Reddit reviews It Starts With Food: Discover the Whole30 and Change Your Life in Unexpected Ways

Take it one day at a time, one meal at a time. It's overwhelming to think about it like, "I'm never ever going to eat sweets again" but its easier to think "I'm not going to eat dessert tonight".

I read this book and it totally changed my perspective on food.

Whole30 worked for me and my wife.

Now, whether you're interested in paleo and/or Whole30 or not, I'd still recommend reading the It Starts with Food. It explains the psychological and hormonal effects of food that lead to binge eating and such.

I feel like I link to this book on every thread, but if you want a good explanation of the Paleo diet and the science/nutrition behind it I highly recommend picking up [It Starts With Food] (http://www.amazon.com/Starts-Food-Discover-Whole30-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B008C20TDG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407293809&sr=1-1&keywords=it+starts+with+food).

It Starts With Food is a phenomenal book to start with just to understand how food affects us. Another one that covers autoimmunity is The Immune System Recovery Plan. Both of these books revolve around diet and not anxiety, but it is my firm belief that in order to find what is triggering the anxiety, you must work on other areas of your life first. If diet, exercise, and sleep do not subdue your symptoms, then keep searching. I’d be willing to bet if you tried the elimination diet, whether Whole30 or Dr Blum’s Recovery Plan, this will help you.

I’d love to hear about your progress. Please feel free to follow up. You’re so young!! You have so much potential!! Don’t let something like this control you. Initially, you might find yourself resistant to try new things, so it will take what I call ‘just making the decision’. This means that if you want to find peace with your health, you just have to decide to do it and push through whatever doubt (or anxiety) you might have.

It’s one thing to make the decision, so how do you stick with the decision you might be thinking? Especially when the stress really peaks. Three things.

1. Know the why. If you do not have a ‘why’ to what you do in life, regardless of what it is, there is no way you’ll stick with it. The why gives us guidance. It gives us dedication and strength. When part of you says who cares, the part that knows the why will say, I do. Really think about this. Take a few days and literally write down a mission statement for yourself. When the anxiety is really affecting you, go to wherever you have this hanging up and read it. Breathe! Deep breaths! If you have to, say, Progress, not Perfection! to remind yourself that it’s okay to feel the way you because you have a plan to get to a better place. This is merely a bump in the road, not a road block.
   
2. Once you have the why, make some goals. The rules about goals: they must be measurable, have a time of completion, and they must be assessed regularly to see if they are still effective.
   “I will work on being less stressed”. This is not a goal. It has none of the components of a goal. “This week, I will take 10 minutes each day to meditate before starting my day.” That is a proper goal. It’s measurable, it has an end date, and at the end of the week, you can measure its effectiveness. Write these goals down to make them real and tangible. Put them with your mission statement and at the end of each week, assess your progress. This might sound time consuming, but after a couple weeks, this new habit will take very little time.
   
3. Make the goals small! So many people who make goals want to go for the gold immediately. Perhaps the person wants to lose 50 lbs. so their goal is to lose fifty pounds, within 6 months, working out 6 times a week. That meets all the requirements of rule #2 technically, but if the person has never worked out or has no idea what diet they should be eating, what’s the likelihood of sticking to this goal? Instead, maybe some goals should be, pick up 3 different whole foods I have never ate before to cook with at the grocery this week. Boom. Small, obtainable, measurable, and can be assessed. Smaller goals also give us the chance to start getting some momentum. They build optimism and positivity, which, in and of itself, can work wonders for anxiety.
   
   For you, being anxiety free might be the ultimate goal, but to reach that, you will need to make smaller, more focused goals to reach that bigger one. You can do this. You might need to enlist the help of someone you trust. Find an accountability partner so when you do hit rock bottom (and that’s okay if you do!), you have someone to lean on who can help you stay on track with your goals.
   
   Again, feel free to reach out if you have more questions. Patience is going to be your friend here. However, just on elimination diets alone, people have made sweeping recoveries to all sorts of illnesses. I won’t go into the details but look at those books I suggested to see how food can truly affect us.
   
   Life is a journey. No one lives your life but you. Make it yours. Make it awesome!

If you like the Whole 30 people, It Starts With Food or Well Fed might be good resources.

http://www.amazon.com/Starts-Food-Discover-Whole30-Unexpected-ebook/dp/B008C20TDG/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1404450579&sr=1-1&keywords=whole+30