The Whole30 Plan: Is the celebrity-backed diet worth trying?

Everybody is talking about which foods to cut out in order to reset your gut.

Gut problems are causing huge issues for people every day with 1 in 5 women saying no to sex due to Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) symptoms.

It’s no surprise, then, that everybody is talking about the Whole30 Plan, a diet designed to cut all inflammatory foods out of your diet.

Let’s find out more about the diet that the likes of Busy Philipps and Emmy Rossum swear by.

READ MORE: Is IBS partly psychological?

What is the Whole30 Diet?

It is described as pushing a reset button on your body. It flushes out the toxins caused by inflammatory food groups and is said to stop cravings, spikes in blood sugar and gut damage.

As the name suggests, it takes place over 30 days and is meant to help you figure out which foods have been causing you problems.

What can I eat?

There’s quite an extensive list of off-limits foods. These include: soy, legumes, real and artificial added sugar grains, dairy, baked goods, junk foods, carrageenan, MSG, and sulfates.

This means no alcohol, too.

Your diet will instead revolve around moderate portions of meat, seafood, eggs, vegetables, some fruit, natural fats and herbs and spices.

You can find all the rules here.

What about exercise?

There are no rules on exercise because this is purely about altering your body composition.

The only rule outside of the food rules is that you must not weigh yourself - or take any body measurements - during the 30 days.

The diet powers that be do encourage you to weigh yourself before and after, though.

READ MORE: Is it ok to go more than a day without eating?

What do the celebrities say?

The diet has come to mass attention because of celebrities like Busy Philipps, who documented her experience through Instagram Stories.

The hashtag #Whole30 has over 4 million posts on it, with people sharing recipes and tips to get through the 30 days.

Busy Philipps described the experience as “intense” but it showed her that she was addicted to sweet food and helped her to deal with emotional eating.

Emmy Rossum also gave her advice on how to get through the 30 days: “Cooking Sundays is key, I like to bake a bunch of chicken and salmon and burgers, steam a bunch of veggies, and so I'm ready-ish. if I get bored, I’ve had success eating out if need be, just being really annoying "is that cooked in olive oil?"“

READ MORE: Busy Philipps opens up about her abortion

What do the nutritionists say?

Many nutritionists have raised questions about the diet, claiming that any diet which encourages you to cut out entire food groups is too restrictive.

Nutrition and weight management advisor, Dan Amos, told Yahoo! that the diet would also be too restrictive for vegans.

There has been a big rise in veganism lately which includes everything from vegan gardening to vegan hotels.

He says: “A large portion of the diet is made up of meat, eggs and fish. What about vegans? Their only option would be to eat vegetables for an entire month.”

The NHS backs up this theory. It’s advice recommends a balanced diet which doesn’t eliminate any food groups.

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