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1-Page Summary of It Starts With Food

Overview

Melissa Hartwig and her husband, Dallas Hartwig, have backgrounds in nutrition and physical therapy. They used information from their own practices to design a diet that improves energy levels, helps people lose weight, and makes improvements in general health. Their book describes the Whole30 program they created based on those theories about food and health.

The Hartwig’s program, the Whole30, is designed to change your life. The centerpiece of this program lasts thirty days and eliminates all unhealthy foods from your diet. You then slowly reintroduce various food groups back into your diet during the reintroduction phase. This is a time where you discover what food sensitivities you have. Ultimately, after completing this program successfully once, you’ll be able to continue on a modified version for the rest of your life.

To be successful at the Whole30, you have to know what foods are healthy and unhealthy. It Starts With Food provides lists of both types of food as well as explanations about why they’re in that category. The book breaks down the different types of food into macronutrients and micronutrients, sometimes even to a molecular level, which shows how your body reacts when you eat those foods. In this way, you can see there’s scientific evidence behind why certain foods are healthy or unhealthy for you.

A healthy diet should be based on four standards. First, it should make you feel good emotionally. Second, it should keep your hormones in balance. Third, a healthy diet supports a healthy gut and immune system. Lastly, it keeps inflammation low by minimizing the intake of unhealthy foods. Any food that doesn’t meet all these standards shouldn’t be part of your Whole30 diet plan.

The Hartwigs then take the reader through a process of determining whether a food group meets each standard. They analyze meats, seed oils, sweeteners, alcohol, seafood, vegetables and legumes. The groups are further broken down into specific nutrients and foods that include popular foods such as peanut butter or calcium-fortified soy milk.

To assess food groups, we must first identify the unhealthy ones. We can do that by asking questions about hormones, digestion and brain chemistry. Once we know what foods are bad for us, it’s easier to eat a healthy diet.

Once the reader understands that certain foods are unhealthy, this book goes on to explore what foods are good to eat. It categorizes them based on four criteria: whether they’re low in calories, high in nutrients, and so forth. The best food categories include meat and seafood for protein (especially avocados).

Good foods also come from good sources. Readers should pay close attention to labels and know where the food comes from. For example, grass-fed cows are better than grain-fed cows, and wild salmon is healthier than farmed salmon. It Starts with Food encourages readers to buy organic fruits and vegetables because they’re less likely to be exposed to harmful pesticides.

Once readers have learned about the foods that are allowed in the Whole30 program, they can move on to meal planning. The book suggests three meals a day with no snacks and no TV or videogames while eating. Participants should give their full attention to food without distractions of any kind. It is also recommended that participants do not skip breakfast because it gives them energy for the rest of the day.

In the elimination phase, dieters are not supposed to consume any artificial sweeteners or tobacco. They also aren’t supposed to weigh themselves for thirty days.

Every meal should be centered around protein, and vegetables are a good source of healthy fats. The palm size is used as a measure for the amount of protein one needs per day; however, athletes may need more than that depending on their lifestyles.