Hartwig is an extremely accomplished public speaker and,as you might expect, totally on top of her subject. She spoke for more than three hours without notes or a PowerPoint presentation to guide her and dealt with every question a diverse audience, that had come from all over Europe, threw at her. She didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know but it was useful to hear it from her directly and and the whole experience has really cemented the ideas in my head. She repeated a few times that the Whole30 is not a “weight loss programme” to which my inner imp replied “Sure, except it is!” and that a key concept of the Whole30 is that you don’t weigh yourself to which my imp answered “right.. except you do”. The most surprising revelation (for me) was that Melissa is a recovering drug addict, I did not know that, maybe I should have done as it is no secret:

http://whole9life.com/2012/01/coming-clean/

All in all the seminar reinforced my view that, for 10, 20 or 30 days (pick your own number between 10 and 90) the programme is a great way to re-set your relationship with food (and alcohol), it provides a set of rules that help you eat and shop is a simple to understand and follow, paleo friendly, way and kick starts a new or stalled weight loss programme. Sorry , Melissa it just does. Look at my data 😉

Finally, while finding the “Coming Clean” post above, I found this post by Dallas Hartwig:

http://whole30.com/2015/03/dallas-whole30/

Which gave me more pause for thought than the fact that one of its founders is a recovering drug addict… not only does the other founder not use it any more, he has only used it twice ever.

Does that change what I think about the programme? No not really, I have my own experience, results and feedback from clients to go on. It works.